How BetterCloud saved BetterCloud $200k+

Besides delivering a zero-touch employee experience through IT workflow automation, we at BetterCloud use BetterCloud to reign in our software spend and manage our evolving tech stack.

This article highlights the learnings from our CFO, Sean Hill, on how BetterCloud transformed our tech stack and saved us big time.

Like many others, my finance and IT teams grappled with a myriad of software-related challenges like a lack of visibility, inefficient management, and shadow IT.

Our team has been overwhelmed by questions about software spending, like:

• How many contracts are we juggling?
• What’s our total SaaS software cost?
• Are we even using all this software?
• How many users actually need each tool?

To say it simply, managing SaaS spend was far from easy and software spending as a whole resembled a bit of a black hole.

In my 15 years in finance, I’ve found that software decisions are not centralized. For example, Marketing might invest in a new outreach platform, unaware that Sales already has a similar solution.

This lack of visibility is a ticking time bomb for a company’s bottom line.

The biggest challenge: Lack of visibility

Before Spend Management with BetterCloud, we relied on spreadsheets to track contracts. Despite our efforts to maintain accurate spreadsheets, they lacked crucial details about software utilization and what the software actually did. 

Knowing shadow IT exists, we needed to reach out to teams across the organization to find out what contract belonged to whom, what the software does, and how many users were actually needed. Sometimes we were able to find these answers, sometimes we did not. 

Crystal clear software spend with BetterCloud

After BetterCloud’s Spend Management solution was implemented, we felt the impact immediately.

I was blown away to find $160,000 of savings from overlapping products and $50,000 from unused licenses.

For years, managing software licenses with outdated spreadsheets was a struggle. Automatic contract renewals often included excessive user licenses, draining our resources. Without manual intervention, these bloated contracts kept recurring. 

As experts in the field of SaaS Management, we thought we had a pretty good grasp on our own SaaS stack. We didn’t.

Thankfully, BetterCloud’s Spend Management solution changed everything. We could now identify actual software usage and upcoming renewals, leading to immediate savings of $210,000 through optimized licenses and product consolidation. This translates to a direct boost to our bottom line and a reduction in financial risk.

Bringing IT and Finance closer together

Beyond the numbers, BetterCloud has transformed the way our finance and IT teams collaborate. With less time spent searching and finding questionable data, we’re able to proactively manage our tech stack to drive business growth. Finance and IT, and even Legal all function in harmony rather than chaos.

Above all, the partnership with IT is stronger than ever. Myself and our IT manager, Damian, are able to work together in BetterCloud to effectively manage SaaS spend as it continues to evolve. Our visibility and trust in one another has never been higher.

The future

Now that we were able to eliminate overlapping software and unused licenses, we’re able to move on to evaluate our tech stack from a strategic perspective.

Our focus now is building a tech stack that truly supports our team. At the end of the day, we want to make sure the software we have in place is actually helping our team be successful and productive in their everyday work.

The employee sentiment module in BetterCloud is going to be a game changer for us during this phase of our journey. It’ll give us all the info we need in one place, so we can stop playing detective and start making smart, informed decisions.

To learn how BetterCloud can help manage your SaaS spend, usage, contracts, and everything in between, request a free demo today!