Shifting Software markets
Traditional software contracts in companies nowadays can be counted on two hands. The signs have long been pointing towards SaaS for every new application that is purchased. Gartner predicts that the worldwide SaaS market is still growing in 2024 by nearly 20%. On average, a company uses around 150 SaaS applications. Traditional software asset and license management does no longer work under these conditions.
Software Center of Excellence (SCoE)
A SaaS Center of Excellence (SCoE) is a dedicated team or organizational unit within a company that focuses on optimizing the use of SaaS applications across the organization. The main goal of a SaaS Center of Excellence is to make SaaS enterprise-ready by discovering, rationalizing, optimizing, managing and securing SaaS. If you want to build your own SaaS Center of Excellence of would recommend to read our whitepaper on “Building a SaaS Center of Excellence (SCoE)”.
Tactic 1 – The business case
Every SaaS software purchase usually starts with a business case. For many companies, SaaS management starts only once the business case has already been turned into a purchase decision. SaaS catalogs and their coverage of business cases do not exist.
The SaaS Center of Excellence acts as the central contact point for all questions in direction of SaaS already starting from the analysis of the business case. With the overall SaaS landscape knowledge it is able to often cover business cases with SaaS software that is already in use.
Prevent new purchases of SaaS solutions by covering business cases with existing SaaS applications
Tactic 2 – SaaS processes
The introduction of SaaS software, especially in large companies, is often a tedious and slow process. Many parties such as data protection, information security and the workers council are involved and have a say in the process. The time-to-market for company products depending on SaaS solutions is severely affected by this.
The SaaS Center of Excellence is able to streamline and standardize these processes, resulting in a much shorter implementation time for any SaaS solution. (e.g.: SaaS light processes)
Save money by lowering your time-to-market with streamlined and standardized SaaS processes
Tactic 3 – Uncovering the hidden
Business-led IT has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the most obvious disadvantages is that it often leads to shadow IT, as the purchasing decision is transferred to the business to be able to make faster business-oriented decisions. Business units often lack an overall software landscape view and networking with central IT
The SaaS Center of Excellence is able to uncover SaaS with discovery processes via provider APIs, SSO platforms, CASB platforms, financial systems and browser extensions. The ability to know any SaaS application and its usage makes it possible to consolidate contracts or rationalize SaaS applications. SaaS applications that do not comply with company standards can even be switched off immediately.
Save money by knowing the unknown and consolidating and rationalizing your shadow IT
Tactic 4 – Centralize contracts
Another effect of Business-led It and the transfer of purchasing decisions to business units is that software (SaaS) contracts are not centralized. Often these units do not have the necessary expertise to understand contractual modalities and stumbling blocks, and there is neither monitoring of notice periods nor actual license usage. This can even be the case with centrally managed SaaS solutions, as application teams have to administer too many SaaS applications.
The SaaS Center of Excellence consists of software asset and software contract specialists that are able to negotiate contracts in the best interest of the company or even using benchmarking. In addition they are able to maintain a contract renewal calendar to not miss any termination periods for SaaS contracts. If a SaaS Management platform (SMP) is used they are able to negotiate contracts on real usage and help optimize SaaS contracts.
Save money through the centralization of SaaS contracts and the associated possibility of optimization
Tactic 5 – Rationalize SaaS
The uncontrolled growth of SaaS applications in the past has often led to duplication of functionality. Often, SaaS applications were purchased that were never used in production but still have fee-based contracts.
The SaaS Center of Excellence is the owner of rationalization campaigns and supports the enterprise architecture department (EAM) in the development of a target architecture. This includes sunsetting non-used SaaS applications.
Avoid costs through identical functionalities and non/low usage in your SaaS landscape
Conclusion
I hope I could clearly show that using these tactics it is quite easy to cut software costs by implementing a SaaS Center of Excellence (SCoE). If I have aroused your interest then I am happy to help introducing one in your company.
