Latest / Connectivity Without Chaos - The Podcast / **The Hidden IT Tax: 5 Surprising Ways Your SaaS Stack Is Wasting Money**

Transcript

**The Hidden IT Tax: 5 Surprising Ways Your SaaS Stack Is Wasting Money** · Connectivity Without Chaos - The Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know that feeling when you sign up for a free trial,
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: completely forget about it, and, well,
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: suddenly realize you've been rolling into a paid subscription for like six months?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and now multiply that by 10,000 employees.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: That is the multi-million dollar problem we're unpacking in today's deep dive
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: on mastering SaaS spend.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're looking at the article, Software Sanity Check, Track, Reclaim, Renew.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: The mission here is figuring out how companies can stop hemorrhaging budget
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: on bloated tech stacks and forgotten apps.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Hemorrhaging is definitely the precise word there.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in the enterprise space, the bleed almost always starts with auto renewals.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Companies get trapped because they just lack visibility into upcoming contract dates.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or even worse,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: they don't know if anyone is actually using the software they're about to pay
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: for again.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Measuring login frequency and duration is really the only baseline you have
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: for determining if a tool is truly business critical.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's unpack this.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like a forgotten gym membership that keeps charging your card, right?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: But say a tool is supposedly critical and the login metrics are flatlining.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Does that mean the software is just terrible or is something else happening?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what's fascinating here is that flatlining usage rarely means the tool is inherently bad.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, often it points to a massive gap in employee training.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, like they just don't know how to use it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you deploy a complex project management suite but never train the team
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: on its workflows, they're just going to revert to sending emails.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Identifying that gap is the core of strategic IT resource allocation.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about matching the licenses you own with
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: the capabilities your workforce actually knows how to leverage.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So once you realize 50 people haven't logged into a platform in six months,
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: you have to either retrain them or revoke their access to stop the billing cycle.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Which brings us to the mechanics of license reclamation.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: You take those dormant seats,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: you revoke access, and then you either cancel them or reallocate them to new hires.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're effectively recycling your software assets instead
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: of just buying net new licenses every time HR onboards people.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: But hold on.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about auditing hundreds of individual apps across thousands of employees.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Doing regular audits sounds like a manual nightmare for an IT team.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: How is that actually sustainable?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it wouldn't be.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Manual audits are basically extinct in modern IT operations.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is where dedicated SaaS spend management platforms come in.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, solutions like the ones provided by Provision Networks don't rely on human data entry.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: They integrate directly into a company's single sign-on,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know, their SSO provider, and connect via APIs to the individual apps.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So they're constantly pinging the applications in the background just to see
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: who is actually active.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Precisely.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: They automatically detect when an employee leaves the company or,
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: say, hasn't logged into an app for 30 days.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Then they can instantly trigger an automated workflow to reclaim that license.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that saves a lot of time.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: It really does.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Furthermore, these platforms can scan corporate expense data to uncover shadow IT.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, shadow IT.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: That always reminds me of, like,
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: bringing your own ingredients into a restaurant kitchen and just tossing them in
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: the soup.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: That is a great analogy.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The head chef or the IT department in this case suddenly has to deal
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: with compliance risks,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: security vulnerabilities, and duplicate spending they never even authorized.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: It completely bypasses all corporate quality control.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: But by connecting expense tracking directly to SSO data,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: tools like Provision Networks flag those unauthorized credit card swipes
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: immediately.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Bringing rogue spending back into the light.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Catching those unauthorized swipes and reclaiming dormant seats obviously saves money today.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have all this API data showing exactly how software is performing across
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: the enterprise,
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: that has to completely flip the dynamic when it's time to sit down with vendors.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, 100%.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Historically,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: vendors held all the cards because they knew their usage data better than
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: the client did.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: But now you walk into a renewal negotiation armed with concrete proof.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that changes everything.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: If your dashboards show that
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: a platform experienced significant downtime last quarter or that 40%
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: of your user base never adopted their premium features,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: well, you use that data to demand better contract terms or steep discounts.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're also in a position to see feature overlap, right?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're auditing everything centrally?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: You might notice you're paying for a standalone video conferencing tool
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: while your main communication suite just rolled out the exact same feature for free.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And consolidating those overlapping tools is the ultimate goal here.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're fundamentally optimizing the entire architecture of the business to ensure maximum ROI.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So what does this all mean?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: understanding this cycle makes you an invaluable asset in any organization trying
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: to run efficiently.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're moving past just being an employee who uses software to understanding
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: the full life cycle of software sanity.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Which is tracking usage, reclaiming licenses, and fiercely negotiating renewals.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's a continuous cycle.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it requires vigilance.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: But the tools to manage it are finally matching the sheer scale of the problem.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And thinking about the scale of the problem,
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: it kind of leaves you wondering where this is all heading.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if software subscriptions are becoming increasingly automated to buy,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: monitor,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: and renew themselves,
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: will companies soon need to deploy their own AI just to negotiate
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: with software vendors' AI over unused licenses?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: That is a wild thought.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Something for you to think about until our next deep dive.