You’re probably familiar with the many benefits of licensing software using a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model. The most frequently touted benefit is that you pay only for what you use when you use it. Additionally, you don’t have to worry about upgrading, or server maintenance, or security. That’s all taken care of. However, even using a SaaS model, you still need to monitor and manage costs, which can be a challenge if you are working with several suppliers.

Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence provides Software Insights and License Management capabilities that help you to manage spend on software that is licensed for on-premises use. These tools help you to determine where you have too few or too many licenses, how to identify end-of-life software, when the time is right for an upgrade, and where you might be wasting money on unused software. Also included are tools to help you manage your spend on software delivered via a SaaS model.

Managing SaaS Spend

By connecting with a single sign-on subscription, you can use Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence to collect and curate a huge amount of usage data for all the associated single sign-on applications. Ivanti then presents this information on a set of dashboards that provide such information such as:

  • The number of active and inactive users
  • Which users have many applications
  • Possible duplicate users
  • Which users are from outside your organization
  • Which applications get the greatest and least usage

For some SaaS applications, such as Adobe, Microsoft 365, or Salesforce, you can gain even greater insights by implementing connectors specific to those applications that provide even more detail.

Perhaps the most valuable insights, however, come when you also import license information into the system. Ivanti identifies which license transactions reflect subscriptions for discovered SaaS applications and links them to the appropriate application. These links help you to monitor your compliance – do your subscriptions match your usage?

The Monthly SaaS spend chart on the SaaS Management home page helps you to track your monthly spend on SaaS applications. This chart has two major components:

  • All SaaS Transactions shows the monthly spend on applications that are identified in the Ivanti Definitive Software Library as SaaS applications
  • Linked SaaS Transactions shows the monthly spend on applications that have been linked to transactions for SaaS subscriptions either automatically when you imported licenses or manually afterwards

If the All SaaS Transactions line is displayed above the Linked SaaS Transactions line, this suggests that there are transactions for SaaS subscriptions that have not yet been linked to SaaS applications. This suggests you need to get those additional applications linked in order to have a complete picture of your SaaS usage and compliance.

On the other hand, if the Linked SaaS Transactions line is displayed above the All SaaS Transactions line, this suggests that there are transactions for SaaS subscriptions that have been linked to applications that are not identified as SaaS applications in the Definitive Software Library. This could be for several reasons, such as having a special agreement with your vendor, the license having a hybrid usage, or the Definitive Software Library not having been updated. This calls for identifying any applications that truly are exceptions and making sure that all required SaaS applications have been listed in your Definite Software Library.

To learn more about using Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence to manage SaaS spending, check out the video below which provides an overview of this important capability.

Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence: SaaS Management introduction