5 Reasons why SaaS Procurement Teams are Choosing CloudEagle

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SaaS application usage by businesses doesn’t seem to be slowing down soon. Organizations are quickly accomplishing more tasks using SaaS apps and multiplying their revenue simultaneously.

But we’re not here to discuss why SaaS applications are great; we’ll discuss the right way to purchase them.

Yes, SaaS applications are excellent, but purchasing them through a controlled process is necessary.

Why?

Anyone within an organization can purchase SaaS applications with a company credit card. This decentralized buying raises a slew of data security, management, and compliance issues in its wake.

Businesses must implement an ideal SaaS procurement process to curb decentralized buying or “shadow IT” or risk losing control of their SaaS stack and spending.

And for that, businesses will need a robust procurement platform, but you already know that.

What procurement leaders, specialists, SaaS negotiators, and other business leaders like you didn’t know is why most SaaS procurement teams choose CloudEagle to simplify SaaS procurement.

Well, we’ll tell you why.
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What is a SaaS procurement platform?

Most mid and large-sized companies use a dedicated procurement team to handle their SaaS purchases, so what’s the point in using a procurement platform? What can it do that a procurement specialist can’t?

This misconception is one of the primary reasons behind the rise of decentralized buying in organizations.

Procurement platforms are not alternatives to SaaS buying specialists; they are more like catalysts to assist procurement teams in accelerating the purchase process.

In a nutshell, procurement platforms are SaaS tools built to assist procurement professionals in streamlining SaaS purchases. A platform like CloudEagle is a prominent example of SaaS buying software.
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How can cloud-based procurement platforms benefit procurement teams?

Before we get to the benefit, let us lay out the steps involved in a SaaS procurement process.

• Identifying the requirements
• Budget approval
• Researching the market for suitable vendors
• Submitting RFI, RFP, and RFQ.
• Selecting the ideal vendor
• Negotiating the SLAs, policies, and pricing
• Purchasing and implementing the software
• Contract signing and invoicing
• Safekeeping the contracts and invoices
• Tracking and maintaining the software.
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What non-procurement professionals don’t comprehend is that SaaS procurement is not just about purchasing a product; there are various steps before the actual purchase, and we know what procurement specialists like yourself are going through.

All the individual steps require detailed planning and execution. Performing them manually is possible, but why go through hardships costing valuable time and energy when you can easily streamline the process using a procurement platform?

A cloud-based procurement platform, for instance, CloudEagle, has all the necessary features to take the sting out of the complex SaaS procurement process. It is not a replacement but an addition to help procurement teams.

Numerous businesses have already witnessed the competence of CloudEagle. Their teams are happy that they could focus more on strategic tasks while CloudEagle did all the heavy lifting for them.

So, what’s so special about CloudEagle?

Let’s dive into it!

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Reasons why SaaS procurement teams are choosing CloudEagle

100% Application visibility and app usage details

CloudEagle is not just a procurement tool; it's a comprehensive SaaS management platform that can help businesses manage and optimize their SaaS stack.

To gauge the effectiveness of SaaS applications and to optimize SaaS spending, businesses need a better look into their SaaS portfolio. With zero visibility, they cannot,

• Identify SaaS and non-SaaS applications.
• Figure out how much they’re spending on each application and vendor
• Track app usage insights and leverage them during renegotiation
• Verify the applications purchased without approval(shadow IT)
• Identify vulnerable applications from third-party vendors.
• Effectively renegotiate and cut down costs.

Practically, SaaS visibility is to businesses what “eyes are to us.” It helps the team see all the applications and the relevant insights in one place.

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CloudEagle provides 100% SaaS visibility thanks to its quad-integration capabilities. The platform can sync with your,

• SSO integration
• Finance system integration
• HRIS integration
• Direct integration

These integrations help CloudEagle take a detailed look at your SaaS applications, vendors, and their relative spending.

So, how is this beneficial for procurement teams?

When a user raises a purchase request, the first step is to verify if there are other applications with similar functionality. This is one instance where visibility can help you out.

With SaaS visibility, procurement teams can

• Identify shadow IT and control it.
• Identify duplicate, hidden, and unused apps and eliminate them.
• Effectively renegotiate with accurate app usage data.
• Identify user activity in the application so that you can renegotiate for more licenses.
• Keep your tech stack free from vulnerability.

CloudEagle provided accurate app usage data and spending insights, which helped SaaS procurement teams renegotiate during contract renewals and cut down SaaS costs. Here's Paul Lanzi from Remediant recalling his experience working with CloudEagle and how it provided app visibility and usage insights:

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Customizable intake forms

The SaaS procurement workflow process begins with an intake request. For users to raise intake requests, you must configure the intake forms initially.

Most procurement workflow softwares provides static intake forms with purchase limitations. This is why most customers migrated to CloudEagle, as our platform has customizable intake forms for various purchases.

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CloudEagle’s SaaS procurement process workflows are not limited to SaaS applications; you can create workflows for purchases like laptops, software, hardware, tables, chairs, and many more.

