According to CloudEagle's SaaS spending report, organizations with 1,000 to 2,500 employees utilize approximately 300 to 400 SaaS applications, with the overall software spend ranging between $10 million to $50 million.
But what happens when these SaaS applications are poorly managed?
Poor SaaS management can lead to cost escalation, reduced team efficiency, security risks, compliance challenges, and operational disruptions that negatively impact your bottom line.
However, a simple yet comprehensive approach to overcome these challenges and have complete control over your SaaS stack is to use a sophisticated SaaS management platform.
With multiple platforms in the market, Productiv is a notable example of its “SaaS IntelligenceTM." This platform aligns IT, procurement, finance, and business leaders with data to govern, optimize spending, and enhance operational efficiency.
Suppose you're considering Productiv as your next SaaS management platform and are interested in understanding how its pricing can match your business objectives. In that case, this article is tailored to your needs. This pricing guide will delve into Productiv's pricing and potential challenges and explore cost-effective alternatives.
Productiv: What is it?
Productiv is a comprehensive SaaS and spend management platform that enables organizations to manage their SaaS applications effectively and spending through a range of features and deeper insights.
It provides IT, procurement, finance, and business leaders with features to optimize spending, improve operational efficiency, and enhance collaboration. Productiv's unique approach involves gathering data on employee app usage, vendor contracts, and organizational data, which is then used to offer insights into SaaS application usage, compliance, and vendor assessments.
Features
Renewals Management: Efficiently handle subscription renewals with custom workflows and pricing benchmark data.
Purchase Management: Streamline procurement with customizable workflows and seamless integration.
App Access Management: Centralize app access, offer recommendations, and simplify requests.
Vendor Management: Assess vendors, gain insights, and track compliance.
SaaS Management: Optimize subscriptions, reclaim licenses, manage contracts, detect shadow IT, and identify cost optimization opportunities.
Integrations: Productiv has a comprehensive integration capability. It can connect with 20,000 apps, including SSO, CASB, HR, Finance, Expense management tools, etc.
Productiv Pricing
Productiv's website does not disclose pricing information or structure. Instead, prospective buyers can schedule a demo and interact with Productiv's Sales team to obtain pricing details.
Although several SaaS management platforms offer transparent pricing plans, Productiv’s non-transparent pricing approach is considered a red flag by SaaS buyers. Here’s why:
Transparency: Buyers prefer to know what they're paying for, and hidden pricing can erode trust. Buyers need to have a clear understanding of costs.
Delays: Potential buyers must interact with sales teams to get basic pricing information when pricing is hidden. This can slow down the decision-making process for buyers like you.
Budget Planning: Hidden pricing makes it difficult for SaaS buyers to allocate budgets accurately, potentially leading to overspending or inadequate resource allocation.
Competitive Comparison: Buyers often compare multiple SaaS products before making a decision. Hidden pricing makes it challenging to compare costs and features, which can lead to buyers choosing a competitor with transparent pricing.
ROI analysis: SaaS buyers perform an ROI analysis before purchasing a product to see how much it will contribute to their revenue. Hidden pricing makes it impossible to calculate ROI, pushing buyers away from the product.
Our thoughts
We consider transparent pricing to be crucial for purchase decisions. It simplifies the process because engaging with the sales team without budget estimates can often lead to upselling, resulting in unintended additional purchases.
Hidden pricing plans are ideal for companies with adaptable budgets, relaxed purchase cycles, and a flexible spending approach. However, for organizations with urgent requirements, there are better alternatives to Productiv that offer transparent pricing and enhanced features.
Nonetheless, dismissing a product solely based on hidden pricing is not advisable. Productiv boasts compelling features that can enhance your SaaS management, procurement, and spend management. Here's a brief overview of the Pros and Cons of Productiv.
Pros
- Comprehensive integration library (20,000 apps)
- Detailed insights on app usage, spend, vendors, and licenses.
