Zluri Features

  • 9 min read

6 Ways To Achieve Immediate ROI With Zluri

Rohit Rao

30th September, 2023

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To swiftly attain an immediate return on investment (ROI), it's crucial for your finance team to optimize SaaS spending. But how can that be done? Your team needs to identify areas where SaaS expenses can be reduced, such as eliminating redundant or duplicate applications, reclaiming unused licenses, ensuring compliance standards are met, and implementing other cost-saving strategies.

As organizations shift from on-premises to cloud-based environments, they procure more and more SaaS apps so their employees can work in the new environment more efficiently. But, this rapid adoption of SaaS has introduced challenges for the finance team. They are unable to keep track of software spend manually. Due to this lack of visibility into SaaS spend, organizations are losing opportunities to save SaaS costs and to get immediate ROI. 

So, as a CIO, how can you overcome these challenges and obtain immediate ROI? The solution is to opt for an intelligent SaaS management platform (SMP) such as Zluri.

Zluri enables your finance team to regain full control over SaaS costs by providing complete visibility into your organization's SaaS stack. Furthermore, with Zluri's powerful features and analytics, your team can obtain a holistic view of your SaaS applications, their usage, and associated costs. This comprehensive insight enables your team to optimize SaaS spend and get immediate ROI by eliminating unnecessary expenses. 

This was just an overview of what Zluri does. To make you understand better, we've compiled 6 ways in which Zluri helps you make better cost-saving decisions and achieve immediate ROI. 

Here’re 6 Ways To Get Immediate ROI With Zluri

Below we'll discuss 6 strategic ways in detail, focusing on how your finance team can seamlessly optimize SaaS spend and get immediate ROI with Zluri. 

1. Discover The Hidden Spend

To effectively discover the hidden spend, your finance team needs to first grasp the concept. Hidden spending refers to expenses that often go unnoticed or are easily overlooked within your organization. 

Listed below are some forms of hidden spending that will help your finance team understand better what was stated above   

• One significant factor contributing to hidden spending within organizations is Shadow IT. It usually occurs when employees independently acquire and utilize SaaS applications without the knowledge or approval of the IT team. As a result, your finance team cannot identify the unknown expenses associated with these unauthorized purchases, leading to a leakage in the SaaS budget.

• Moreover, your employees unintentionally procure SaaS applications whose features are already offered by other applications existing in your organization's SaaS stack. This results in the acquisition of duplicate and redundant applications, giving way to unnecessary SaaS expenses.

• Also, there are instances where your employees stop using certain SaaS app licenses after a period of time, and you end up bearing the cost of unused, underutilized, or duplicate subscriptions/licenses. This, once again, adds to the SaaS spend.

• Lastly, hidden charges which come from true-up costs, i.e., the difference between the cost that comes from the contract and the actual expenditure. 
  
  Consider a scenario where you initially purchased 200 licenses for an application at $10 per license, resulting in a total contract cost of $2000. However, halfway through the year, 30 additional employees joined, so now you need 30 more licenses for the same app and pay $300 for those app licenses. 
  
  Technically, the total spend for the first year becomes $2300. Nonetheless, since you paid $2000 based on the contract, there exists a difference of $300 between the actual spend (managed by finance and expense management) and the contract cost. This $300 represents the hidden charge.
  
  You must wonder how hidden charges become an obstacle to optimizing SaaS spend. When finance teams rely on manual methods, they often fail to accurately assess the spend, due to which they get inefficient data. Thus, while calculating the hidden charges, the result differs and doesn't reflect the actual expenses incurred.

How does Zluri help mitigate these challenges? 

With Zluri's 5 discovery methods, i.e., SSO or IDP, finance & expense management system, direct integrations, browser extensions (optional), and desktop agents (optional), your team can discover all the SaaS tools apps present in your organization's SaaS stack. 

This way, your team gains full visibility into the SaaS stack, allowing them to eliminate shadow IT, which further helps your finance team identify which app subscriptions they are paying for.  

Furthermore, with this cloud solution, your team can access all the SaaS application details that help them analyze overlapping features among different applications. This further empowers your finance team to discontinue subscriptions for duplicate and redundant SaaS apps, significantly reducing SaaS costs and allowing you to attain immediate ROI.

But that's not all that Zluri offers. It goes a step further by providing insights into underutilized and unused licenses. With this data, your finance team can take proactive measures to decrease, reallocate, or right-size licenses accordingly. 

For instance, let's say you purchased 50 licenses for an application, allocating 25 licenses to the HR department and 25 licenses to the procurement department. However, the procurement department only utilizes 20 of the allocated licenses, while the HR department utilizes all 25. 

