It takes good tools to drive growth. However, inefficient software purchasing creates headaches for both the budget and technical infrastructure. Companies that prioritize their tech stack keep a handle on day-to-day tech management, SaaS licensing agreements, and legal and security concerns.
An efficient SaaS management process requires ongoing efforts to maintain cost and time efficiency. Procurement professionals are skilled at ensuring stability, saving money, and negotiating purchases. Partnering with a supplier to manage parts of the sourcing process though, is critical in achieving process efficiency.
Teams must understand their current SaaS usage, costs, and value to create a more efficient procurement function. With this information about the SaaS supply chain, they can enter the software purchasing process armed with information to simplify the negotiation, licensing, and purchasing approach. We recommend three tactics to save money and time when purchasing new software:
- Encourage transparency to reduce rogue spending.
- Make more informed SaaS buying decisions with better pricing, data, and scope knowledge.
- Enhance procurement efficiency with negotiation professionals.
Encourage transparency to reduce rogue spending
Without a transparent procurement process, employees will be left to fend for themselves in sourcing, negotiating, and signing contracts – and most likely, they aren’t procurement experts. Purchases by them create unnecessary licenses plus a hidden drain on resources. Even more detrimental, they open the organization to security or regulatory risks.
Think about the current state of SaaS spending within your company:
- What is the process to access available contracts?
- How do you compare prices and determine the best-known suppliers?
- How often do you conduct a SaaS spending analysis?
Procurement systems can offer the transparency needed to make better spending decisions. SaaS vendor management increases transparency by making suppliers, contracts, and costs easy to access. Outsourcing SaaS management to a reliable solution is a huge time-saver for your procurement team, putting the renewal process on auto-pilot.
Make more informed SaaS buying decisions
Pricing research and scoping are time-consuming parts of the procurement process. But without them, making informed purchasing decisions is nearly impossible. With so many variables in play, insight into the SaaS buying process can create meaningful cost reductions and lower the friction of the deal.
Relying on the data of a vendor management platform can significantly improve pricing outcomes. By giving procurement teams access to historical pricing and metrics of other benchmark organizations, buyers have information that can make their negotiations stronger and fairer. This streamlined approach isn’t just good for the buyer; it allows both sides to work better, move deals along faster, and emerge from negotiations feeling more confident.
Enhance procurement efficiency with negotiation professionals.
As a company grows and scales, the cost-efficiency of cross-functional processes lessens. This cost avoidance creates a compelling business case for streamlining the process via procurement outsourcing to a vendor management solution. SaaS vendor management professionals are highly trained and specialized in negotiating SaaS purchases. These SaaS buying experts can relieve those procurement pain points while implementing workflows that ensure the best deals.
Utilizing this resource reduces spending on software, letting stakeholders turn their attention back to the work that matters. It’s a win-win. When it’s time to implement your updated procurement process, don’t go it alone. Enhance the effectiveness of your procurement efforts with guidance and assistance from our SaaS experts. We can help you enter the software purchasing process armed with the information you need to ensure that each new SaaS purchase and renewal is handled effectively from the beginning. Contact us today to take control of your processes and to start improving your procurement efficiency!