Save on Salesforce License Costs with CloudEagle

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Salesforce is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform for 150,000 companies worldwide.

CloudEagle's research reveals that in the first half of 2023, CloudEagle's customers acquired more than 300 products, with Salesforce standing out as the frontrunner in the number of deals and having the highest average contract value within the CRM domain.

CloudEagle's data further indicates that CRM falls under a category susceptible to pricing fluctuations, potentially leading to increased costs. Effectively managing Salesforce licenses is paramount to preventing excessive spending on Salesforce licenses.

This blog aims to guide you through strategies for optimizing your Salesforce licenses, enabling you to save more effectively.

Understanding Salesforce license types

Salesforce offers various license types and pricing options. Understanding these license types and pricing structures is crucial for organizations that already use or are planning to buy more Salesforce licenses.

Salesforce's pricing structure is typically based on a per-user, per-month model. The cost varies depending on the chosen license type and the edition (e.g., Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, or Unlimited). Let's take the example of Salesforce Sales Cloud:

• Essentials ($25): This license allows access to all-in-one sales and supports app
• Professional ($75): This license allows access to all features of the Essentials edition. In addition to that, the edition allows Lead registration, Rule-based lead scoring, and collaborative forecasting
• Enterprise ($150): This license allows access to all Professional Edition, Workflow, and Approval Automation features
• Unlimited ($300): This license allows access to all Enterprise Edition features and offers 24/7 Salesforce support

In addition to the above pricing tiers, you can pick the platform edition if your business has a unique sales method and requires custom processes.

Subscribing to platform licenses can also reduce license costs. Salesforce Enterprise licenses can cost around $1,800 per year per license, while Platform licenses cost $300 per user license per year, thus creating a lot of difference.

• Platform Starter ($25): This edition helps build custom apps to improve marketing, service, and sales productivity. It offers access to 10 custom objects.
• Platform Plus ($100): This edition helps extend Salesforce to every employee and department and transforms the development experience for everyone. It offers access to 110 custom objects

It doesn't matter which license you purchase; only one user can log in with one license. The login credentials cannot be shared with others.

Do the options sound overwhelming now? Therefore, understanding the specific needs of your business and proper license management is crucial to preventing overspending on Salesforce.

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Understanding Salesforce License Management Challenges

Salesforce license management can pose several challenges for organizations. Some of these include:

Complexity in License Types

Salesforce offers various license types (user, feature, or add-on licenses), each with its own features and pricing structures. Managing and understanding the nuances of these licenses can be complex, especially in larger organizations with diverse user needs.

License tiers

It takes work to optimize licenses to match actual user needs. Sometimes, users have more features than they require, leading to unnecessary costs. Finding the right balance, providing adequate access, and controlling costs can be tricky.

User Adoption

Another challenge in Salesforce license management is ensuring that all users utilize their licenses effectively and comply with the terms and conditions set by Salesforce. Low user adoption rates or improper utilization of licenses can result in wasted resources.

License Renewals

Keeping track of license renewals can be a task in and of itself. Managing expiration dates, negotiating new agreements, and aligning licenses with evolving business needs can be time-consuming.

Addressing these challenges often requires a combination of proactive license management strategies, continuous monitoring of license usage, and aligning license allocation with business objectives.

CloudEagle’s approach to license management

CloudEagle has one of the largest numbers of integrations among all SaaS management platforms. The following are some ways CloudEagle helps you save more on Salesforce licenses.

Plan license purchases in advance

CloudEagle keeps track of your license inventory and promptly alerts you when licenses are running low, facilitating efficient Salesforce license management. This prevents ad-hoc purchases due to licenses running low, which makes it impossible to negotiate the price.

Track logins

CloudEagle tracks how often a user has logged in to the Salesforce account over a certain period. If the user has not logged into Salesforce for a fixed number of days, a reclamation workflow is triggered to harvest the license. The admin can then reallocate the license.

Automated deprovisioning

Whenever an employee exits the organization, their license is automatically revoked. This ensures that licenses are available for active users only, and you are not paying for unused licenses.

Feature-level usage tracking

CloudEagle tracks user activity on Salesforce to capture which features are being used by the user, offering visibility into how frequently and intensively users engage with specific applications.

In Salesforce, people buy licenses for Sales Cloud, so if no opportunities are created, you know that the user is not using his Sales Cloud license. With this, CloudEagle assists in determining the appropriate licensing tier for applications with multiple plans.

Budgeting for licenses

CloudEagle's functionality extends to a thorough assessment of license inventory and mapping it with usage data, distinguishing active from dormant licenses. This data forms the basis for accurate departmental budget projections, ensuring precise resource allocation.

Negotiations during renewals

Leveraging usage data and contractual insights, CloudEagle empowers you with the correct data for negotiation with vendors, facilitating the selection of appropriate plans or favorable terms for licenses and services.

CloudEagle also offers negotiation as a service, where our SaaS buying experts negotiate with vendors on your behalf. Furthermore, the data on actual license utilization can be used during contract renegotiations during renewals.

Here is how CloudEagle helped Armory save 18% on SaaS spend with vendor negotiations (including Salesforce cost savings).

Overall, CloudEagle puts users at the center of Salesforce license management by offering granular insights, efficient allocation, and adaptive management based on individual user behaviors and needs, optimizing resources, and enhancing user experiences.

How CloudEagle helped an American communications giant reclaim and reallocate hundreds of underutilized Salesforce licenses

Background

A leading company faced a challenge managing Salesforce licenses, struggling to track usage among their 4,000+ users. Although they had license visibility, the absence of usage data within Salesforce posed challenges in making informed decisions about license reallocation.

Solution

CloudEagle's direct integration with Salesforce tracks login details and also captures usage data, including features like opportunities created and leads generated. This data aids in the identification of underutilized licenses, facilitating efficient reallocation.

Result

The company successfully identified hundreds of underutilized licenses and harvested them to reallocate new users. This data on actual license usage also empowered them to right-size licenses during renewal, resulting in cost savings.

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Conclusion

Managing costs while ensuring optimal utilization is a constant challenge for organizations when it comes to Salesforce. CloudEagle’s advanced license management transforms this challenge into an opportunity for substantial savings and efficient resource allocation.

By leveraging CloudEagle’s license management capabilities, companies can gain granular insights into their Salesforce license usage, streamline allocation, and negotiate with vendors with precise usage data. Real-time tracking, automated deprovisioning, and proactive planning capabilities optimize spending and enhance user experiences by aligning licenses with individual needs.

Empower your organization to thrive in the realm of Salesforce license management. Book a demo with CloudEagle today and discover how to unlock substantial savings while maximizing the potential of your Salesforce investment.

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