When you think of budget do you think of your IT department? Chances are you are overlooking this important area. As the use of the cloud grows, so does the need for smarter Software as a Service (SaaS) strategies.
The switch from on-premise to the cloud offers a great change: month-to-month billing. Gone are the days of being locked into 3-year contracts! Now, you can flex your license subscribers up or down each month. Even though the cloud offers pay as you go billing, the software expenses do add up if they aren’t being monitored. Some questions to consider when thinking about your business budget are:
- Are these software expenses part of the IT budget?
- Are software expenses part of another departments budget?
Oftentimes asking these questions results in figuring out that there may not be a consistent or definite answer. The great news here is that now you can get a hold of this situation before anything goes south!
Not only should your business get a hold of the budget process, but we think you should also look into the spending. Some questions to ask yourself are:
- Are we over-spending on licenses?
- Where are we over-spending?
Here at TBSC, we find many businesses care about their spending but really do not have a grasp on how much they may be over-spending. We’ve also found that the on of the top contributions to over-spending on cloud software is unused licenses.
Software can eat away at a budget. It is easy to fall into over-spending and not even realize. The fact is, with the cloud growing, so is the spending. Many businesses do not have a proper system in place to help keep track of their licensing. Luckily for you, we have done the research to help you get your spending under control.
Here is our advice on helping you budget your SaaS:
- Discover what applications are running: by discovering what you currently have and taking a solid inventory of your software, you can safely start the process of figuring out what applications are used and not used in each company department or even per user. Having a detailed overview of this data can ensure you make cost-effective decisions moving forward.
- Review cost-cutting opportunities: with the data provided from the discovery and inventory scan, you can begin to see where costs may be cut with your cloud software. When reviewing this data, you should ask yourself:
- Can these licenses be reharvested and used somewhere else?
- Can these licenses be downgraded?
- Can these licenses be utilized to the fullest?
- How often are these applications being used in the last 60 days?
- Make the changes! After looking into the data and finding where the costs can be cut, it is time to implement the changes.
- Continue to monitor the data and report the improvements over time. Perhaps you may need to make changes month to month, but in the end it will be worth it!
This task list might be easier said than done. Even though the steps are simple, it is a tedious and daunting task to get the SaaS budget under control. It can even take a lot of manpower. However, there is some good news for you!
There is a fool proof method out there that has helped plenty of our customers get their SaaS spending on track. If you are looking to get help with your SaaS budgeting, we can help.
TBSC is proud of our smarter solutions for software asset management. We have developed a smarter method to ensure you make smarter choices with your budget. We took the 4 steps above and made them simple and automatic through our Smarter SaaS tool.
We can help you gather data quickly with our agentless technology and begin making budget saving decisions within minutes! If you are interested in learning about our products, please contact a member of our sales team today: sales@businesssoftwarecentre.com or visit our website: https://tbsc.cloud/
