What is SaaS Management?

In the very early stages of a startup, software subscription information  typically lives in a spreadsheet since it is relatively simple to track. However,  this can quickly become a problem, since spreadsheet data goes out of date quickly as you hire people and add new apps

Download Cledara’s free software management template for  a good starting point—just know that this is not a great long term solution, as a spreadsheet won’t scale with you as you grow.

Starting with SaaS management software early saves you time and money as your business scales. With Cledara’s Get Started plan, you can manage up to 15 apps for free and have peace of mind that your software is under control.

Your spreadsheet is only as accurate as the last time you updated it. This means that as soon as an app renews or someone purchases a new tool, it will be out of date.

Managing software in spreadsheets requires you to manually capture invoices, review cards statements and reconcile payments. This is time-consuming and often requires you to ‘chase’ stakeholders across the company to validate information.

If you’re buying software with shared company cards and don't use a dedicated system for software payments it's easy to lose control of what's being spent by who. More worryingly, business critical tools can be disrupted if cards are lost or blocked.

If you’re logging your tech stack in a spreadsheet, it’s hard to know whether a tool is really being used—let alone whether it offers a positive ROI.

If you ask your colleagues whether they’re still using a tool, they’re likely to just say “yes” for simplicity’s sake. Without a way to know whether they’re telling the truth or not, you’re going to be paying for tools that aren’t being utilized.

It’s easy enough to manage one or two applications. But as your software stack grows, a lack of visibility quickly starts to become a problem.

SaaS management platforms like Cledara give you visibility over every piece of software your company uses and every dollar of tech spend, regardless how big or small.

From a single dashboard, you can see:

• A real-time view of all your apps
• Detailed insights into how much your team use every app
• The costs and renewal dates of every app

According to a recent survey, only 47% of companies are confident that all their SaaS tools add value to their organization.

A SaaS subscription management platform like Cledara helps you set spend controls to ensure every dollar of the tech budget is being put to good use.

You can:

• Approve software requests
• Set spend limits and cancel subscriptions in a click
• Flag duplicates and underused seats

Every tool means a payment every month, an invoice, and multiple access requests. A SaaS management platform helps you streamline this admin burden by giving you a way to:

• Capture SaaS invoices automatically
• Sync payments and invoices to your accounting system
• Streamline software access in your organization

According to a recent survey, executives’ top software-related concern is the risk of privacy and data breaches. And Shadow IT is probably where the biggest concentration of that risk is.

SaaS management platforms like Cledara give you peace of mind that Shadow IT is under control, by giving you:

• A process to approve new tools that you control
• Set spend limits and cancel subscriptions in a click
• Alerts on Shadow IT usage

SaaS tools are hard to track, and even harder to chase stakeholders to ensure you comply with regulation.

A SaaS subscription management platform like Cledara gives you the peace of mind that you’re ready to pass (or maintain) you certificates.

You can:

• Natively embed compliance in your purchasing processes
• Delegate compliance questionnaires
• Access templates to meet ISO27001 and SOC2
• Check whether your software vendors are certified

We recommend mapping the journey of SaaS at your company and asking yourself what needs to be done each step of the way. This will help you ask the right questions to the sales reps of your SaaS management vendor.