Introducing Subscriptions: Centralize contract details in Vendr’s System of Record

Getting full visibility into your software spend is the first step towards optimizing it.

At Vendr, we’ve found that more than 30% of SaaS purchases in the average organization are subscriptions, SaaS purchase agreements made directly on a supplier’s website with a credit card.

Without a transparent way to track subscriptions, it’s impossible to have a full picture of your expected spend. You can't identify when actual spending is over budget, and you lose opportunities to annualize agreements and reduce costs.

Now, Vendr can provide even more clarity into your SaaS stack. Today, we release Subscriptions — a new feature to capture your month-to-month software agreements in addition to annualized contracts.

Track and manage your SaaS subscriptions in Vendr

SaaS contracts and subscriptions are both types of agreements for using software, but there are key differences.

SaaS contracts are formal agreements between a customer and a software provider that typically have a defined start and end and usually contain more extensive security, legal, and finance provisions.

Contracts are typically vetted, negotiated, and purchased through an established set procurement process.

A subscription, on the other hand, is a lighter-weight agreement that allows customers to use the provisioned software on a month-to-month basis. SaaS subscriptions are typically purchased as “click-through” license agreements by individual employees on personal credit cards.

Get your data out of spreadsheets for better visibility

Subscriptions make up a significant amount of your SaaS agreements. Instead of tracking month-to-month agreements in a spreadsheet, you can upload your subscriptions directly into Vendr.

With subscriptions in the same place as your contracts, you can confidently see all your agreement details in one place. You have one place to look for the details of any purchase.

Your applications and supplier relationships will be automatically saved into your System of Record, a single repository for all your software information. Subscription purchases and agreement details will appear alongside your current contracts, so you can easily search, sort, and filter your data across your entire software stack.

Stop and course correct shadow spend

When SaaS purchases don’t go through a formal procurement process, it can lead to overspending and SaaS sprawl. There’s no oversight preventing multiple instances of the same application from being purchased by different employees. There may also be overlapping tools that serve the same function.

By tracking subscriptions in Vendr, you can see which applications employees are using and determine which could be consolidated or removed. When multiple instances of employee-acquired SaaS exist, merging them under a single enterprise contract can create significant savings.

Subscriptions are notorious for having pricing terms with unconstrained spend. For example, collaboration tools will often charge per user and make it easy for end users to share content widely and bring more users into the platform, often resulting in huge swings in billing. When it's billed directly to a credit card, spending more than you expect can happen easily.

Vendr tracks your expected spend and uses accounting integrations to track what you’re actually paying. You can compare these two numbers to keep an eye on where costs might be getting out of control and take action.

Find opportunities to convert subscriptions to contracts

Insight into subscriptions can help you identify where you will benefit from upgrading to an enterprise contract. Moving from month-to-month to annualized agreements is an excellent opportunity to find savings. This is where Vendr can drive additional value through pricing benchmarks and strategic supplier insights.

With a full view of subscriptions and how much you spend on them, you now have a list of existing purchases that may be worth upgrading to contracts. Subscriptions you have been using for years, or those that have increased significantly in price, are good candidates to be reevaluated and potentially negotiated as annual contracts.

In addition to cost savings, you can negotiate other aspects of the agreement for better security, compliance, and legal protections.

How to start using Subscriptions

The challenge of managing SaaS subscriptions presents an opportunity. Capturing and centralizing subscriptions along with your negotiated contracts provides a complete view of your software, allowing you to avoid redundant and unnecessary costs for your business strategically.

With Subscriptions, Vendr provides a comprehensive solution for tracking and managing your complete SaaS spending alongside our suite of SaaS management tools. For our Vendr customers, Subscriptions is now available for you to jump in and start using today. For more information about how to add and track your Subscriptions in your Vendr account, check out our help docs; if you need help with anything, please contact Support (support@vendr.com).

If you're ready for a better way to manage your SaaS contracts and subscriptions, contact us to start using Vendr.

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