DiffBlue is a pioneering Generative AI for Code company with a mission to change the way software is written. With growth came complications: the software stack swelled to over 100 tools. SaaS and cloud expenses reached £300,000. The result? Too many hours poured into overseeing purchases, approvals, and budgets. For Financial Controller Dionne Clarke, managing it was a nightmare.
“I had no visibility so managing SaaS spend was virtually impossible. It was exceptionally difficult attempting to forecast budgets from the spreadsheet as it was always out of date with inaccurate information."
Making sense of DiffBlue's SaaS apps meant a frustrating scavenger hunt for Dionne. With data fragmented across spreadsheets and statements, even simple questions required digging through multiple sources.
Payments for new tools would appear, and Dionne was forced to find out who owned the account, how many seats had been purchased if it was monthly or annual, and if a contract was signed. Not only was this time-consuming, but it also caused conflict in having to police software spend and approvals.
“My biggest issue was that I was in a situation where I was having to police what was going on and I didn't want to be in that position. I didn't want to be the policeman of the company”
How Cledara helped
Dionne loved Cledara right out of the box, now it’s the first thing she opens in the morning as she can see everything in one place. Each transaction is right there, and every application has an owner, details about seats, contracts, and renewal information.
“Cledara is the first thing I open in the morning. I can look at everything that’s being spent on software, it has details about what we pay, when it was paid, invoices that I can check, contract documents, the number of seats and I can set reminders for annual renewals”
Initially, Dionne found it hard to get buy-in from the leadership team. She knew she needed a solution but the team didn’t fully understand the issues with our SaaS tools so didn’t see it as a priority.
“In the end I just went ahead with the installation, I knew it had value and I didn’t want to wait any longer for everyone to buy into the solution. After setting it up I demonstrated it first to the CEO and he loved it as it solved another long term problem of visibility for Department Heads.”
How Cledara helped
The visibility has helped the whole team, the CFO and CEO love Cledara and the systems admin team are now power users. In the past, they would go to Dionne for approval and there would be a lot of back and forth over budgets and payment methods. Now it’s just a simple request, I can approve it and they can do everything in Cledara to set up a new tool.
“It’s helped across our Finance and IT departments. Between those teams, we now save up to 10 hours a week managing software”
Like many companies, Diffblue had a handful of company cards that would be used to purchase software. Individuals who needed a new tool would track down someone with a card and purchase the tool they needed.
Not only did this mean that Dionne was dealing with unexpected transactions, but it also caused problems if an employee left or in Diffblue's case there were major headaches when they changed banks.
Finally, traditional cards don’t have any spend control so Diffblue was at the mercy of the vendors' renewals.
“I had no control over the spending because vendors had our credit card details, so they could renew and charge a payment and the first time I was going to hear about it was when I saw the payment on the statement at the end of the month”
How Cledara helped
Now with renewal reminders, spend limits, and the ability to disable a card in one click, Dionne has all of the control.
“Now I can control the spend, we can set limits, and if someone leaves or a tool isn’t being used I can disable the card. I get to control the spend, rather than the vendors.”
Before Cledara no one at Diffblue had a full picture of their software. Now the CEO, CFO, Dept Heads and IT teams are all on the same page when it comes to their software.
“Visibility and being able to track our SaaS spend and set accurate departmental budgets has been incredible. It makes Cledara worth its weight in gold and is the reason why it’s my favorite software tool.”