So, what Zluri does is it gathers this relevant information and updates it on a centralized dashboard. Now, your finance team can easily identify the unused licenses and take appropriate action, either by eliminating them or reassigning them to other departments where needed. 

Additionally, Zluri helps identify hidden charges by providing your finance team with comprehensive cost and actual spend (YTD) data. This enables them to precisely figure out the differences and obtain accurate expense information.

2. Analyze The Software Usage

Finance teams often face challenges in achieving complete visibility into software usage when they practice manual methods to gather insights. This limitation significantly hinders their ability to accurately analyze which app features are actively utilized and which remain unused. As a consequence, there is a higher risk of SaaS cost leakage and becomes an obstacle to get immediate ROI. 

How can one analyze software usage with the help of Zluri?

So, to effectively tackle this challenge, Zluri SaaS management platform provides your finance team with valuable software usage insights. This empowers them to find exactly which employees are actively utilizing specific app features and identify the ones that remain untouched. 

With this granular visibility, your manager can make informed decisions, and accordingly, your finance team will downsize to a suitable tier or shift to a more suitable one. By doing so, your finance team can optimize licenses and obtain immediate return on investment. Also, this intelligent approach helps reduce the chances of SaaS cost leakage. 

To help you understand better, let's consider a scenario: an employee has a paid version of Zoom but doesn't conduct meetings that exceed 40 minutes. In such a situation, Zluri provides your finance team with app usage insights, indicating that the paid version may not be required for these users. 

Armed with this information, your manager can make an informed decision, and as per the decision, your finance team can switch to a free plan. By doing so, your finance team can avoid paying for features that are not being used, helping to reduce unnecessary expenses. 

3. Be Proactive With SaaS Renewals

Your employees sign up for applications to fulfill specific project requirements in certain situations. However, once the project is completed, they often neglect to discontinue the subscription or inform the IT team about its discontinuation. 

Consequently, due to automatic renewal, your finance team continues to bear the costs for applications no longer in use.

Let's assume a scenario: the procurement team procured the Kissflow app for a new project for managing purchase needs. The project was completed within six months, and after that, the team stopped using the application without canceling their subscription. 

As a result, despite its non-usage, the application was auto-renewed monthly, leading to unnecessary ongoing expenses.

How can your finance team proactively manage SaaS renewals with Zluri? 

With Zluri's renewal calendar, your finance team gains valuable insights into upcoming renewals, keeping them well-informed and prepared. This enables your managers to make informed decisions regarding the continuation or cancellation of subscriptions and contracts by enabling your finance team to assess app actual usage before the renewal deadline. Additionally, the renewal calendar provides a centralized view of all payments and contracts organized month-wise.

Furthermore, this cloud solution offers the flexibility to prioritize renewals based on specific requirements. For example, if a payment involves a huge amount, your finance team can prioritize that particular renewal first. Moreover, they have the ability to set manual alerts according to their preferences, allowing them to stay updated on important renewal deadlines.

However, by default, your finance team will receive timely alerts for contracts 30, 15, 7, and 1 day(s) prior to renewal. For payments, alerts will be received 7 and 1 day(s) before renewal. 

This comprehensive system ensures that your finance team has complete control and visibility over the renewal processes, empowering them to effectively manage software spend and avoid unnecessary expenses.

4. Reclaim Former Employee’s App Licenses Upon Deprovisioning 

Another area often overlooked is the opportunity to save and get immediate returns by reclaiming app licenses from former employees upon their departure. This occurs because the finance team relies on traditional methods to track and obtain insights into SaaS licenses, leading to unclaimed licenses. 

How Zluri help in reclaiming ex-employees' app licenses?

When an employee leaves your organization, Zluri updates the details of departing employees on its centralized dashboard by seamlessly integrating with your HRMS. 

By doing so, your finance team will get the details of employees who are departing and accordingly check which licenses ex-employees held and reclaim them or allocate them to new employees or employees who require them. This proactive approach saves you from unnecessary SaaS expenses and helps in get an immediate return on investment.

So, valuable licenses will no longer go unused or be forgotten amid employee transitions. Your finance team can transform the offboarding process into an opportunity for cost optimization. By reclaiming former employees' app licenses and repurposing them effectively, you unlock significant savings and ensure that every license serves a purpose. 

5. Enhance Security & Compliance  

Sometimes, your finance team gets so engrossed in saving costs on applications that they neglect crucial aspects such as security and compliance. You must be wondering what security and compliance have to do with minimizing SaaS spending.

To help you understand better, let's take a few examples:

When an organization doesn't have a data recovery tool, the manager seeks third-party assistance to retrieve lost or compromised organization's SaaS app data. However, unfortunately, this approach proves to be extremely costly and unnecessarily inflates SaaS expenses. 