And you can customize the intake forms based on the type of product. This functionality is what differentiates CloudEagle from other SaaS-buying tools.

Once you've configured the intake form, users can fill it out to raise an intake request, which will trigger the respective workflow.

Automated procurement process workflows

You can configure procurement workflows for each product type and add them to the intake requests.

The workflows will be triggered as soon as the purchase request is raised; however, the process doesn’t end there; it still needs assistance from various team members.

In the beginning, we displayed the various steps in the procurement process that led to the final purchase. Each step will have a specific stakeholder. And the workflow moves forward as the stakeholders complete their tasks.

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Once the issue is processed, the team can negotiate, sign the contract, and purchase the product.

This is how CloudEagle’s SaaS buying workflow operates.

Notifications

You’ll assign various tasks to individual stakeholders when configuring the workflow.

All the respective stakeholders will be notified via Slack, email, and in-app notifications when the workflow is live. This can help your team coordinate accordingly and get the process accomplished promptly.

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Assisted buying and price benchmarking

Workflows have done their part; the purchase has been green-lit—what's next?

Now comes the complex vendor negotiation process, and here’s how CloudEagle's SaaS procurement services helped businesses ace the process.

Most businesses had a lean team; they lacked the bandwidth to manage the entire procurement cycle, leverage the data, and negotiate with the vendors.

So, CloudEagle’s experts took over the negotiations.

What happened next?

The SaaS buying experts at CloudEagle collected the budget and requirement information and leveraged it to negotiate with the vendors. As the procurement workflows were promptly accomplished, gathering this information didn’t take long for the experts.

CloudEagle’s platform had access to the latest price benchmarking data and pre-negotiated vendor discounts, making it easier for the buying experts to secure the best deal with the vendors.

The procurement teams were elated as now they had more time to perform strategic tasks and not run behind procurement approvals, and vendor negotiations as CloudEagle did all the heavy lifting for them.

SaaS management, SaaS procurement services, assisted buying, and pre-negotiated discounts—no other platforms provide a comprehensive stack of features like CloudEagle. And is one of the significant reasons why procurement teams are choosing CE.

Wait, there is one more!

Centralized contract and vendor management

It’s 2023, and a business uses 150+ SaaS applications on average.

That’s 150+ SaaS contracts, invoices, and plenty of vendors. Centralizing them is essential for effective management.

For example, you purchased an application three months ago, and you’re receiving a notification from the vendor about renewing the contract.

With a centralized inventory, retrieving the contract and invoices and preparing for the renewal can be easy.

What if you had a decentralized contract management process?

You’ll be searching for the contract in your employee's inbox and shared folder; what if the employee had quit? You’ll have to go through a great ordeal to recover it, and by then, the contract would be auto-renewed, costing you more money.

Check out this customer success story to know how Aira got rid of spreadsheets and centralized their contracts using CloudEagle.

This is why you must eliminate spreadsheets and use a platform like CloudEagle to store your sensitive documents in one secured location. Do not overlook the importance of SaaS contract management.

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What about the vendors?

They’re more like a business partner, and maintaining a healthy relationship is necessary for a long-lasting partnership. Managing software vendors is often overlooked once the product is purchased.

But that’s not the case with CloudEagle.

Businesses get complete details about the vendors and how much they’ve spent on their applications, along with the contracts and other sensitive information, from a single dashboard.

The platform displays more granular details about the vendors in an intuitive dashboard. You can stay updated with their pricing and policy changes, get renewal alerts, and constantly communicate with the vendors using CloudEagle.

This concludes the reasons to outsource your procurement process to CloudEagle; the platform has more to offer for finance and IT teams; click here to know more about it.

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Conclusion  

SaaS procurement is a complex process; it involves multiple moving parts, numerous stakeholders, dozens of vendors, and negotiations.

Cloud-based procurement software like CloudEagle was built to simplify the process. And businesses are already witnessing how their procurement teams increased their productivity using the procurement workflows and assisted buying services of CloudEagle.

However, procurement features are not the only reason to choose CloudEagle. As you read in the article, the platform is equipped with,

• SaaS management
• Automated SaaS procurement services
• Contract management
• Vendor management
• Assisted buying features.

What do you think? Do you want to streamline SaaS procurement and increase productivity?

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Frequently asked questions

1. What does CloudEagle do?

CloudEagle is an all-in-one SaaS management and procurement platform to optimize your SaaS stack and streamline SaaS buying. It provides 100% SaaS visibility and spend insights to help businesses save on SaaS spend. It is equipped with procurement workflows to simplify SaaS purchases and has robust contract management and vendor management features to enhance your entire SaaS lifecycle.

2. Is CloudEagle the best SaaS management platform?

Yes! CloudEagle is the only SaaS management solution with procurement, assisted buying, cost optimization, contract management, vendor management, provisioning, de-provisioning and vendor research features. No other platforms can stand toe-to-toe with CloudEagle in terms of features, services and support offered. This eventually makes it the best SaaS management platform.

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