SaaS solutions have become essential for businesses. In the 1990s and 2000s, on-premises software accompanied the first wave of digital transformation. Then, usage evolved with an explosion in the offering and adoption of SaaS between 2010 and 2020.
New challenges have therefore arisen for CFOs, CTOs, and other managers:
SaaS Management solutions address these challenges, enabling companies to save between 10% and 30% on software subscription expenses.
However, this market is as recent as SaaS adoption. How to solve the problem and optimize companies' SaaS expenses? Different approaches:
SaaS spend detection (via bank account, finance/accounting software or virtual cards)
SaaS procurement or SaaS negotiation
SaaS operations: security and user management
You'll find detailed explanation for each of these sub-categories.
Have a good read!
The solutions listed here are still diverse because the market is fragmented. There is no single offering that objectively covers all a company's needs for implementing a SaaS Management policy.
Actors target different market segments, mainly varying by company size, number of employees, number of different software subscriptions, and total annual expenses.
Comparison criteria include:
Subcategories by usage and functionalities:
The proposed benchmark highlights three main categories related to functionalities or services:
Specifics of each subcategory are detailed below. Some trade-offs were necessary for solutions that sometimes have common features in these different subcategories.
The widespread adoption of cloud tools has brought several problems:
The specific SaaS Spend Management sector was born.
The best solutions that allow companies to manage their software subscription expenses are distinguished by their detection mode of SaaS expenses through two key features:
Detection via integrations (bank account, finance/accounting software):
Ideal for SMBs. Takes less than 10 minutes to organize all expenses by team and users. Expense information can come from two different sources:
In both cases, setup is automatic and takes less than 10 minutes.
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A French startup founded in 2020 by a team passionate about SaaS products.
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Founded in 2018 in England. The application offers many integrations with different finance/accounting software and stands out with a user evaluation feature.
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Trelica is a relatively small player with 15 employees based in England, focusing on internal user feedback.
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An American company founded in 2005, acquired by investment fund Thoma Bravo in 2022. Their offer is clearly geared toward large corporations, with most of their references in the Fortune 500.
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An historic American player (2500+ employees) that places cloud access security at the heart of its offering for large enterprises.
With 1000 clients and references such as Adidas, Bosch, and Volkswagen, LeanIX is undoubtedly a solution for IT teams in large enterprises. Their offering embraces organizational complexity. They offer dedicated human support.
In September 2023, SAP acquired LeanIX.
LeanIX's offering is structured around three distinct products:
The SMP part comes from another player (Cleanshelf) acquired by LeanIX in 2021. Their wide range of integrations caters to companies equipped with Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions or ERP (NetSuite, Sage, SAP Concur).
LeanIX very detailed product specifications are available online.
Substly was founded in 2018, and the product has been available since 2020.
The discovery of subscriptions is possible thanks to integrations with Xero, Quickbooks, Microsoft Dynamics, and Fortnox (a Swedish accounting solution).
Banking integrations are limited to Europe.
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Substly is a small Swedish company that has developed a SaaS Spend Management solution dedicated to SMEs to address a problem they had encountered themselves.
Detection through on-demand virtual payment cards
Founded in 2018, Cledara positions itself more as a Fintech and offers a virtual card payment service. SaaS expenses are recorded based on transactions made using these purchase cards. Integrations with accounting software are also a possibility.
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Cledara's service was created by a team from the finance industry, and their customers benefit from cashback by using their virtual bank card service.
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Airbase takes a comprehensive approach. This powerful platform covers all of a company's purchases, not just SaaS. The tool is robust, targeting large SMEs (+100 employees) and organizations with multiple subsidiaries.
They have created a very active "off the ledger" community in the USA, bringing together finance and accounting professionals.
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Airbase was founded in 2017 and raised nearly $250 million. It's one of the unicorns in purchasing solutions alongside Spendesk.
With a similar approach to Airbase, Spendesk is the European player that offers comprehensive purchasing coverage. They issue physical and virtual payment cards and, depending on usage, classify SaaS purchases specifically.
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Spendesk is a French startup founded in 2016, covering the specific needs of the countries in which it has expanded, from German per diems to French mileage expenses and pre-accounting
AppBind offers a service distinct from the other solutions in this listing. It's a subscription payment platform for agencies or freelancers.
Another option for managing SaaS expenses... for their clients!
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AppBind is a small California startup with 5 employees that had a brilliant idea.
Supplier relationship management services have had a tremendous opportunity for growth and diversification with the increasing use of SaaS in the business world.
In 2023, for service companies, software subscriptions even represent the second-largest cost category after payroll!
Software publishers do not approach things the same way as traditional suppliers. Their business model is specific, and their sales methods are new. They offer online subscriptions with options for staggered and scalable payments.
Historically, the client company centralized its purchases. Software licenses were acquired through tenders. Specialized service companies (integrators, IT consultants, etc.) were often commissioned to support the IT team from pre-sales to project deployment.
The sales logic of SaaS is at odds with this model. Every employee can become a buyer. SaaS publishers do everything in their power to minimize friction and shorten the sales cycle.
