Peter Fallowfield is IT Support Manager at Solidatus, a data management, discovery, and visualization platform for companies in the financial sector. He was tasked with getting to grips with the company’s software subscriptions, which led him to discover Cledara. Peter shares how Cledara has helped him manage Solidatus' software subscriptions and procurement process.
“Cledara has made life a lot easier. It has given me a good overview of what software we have and who is using it. I can easily see who the owners of the software are and what our monthly and yearly subscription payments are. It has also allowed me to quickly implement new pieces of software without a long procurement process.”
When Peter started, he had no list of the software Solidatus had, what was being used, or who was using it. Over the course of a year, he tried to put as much information as possible into their expense management tool. He recorded all day-to-day expenditures and also used it to purchase hardware and manage software subscriptions through the tool.
“But it still wasn't that great because it couldn't display who owned each software subscription or who was using it. And it only let you do monthly rolling subscriptions. I couldn't have yearly subscriptions or one-off payments, so it still wasn't very helpful and if you changed anything, it would need approval. So, it's very clunky. It didn't really give me a good overview of what software we had. And that's how I found Cledara. And it's really changed how I've been managing software and made life a lot easier.”
How Cledara helped
Standard expense management solutions don't give you much information apart from that it's a monthly recurring cost and you can match it against the supplier, with a brief description. And when Peter gave access to cards to colleagues, he'd have to move that subscription into their account and would lose visibility.
“Which is why I love Cledara because I can see all the different pieces of software. I can see who's the owner. They can see the card. I can see the card, it just gives you that extra visibility so you can see what's happening.”
In our conversation with Peter Fallowfield, he emphasized the importance of obtaining the ISO 27001 certification for Solidatus. The ISO 27001 certification is a globally recognized standard that demonstrates a company's commitment to protecting sensitive data.
“When I started there was a lot of shadow IT and people with their own subscriptions. So we've really been trying to lock it down. Especially because we're trying to get our ISO 27001 certification. Cledara really helped for that part because you don't have things like rogue pieces of software or people granting their own access, things like that.”
How Cledara helped
Cledara helped us by providing visibility into software subscriptions and usage, making it easier to track and manage them. This has been especially helpful when it comes to compliance with various standards such as ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials.
“Without Cledara, it would have been quite tricky to pass some aspects because it would be hard to track down what software we exactly had. And it would have been a lot more manual. We probably would have had to have spreadsheets with the software written down, which would have taken up more time. And I think that's when you start to slip, because if you're having to manually update everything, you know things can soon get out of date.”
Prior to using Cledara, Peter had no list of the software Solidatus was using and who was using it. He tried using a standard expense management tool to manage software subscriptions, but it was clunky and didn't provide a good overview of their software subscriptions. Cledara changed that by giving him visibility of their software subscriptions and the ability to see who was using it.
“Cledara has made it easier for me to manage our software subscriptions. I can easily see who the owners of the software are and what our monthly and yearly subscription payments are. It has given me a good overview of what software we have and who is using it.”
How Cledara helped
Cledara helped by providing greater visibility over software subscriptions, allowing for quick identification of issues and alerting them to the responsible parties. This saved the IT and finance teams a significant amount of time, with Peter estimating a couple of hours per week.
"Cledara saves hours out of my week again...which adds up over a month, and because there's only one of me, a couple of hours a week might not sound like much, but when it's only you doing the IT, saving those few hours is just amazing because I can spend it on something more productive."
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