- Automated workflows for procurement and renewals
- Multi-level benchmarking
- Comprehensive app, spend, and vendor management features
Cons
- No assisted buying services
- Limited custom fields and analytics
- Doesn’t provide pre-negotiated vendor discounts
- No marketplace
- Hidden pricing
- No vendor research capabilities
So, if you have flexible budgets and relaxed purchase cycles and aim to streamline SaaS management and procurement, you can proceed with a single-dimensional platform like Productiv.
or
Here's an eye-opener:
According to CloudEagle’s 2023 SaaS spend report, software spend now ranks third in organizational spending, following employee and office lease expenses. Given the economic uncertainties of 2023, CFOs face intense pressure to reduce SaaS spending by 30% and announce budget reductions.
Organizations globally are intensifying cost optimization strategies to regain control over spending. Effective vendor negotiations are critical in cost management, as poor negotiations often lead to overspending.
Mastering negotiations has become imperative for organizations seeking to control spending. Hence, many are opting for platforms offering negotiation support.
Regrettably, Productiv does not offer negotiation assistance. You need a comprehensive solution that optimizes SaaS management and aids in vendor negotiations—an all-in-one platform like CloudEagle.
If you’re looking to effectively manage SaaS apps, minimize SaaS spending, achieve savings through expert negotiations, streamline procurement, and automate routine tasks, CloudEagle is the ideal choice.
Moreover, CloudEagle stands out with its transparent pricing plans to facilitate well-informed decision-making.
Why is CloudEagle superior to Productiv?
CloudEagle is a comprehensive SaaS management, spend optimization, and procurement services platform that combines platform functionalities with SaaS purchasing services.
Compared to Productiv, CloudEagle follows a transparent pricing strategy that guarantees savings based on your annual SaaS spend.
There are no hidden costs, just an add-on, assisted buying service. Buyers can choose either the platform, the service, or both.
Features
Assisted Buying Services
Struggling with vendor negotiations? CloudEagle offers the expertise of our SaaS buyers to support your negotiation processes. Whether you prefer to lead the negotiations or have our specialists handle it, the choice is yours.
Our seasoned experts conduct in-depth analyses of your business needs, budget constraints, and usage data. They leverage the latest pricing benchmarks to ensure you acquire the right product at the most favorable price.
Be it a new purchase, contract renewal, or optimizing your licenses, our on-demand procurement professionals are ready to negotiate on your behalf and purchase the right product at the right price.
Armed with years of negotiation experience and access to pre-negotiated discounts and benchmarks, we're here to guide you in vendor selection and securing optimal deals.
Check this testimonial from Lucas Dermois, IT Systems Architect at Iceye, who discusses how CloudEagle's support in negotiating contracts effectively led to considerable savings.
Application Discovery
CloudEagle's extensive integration library grants you complete visibility into your SaaS landscape. The platform provides a bird’s eye view of apps, spending, licenses, contracts, workflows, and users, along with detailed usage details.
CloudEagle will send proactive alerts when it detects an unsanctioned application. It acts as the first line of defense, warding off shadow IT and curbing unnecessary expenses.
Gain detailed insights into every facet of your SaaS applications, including vendors, expenses, licenses, and more. This information empowers you to manage your SaaS stack and optimize your spending effectively.
License management
You can see how many licenses have been purchased, including the users provisioned to those licenses and accurate usage data. You can set a minimum usage threshold for licenses; if the usage is low, the user will be automatically deprovisioned, and the license will be reclaimed.
You can then reallocate the licenses to the other users based on their requirements or eliminate them during the renewal negotiation with the help of our SaaS buyers without affecting your vendor relationship.
Renewal management
CloudEagle will extract metadata from the contracts, including renewal dates, and create a renewal calendar. It’ll automatically send reminder alerts via Slack or email 30, 60, or 90 days before the renewal deadline.
This will give your team enough time to analyze the usage review benchmarks and prepare a negotiation plan. Unlike Productiv’s renewal reminder, CloudEagle doesn’t stop with just alerts; it’ll keep escalating the process to various stakeholders until one acts on it.
The reminders will only stop when the contract is renewed. No more missing out on renewals or losing expenses due to auto-renewals, as CloudEagle’s renewal workflows will ensure you stay ahead of renewals.
CloudEagle's renewal workflows simplified renewal tracking for WeFunder. Now, they avoid chasing status updates, enabling more productive work and leading to savings.
