SaaS Management

  • 5 min read

How to Optimize your Google Workspace Licenses

Rohit Rao

28th June, 2022

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There are high chances that your current Google Workspace license is unoptimized. Inappropriate SaaS management practices may lead to inefficiencies in the form of unused licenses, redundant apps, and more. You might end up paying more than what is required. Moreover, it might raise compliance and security issues.

Are you worried about your Google Workspace license optimization? Don’t Worry. We have a solution for you. With the help of a SaaS management platform like Zluri, IT teams can overcome all the SaaS challenges via SaaS cost optimization, improving security and compliance, and automating IT tasks.

Optimize Google Workspace Licenses with DUAAS Framework

In this article, we will discuss in detail the DUAAS framework and will assist you with the optimization of Google Workspace licenses.

1. Eliminate the Apps With Same Use Cases

Due to the accessibility of SaaS apps, employees or teams purchase apps independently, leading to an increase in duplicate apps with overlapping functionality. It increases expenses for the organization.

Consider the below-mentioned examples.

• If you have signed up for any Google Workspace plans, it offers Sheets with any plans you choose. But the problem arises when a few employees and departments have also signed up for similar apps like Airtable.

• The different plans of Google Workspace offer various file storage spaces of 30GB, 2TB, 5TB, or unlimited space through Google Drive. But if the employees are using different apps like Dropbox or Onedrive to store their documents, you are paying an extra amount for the same purposes. 

In addition, individual apps purchase makes you lose the capacity to negotiate with the SaaS vendor. Hence, losing on discounts that could have availed if they purchased licenses in bulk, not to forget the other benefits that come with enterprise plans. 

App discovery is the first step toward eliminating SaaS redundancy. Rather than using traditional solutions to track SaaS apps, like spreadsheets, ITAM, or SAM tools, it's better to use a SaaS management platform (SMP).

SMPs are purpose-built for SaaS management. Zluri, an SMP, has the largest app library in the world, with over 225,000 SaaS apps. 

Zluri discovery engine uses five discovery methods to find SaaS apps in your organization with 100% accuracy. These methods are SSO, finance or expense management, direct integration through APIs, desktop agents (optional), and browser extensions (optional). 

2. Rightsize Unused Licenses

Usually, the larger companies prefer buying licenses in bulk. They buy licenses based on the forecasted demand. At the time of distribution to teams, departments, or business units, many of these licenses are left unused, thus creating waste.

Suppose you have 2000 licenses and you plan to hire 300 new employees in your organization. So you purchased a total of 2300 licenses for Google Workspace Enterprise, including the new joiners and the existing employees.

Whereas in reality, you have 850 employees on board. In this case, you will lose and waste an excess of 150 licenses from the highest tier if you have not attained the numbers yet.

Now consider this across all the other apps that have the same use as that of suites of apps in Google workspace.

Zluri finds out the number of licenses that are left unused and unattended across your entire SaaS stack, not just Google Workspace. So, you get all the license details on one page. 

Unassigned licenses across all the apps

With this data, you can easily plan your IT budgets. 

We assist you in rightsizing your valuable licenses and prevent you from wasting large sums of money. We also help you with more accurate forecasting of license demand.

Save money deleting suspended users and with accurate licenses forecasts

3. Terminate Abandoned Apps

Abandoned apps grow in an organization when there is no process for procuring apps and termination of these apps. It means the SaaS apps are not terminated appropriately, leaving your organization with compliance and security risks. 

Employees forget to terminate the apps they have signed up for without informing the IT teams. It leads to paying for abandoned subscriptions and data breaches that IT teams are unaware of.

We have seen that Google Workspace comes with its own suite of apps. When employees sign up for parallel apps and forget to terminate them before leaving the organization, it leads to a lot of abandoned apps. 

Therefore, it is very important to have an owner for each app so that accountability can be maintained. Zluri enables you to keep track of owners and alternate owners. This also helps save time for IT teams as many tasks can be decentralized.

Keep track of app owner

While offboarding employees, Zluri can verify that all their accounts are closed and terminated. It will help you to secure the data and save your money from being wasted on an abandoned license.

Zluri tracks the software usage and finds out the licenses that have been abandoned or unused. Additionally, you can de-provision the application for offboarding employees directly from Zluri's dashboard

Zluri's Once Click Offboarding. 

4. Be Proactive with Automatic Renewals

Most SaaS applications have auto-renewal clauses in their IT contracts. Once you provide credit card information, the SaaS vendor will automatically renew the license depending on the SaaS agreement. 

But the problem arises when an employee signs up for a free trial period on a corporate card and forgets to cancel the license once their usage is over. This leads to paying for unnecessary licenses which are not being used anymore.

If the employee forgets to cancel the license, then the auto-renewal happens after 14 days. It means the money paid for the license will be a complete waste as there is no usage until IT teams discover it.

Zluri solves this issue with a renewal calendar. 

For contracts, you get alerts 30 days, 15 days, and one day in advance. For payment, you get seven days and 1-day alerts. And you can set custom alerts as well. This helps you prioritize high-value contracts.

Prioritize high-value contracts

5. Downgrade Licenses to Suitable Licenses

SaaS vendors offer features based on the pricing tiers you choose. Most of the time, organizations overestimate their requirements and purchase the top-tiered plan. Once you start using the app, realize that it could have fulfilled the features you are using with the lower-tier plan.

Say, for example, you have purchased the Business plus plan of Google Workspace, which can record a virtual meeting with 250 video participants. But gradually, the departments in the organization realized that a maximum of 144 people attend the meeting at a time.

You can downgrade the plan to the Business standard that will record the virtual meetings with 150 video participants and fits the requirement. With this plan, the organization will save $6/user/month.

Again, this can be used not just for Google workspace but for your entire SaaS stack.

Zluri can offer visibility to the least used applications. This will help you understand the app usage pattern at the department, business unit, teams, etc., level, and sign up for a plan that suits your organization.

Use Zluri to Optimize your SaaS Stack

Using a SaaS management platform like Zluri can assist you in optimizing your licenses of SaaS vendors like Google Workspace. It helps you gain visibility to all the detailed data of applications and vendors. You can automate your IT tasks and make your organization secure and compliant.

With Zluri, you get a real-time view of the apps, and you can cut costs without sacrificing the organization's requirements. You can forecast whether you need to upgrade or downgrade software before the renewals with the help of a renewal calendar.

Google Workspace is one such example. With this, we can portray the value-based pricing and help you visualize the key points on which you can optimize your licenses. 

As your SaaS stack grows in the organization, it is better to take control and be in your control. Zluri helps you automate your renewal process and stay away from vendor lock-ins. Book a Demo Now

About the author

Rohit Rao

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