The highly specific skill of supplier relationship management with SaaS publishers has therefore become critical in more ways than one. Due to the budgets involved, but also because of the technical expertise and agility required in this sector.
SaaS Procurement is thus a negotiation service with software publishers. However, there are preliminary steps to these negotiations:
SaaS Procurement - or SaaS Negotiation - is primarily a service that involves human interaction. It is less about the software itself, although it generally relies on an online platform.
Vendr is an American player that has raised a total of $216 million and acquired one of the market leaders, Blissfully, in early 2022. The central value proposition is the negotiation service and purchases through their marketplace. Vendr can be seen as a procurement platform.
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Vendr is a procurement platform that guarantees a return on investment to its customers by negotiating SaaS vendor prices on their behalf.
Zylo also offers services to negotiate SaaS supplier contracts. Their target market ranges from SMEs to large enterprises and also includes administrative services (for negotiation).
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With investments from Adobe, Slack, and Salesforce, Zylo counts these brands among its references. Founded in 2016, its positioning is somewhere between a SaaS Management solution and negotiation services.
A leading Indian player offering a wide range of features with a focus on the needs of IT directors. This includes governance management, offering user access management.
This player is thus positioned in two categories:
Integrations with numerous SaaS are highlighted through a marketplace. Be sure to check what is possible or not for each integration.
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An Indian company founded in 2020, raised $32 million, and focused its development on native integrations, placing IT departments at the core of their offering.
Sastrify is a platform created in 2020, which has raised nearly 60 million euros, and has focused on negotiation with software vendors. Its offering targets rapidly growing companies with SaaS budgets reaching several million euros.
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A European player founded by digital entrepreneurs, Sastrify places software purchase negotiation at the heart of its offering.
NachoNacho has truly placed the marketplace at the core of its offering. Customers benefit from pre-negotiated deals and cashback. The detection system is therefore abandoned in favor of tracking through the use of virtual cards.
There is a real onboarding effort compared to solutions that offer integrations with existing payment methods.
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A San Francisco startup with around thirty employees. NachoNacho creates a model and a true ecosystem in the B2B SaaS universe.
Welii.io is a team of specialized buyers. Their business model is based on the savings their clients achieve on their SaaS budget. Their methodology begins with an inventory of the company's software purchases, followed by tracking renewals to improve the procurement processes.
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The Welii.io buyer's team offers clients the outsourcing of their SaaS procurement process.
Spendflo's promise is to simplify software procurement for hyper-growth businesses.
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Tropic centralizes SaaS management and offers purchasing support.
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Another software procurement platform that helps businesses optimize their annual software spending. The solution streamlines the entire purchasing process and provides financial managers with complete visibility over all in-house SaaS software.
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SaaS Operations solutions are specifically designed for IT departments, addressing a growing issue in businesses: the proliferation of online tools used by employees.
Historically, before the rise of SaaS, access to company-purchased software was exclusively managed by an IT administrator.
Since the 2010s and the widespread adoption of remote work in 2020, the processes of purchasing and accessing licenses have become decentralized.
Indeed, employees independently test and purchase SaaS software, but they don't always understand the financial implications and compliance risks involved.
However, system administrators are trained and knowledgeable about access management, data privacy, and, ultimately, gaining visibility into the internal usage of specific solutions.
Therefore, the term "SaaS Operations" refers to the policy governing the internal use of online software.
With clients such as Pipedrive, Cloudinary, or Hired, Torii targets large enterprises (>500 employees) that consume many online applications. The primary concern for such companies is Shadow IT.
How does Torii tackle the Shadow IT issue in large enterprises?
There are multiple methods for detecting SaaS usage, with a preference for authentication methods. However, it's essential to note that SSO options for SaaS are predominantly available for "enterprise" plans and often come with a significant additional cost.
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An Israeli company founded in 2017 by an experienced team. According to Crunchbase, they have raised $65 million for a solution targeting large enterprises.
BetterCloud's positioning is similar to Torii's, with features designed almost exclusively for the IT departments of very large enterprises. Security and compliance are at the core of their offering. CEO David Politis coined the term "SaaSOps" for the first time in 2019.
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BetterCloud is one of the most relevant players for very large enterprises. Their features allow for the automation of a significant portion of IT team tasks and are one of the few companies offering training and certifications.
Lumos is an 80-employee Californian startup. They have raised €30 million. User access management and employee onboarding are at the core of their platform.
Lumos, therefore, caters to rapidly growing businesses in need of implementing SaaS Operations policies.
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Founded in 2020, Lumos focuses on the needs of IT teams in growing companies.
If your company uses Microsoft 365, Coreview is an essential tool for IT teams. The advantage of this solution is the centralization and streamlining of Microsoft suite license management. Usage can be hybrid: cloud and on-premises.
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Coreview is a preferred Microsoft partner for enterprise account management. It focuses on the Microsoft suite's complexity and all its peculiarities.
Basaas is a platform that replaces a web browser for users, allowing managers to administer all applications used from a single space. However, it seems that this platform is merely being maintained and hasn't been developed since 2022.
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Basaas is a German software. The well-designed platform distinguishes between two uses (user and administrator). Unfortunately, development has ceased since 2022 as the leadership team has moved on to a different project.