Learn more about how WeFunder automated contract renewals with CloudEagle's renewal reminders. Read the complete story here.
Cost Optimization
The platform will display unused, free, and redundant apps in your portfolio. You can analyze the usage, eliminate redundancies, or consolidate overlapping applications to save on SaaS spend.
Shadow IT will increase the number of duplicate, free apps in your system, leading to escalated spending. However, CloudEagle will identify these applications and display them in the dashboard so you can make necessary cost-optimization decisions without hassle.
Contract Management
Centralize the management of contracts, invoices, and documents. Utilize dynamic filters for seamless contract retrieval whenever needed, avoid wasting time searching through folders looking for contracts.
You can also manually upload contracts to CloudEagle, and the platform will extract the contract metadata and organize the contracts in one unified dashboard.
A renewal calendar is generated based on contract data, enabling workflow-triggered renewal reminders through Slack and email to facilitate successful negotiations.
Procurement Workflows
Streamline the SaaS purchasing process with automated workflows. Create intake forms for both SaaS and non-SaaS purchases. Respective workflows will be triggered automatically when the purchase request is raised.
Notifications will be sent to relevant stakeholders through Slack, email, or in-app, encouraging collaboration and task delegation.
The procurement Slackbot further enhances the process by allowing users to initiate purchase requests directly from Slack. Additionally, the creation of private channels fosters collaboration and well-informed decision-making.
Custom Fields
CloudEagle's custom fields provide room for customization, expanding the platform's functionality to suit your unique needs.
Automated Provisioning and Deprovisioning
Manually configuring user access when new employees join or removing it upon departure is laborious. Ensuring that users have the correct permissions for their tasks is vital.
Similarly, it's crucial to promptly revoke access for departing users to prevent unauthorized entry and potential data exposure.
CloudEagle simplifies this with auto provisioning and deprovisioning workflows, suggesting relevant apps based on roles and departments.
All user data is centralized, enabling one-click provisioning and deprovisioning. This streamlines employee onboarding and offboarding, saving time for IT and HR and enhancing the experience for new employees.
Here’s Alice Park from Remediant sharing her experience of how CloudEagle helped her streamline user provisioning and deprovisioning.
Vendor Management
Efficiently oversee vendors and their spending via a unified dashboard. This serves as a central hub for all SaaS and spending management activities, encompassing apps associated with vendors, contracts, licenses, and renewals.
CloudEagle's AI-powered vendor research module simplifies vendor selection based on specific requirements. You can access reviews, interact with peers and customers, and make informed decisions, all within a single platform.
Why bother with extensive external research when CloudEagle consolidates all this information? Compare vendors, assess unbiased pricing, and make well-informed purchase choices within a single, user-friendly platform.
Vendor negotiation also becomes crucial for cost savings. Armory aimed to cut costs on high-spend vendors and optimize license usage. CloudEagle used usage data to adjust license numbers, negotiated discounts with vendors using insights, and implemented a renewal calendar for early planning.
As a result, Armory saved costs on vendors like Salesforce and New Relic while increasing overall savings through optimized licensing.
Read the detailed story here: CloudEagle helps Armory save 45% on SaaS spend.
Pricing
CloudEagle’s pricing is not gated like Productiv. It has three plans: Starter, Growth, and Enterprise. Each plan has its own set of features and offers a savings guarantee based on the annual SaaS spend of organizations.
With CloudEagle, you'll unlock access to more advanced features as you progress to higher-tier pricing plans. CloudEagle offers its SaaS buying services as an optional addition. Customers can purchase the platform, services, or both depending on their business requirements.
CloudEagle ensures transparency with no implementation fees, hidden pricing, or specialized integration charges—just the clear-cut pricing displayed on the website.
Suppose you're searching for a comprehensive SaaS management, spend management, procurement, and SaaS buying solution. In that case, CloudEagle is well-equipped to meet your needs, and help you streamline your business operations and save on your SaaS spend.
Furthermore, it's worth noting that CloudEagle has the industry's swiftest onboarding process. You don’t have to take our word for it. Check out what Devin Murphy from Rec Room has to say about our onboarding process.
Are you interested in a quick walkthrough to discover how to optimize your SaaS spending using this platform? Schedule a demo today.