SaaS is a hot topic right now. Or should we say, the cost of SaaS is. In the last couple of months alone, we’ve seen the likes of Microsoft, Zoom and Shopify all announce imminent pricing changes — and we can almost guarantee that more vendors of all sizes will follow suit.
But while SaaS pricing inflation will no doubt continue to be a talking point across the media, we’re also beginning to see a new narrative around SaaS pricing emerge. One that is less focused on vendors increasing their pricing and more focused on companies reducing their spend.
Twitter, for example, recently announced that it would be cutting its Salesforce bill by 75%, reducing its annual spend from $20 million to $5 million per year.
While it would be easy to assume that the decision to rightsize its licenses was simply a result of its reduced headcount, the reality is that it could have cut back on its SaaS costs regardless.
Why?
Because cost-saving opportunities exist in almost every SaaS stack. Companies often just don’t know where to begin.
The good news is that Vertice can help.
Having analyzed the data behind thousands of SaaS transactions, we have been able to draw some invaluable insights into the world of SaaS purchasing.
Each month, we’ll not only share our top findings, but we’ll also highlight the leading SaaS players across the industry.
Let’s kick things off for March.
SaaS purchasing insights
One third of SaaS spend goes entirely to waste
According to our data, 33% of software licenses go unused. When you consider that the average organization uses 110 SaaS tools, that’s a huge amount of wasted spend.
But this SaaS wastage is even more of a problem in certain departments.
While marketing and product teams are underutilizing 44% and 45% of their SaaS licenses, sales teams are wasting more than any other department, with 52% of licenses either barely used or not used at all by the intended employee.
The question is, how can you obtain this insight within your own organization?
In short, with a solution such as Vertice. With our usage analytics and discovery capabilities, Vertice now enables you to get detailed insights into the applications being used across your business and the utilization of these tools. You can learn more about this here.
Sales teams are spending more on SaaS than any other department
Sales teams aren’t just wasting more licenses than any other department, but they’re also spending significantly more.
In fact, within the average organization, sales tools now represent a fifth of total SaaS spend.
What makes this even worse though is that organizations are spending almost double the amount on SaaS per sales representative ($9,000) than the $4,552 that is spent on the average employee.
In monetary terms, this means that you could be wasting as much as $4,680 on every employee in your sales team.
But while CEOs and CROs are clearly investing in the tools that will empower these employees to hit revenue goals, the fact that so many licenses are going to waste provides these companies with the opportunity to rightsize revenue stacks without compromising on processes and productivity.
It also highlights why sales leaders shouldn’t be the ones to negotiate sales software.
Rightsizing isn’t the only way to reduce SaaS spend in this area though. With the average real price paid for sales software being 22% lower than list pricing, it’s almost certain that you could be negotiating a discount.
Download our latest report for a detailed breakdown of the pricing and discounting data for the 50 leading vendors in this space.
What’s trending in SaaS?
Each month, we’ll be tracking the biggest movers and shakers with our SaaS trend forecast. In addition to highlighting our hot picks for March 2023, we’ve also shone a spotlight on the SaaS players that have been the most willing to adjust to customer requirements and those with the most seamless renewal process.
With SaaS prices continuing to soar, our expert team of negotiators have been working incredibly hard to secure the best possible deals for our customers.
This month, we’ve seen Domo, Gong and ChurnZero lead the way by being the most willing to adjust their pricing to meet the requirements of their customers.
Of all the vendors we work with, Calendly, HiBob and Miro provided the most seamless renewal process for our customers this month.
Hottest vendors for March 2023
Each month, we track the biggest movers and shakers in SaaS. These are the vendors that we’re seeing the most activity around and that are well and truly on our radar.
Topping the leaderboard in March are:
Save on your next SaaS purchase or renewal
With access to the pricing and discounting data behind more than 13,000 SaaS vendors worldwide, Vertice can see what organizations like yours are actually paying for their software and use this as leverage in negotiations, working on your behalf to secure the best possible terms and price on any SaaS deal.
That’s not all we do though.
Through the Vertice platform, we can provide you with total visibility of your SaaS contracts and renewal deadlines, while also helping you understand whether or not these tools are being utilized and where cost saving opportunities may exist within your SaaS stack.
Get a better sense of how Vertice works here, or alternatively use our free cost savings analysis tool to see exactly how much you could be saving on your annual SaaS spend.
