

Trying to see if this Saas management idea makes sense. - jackrudo

In other words is this a problem &#x2F; does a formal solution aside from an ad hoc one exist?<p>Let&#x27;s say a company (SMB or even enterprise) has at any time users signed up for several diverse SaaS solutions, all expiring at different times often not being used but still auto renewed (or being used but by less users than initially thought).  Would it be useful to have a subscription management system which would:<p>1. Manage expiry and renewals
2. Contain relevant info on price, contract details, terms etc..
3. list specific users
4. track usage by outgoing server logs.  Granted it would not be all encompassing but just to check for non use. 
5.  If #4 shows non use then poll the users listed on that service
6.  Track price changes and other bundles offered by the Saas including competing ones as well.<p>As a vendor I notice that like gym memberships these services are under used and Saas companies benefit from auto renewals etc...<p>Yes, this can be done in-house, but I was thinking if building a dedicated solution to offer would be worthwhile (and would managers, accountants pay for this).<p>I would appreciate any comments, experiences, further ideas... or if this even makes sense.<p>Thanks in advance.
Jack
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loumf
I am a product development manager at an enterprise company. This is just an
opinion based on what I see.

I don't have this issue exactly, but maintenance schedules of non-saas
software is much harder to manage, budget, purchase, etc. It's not hair-on-
fire for me -- I have a spreadsheet. Saas is actually easier, and we do all of
the user management actively -- it's not a big deal (for our big Saas usage,
it's tied to hiring/termination basically automatically)

There are some things that are used across all dev departments, like MSDN
subscriptions, that are challenging to manage. We use a shared spreadsheet in
sharepoint -- works fine -- I doubt anyone thinks this is a huge issue for us.

If you were thinking of doing this -- I think the way to go is to take the
whole job -- not just give me what is basically a shared spreadsheet on the
web, but perhaps tie into the Saas and see how it's being used and offer
savings ideas (20% of your users don't use featureX). Try to find one really
hard to manage product and align yourself as being perfect for managing that
(Salesforce, Dynamics, MSDN?, -- things that an entire department uses across
a whole company)

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jackrudo
Thanks for your feedback. Good points about tackling the hard to manage
aspects. I wonder how feasible it is to track usage based on logs. I guess you
would just need to flag non usage then follow up. Obviously usage info is not
something that saas companies would share. Although I've been asked once or
twice (by purchasing depts) to check if anyone of their users where using it.
Thanks again

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lazylizard
does this solve the problem incidentally?

[https://www.meldium.com/integrations](https://www.meldium.com/integrations)