Another scenario arises when a Saas app doesn't meet the company's compliance standards, you end up paying hefty penalties. Instead, this money could have been utilized in other required areas.

How does Zluri help to enhance security and compliance?

So, to mitigate the risk of data loss, Zluri provides data recovery features, ensuring the safety of your organization's SaaS app data. Additionally, it notifies your team in real-time about any unauthorized breaches so that they can take measures to prevent security breaches that may result in data loss.

Additionally, Zluri offers your team complete insights into the compliance status of your applications. Armed with these details, your team can easily identify which applications meet the required compliance standards and which ones don't, helping you avoid potential penalties. 

Further, by swiftly eliminating non-compliant applications, your finance team can avoid unnecessary expenses incurred on such applications.

6. Automate Manual IT Teams Tasks

When an organization practices manual methods, it drains valuable time and effort from their IT teams and adversely affects employee experience and overall productivity. Consequently, this indirectly impacts SaaS costs and hampers the organization's return on investment.

For instance, when your team relies on manual methods, user onboarding and other processes that could be completed within hours take days to accomplish. This not only diminishes the user’s experience but also hinders productivity. These processes can be streamlined and expedited by opting for an automated platform. However, continuing to support manual processes consumes additional time and financial resources, further impacting your organization's ROI.

How is Zluri the right automated platform for your IT team?

With Zluri, your team can automate repetitive IT tasks, such as provisioning, deprovisioning, and the access request management process during mid-life cycle changes. 

But how does it do that? It allows your IT admin to create onboarding and offboarding workflow, and provides your employees with an Employee app store. 

• Zluri’s onboarding and offboarding workflow helps you grant and revoke employee(s)with just a few clicks. This automation eliminates the manual practice, which requires more people to manage a single task, saving costs and resources. Also, it reduces the likelihood of human errors, further enhancing efficiency.
  
  Not only that, but by gaining access to all the required applications, your employees can start with their work efficiently from day one without any interruption. This improves their overall experiences and increases their productivity. And upon offboarding, your team can ensure all the access has been revoked promptly from former employees, reducing the risk of security breaches and saving the organization from data loss. 

• Further, when employees are promoted, switch departments, or move to a different location, the need for access to new SaaS applications arises. So, your IT admins need to grant them access to new SaaS apps without any delay. But when this process is managed manually, employees have to wait for days to get the approval, causing an interruption in their work. 
  
  So what Zluri does is it provides your employees with an Employee app store, i.e., a collection of SaaS applications approved and verified by the IT admin. This gives your employees the flexibility to choose any app from the EAS and gain access to it within no time. This reduces the waiting time and they can start with their work right when they get access. 

  

  

  In short, the IT tasks which take days to complete when done manually, through Zluri’s automation capabilities, your team can complete those tasks within a day. This way, your team can expedite work and free up valuable time and resources to concentrate on essential core areas of operation.
  
  However, Zluri doesn't stop here; it also offers SaaS buying capabilities, simplifying the process of app procurement. It allocates experts to negotiate the best possible deal on behalf of your procurement team while acquiring a new SaaS app. These experts utilize two negotiation techniques: ZOPA (Zones of Possible Agreements) and BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement).

  

  

  To help you understand better, let's assume an instance. Suppose you have a budget of $40,000 and need to purchase a SaaS app from a vendor. After conducting market research, you discover that vendors offer the required app within a price range of $35,000 to $45,000. In this scenario, the ZOPA represents the difference between your spending limit and the vendor's price range ($35,000 to $45,000). 
  
  Armed with this information, Zluri's experts can confidently negotiate on your behalf, aiming to secure the SaaS app at a price closer to $35,000 while ensuring the vendor still earns a profit.
  
  Another scenario arises when negotiating a new service agreement with a preferred vendor. The preferred vendor charges $20,000 per year for the service, but you have received estimates of $17,000 and $15,000 annually from other vendors offering the same service. In this case, your best option is to consider one of the alternative vendors if the preferred vendor's price exceeds your budget. 
  
  With this knowledge, Zluri's experts can negotiate with the preferred vendor to secure the service closer to the competing charges of $17,000 or $15,000 per year. Additionally, you can rely on your BATNA and opt for a different vendor if the preferred vendor cannot match these prices.
  
  This is how Zluri effectively supports your finance team in optimizing your SaaS expenditure. 
  
  So, book a demo now to witness firsthand how it significantly reduces your SaaS expenses and helps get immediate ROI right from day one of deployment.
  
  Also Read: How High-Growth Companies Can Reduce SaaS Spend

About the author

Rohit Rao

Rohit works in the Community and Marketing Team of Zluri and is a strong advocate of community led growth.