In high-flying economic times, many companies could be content to prioritize growth at any cost. But with inflation stubbornly high, markets stubbornly down, and a full-blown recession on the horizon, growth has to come at the right cost.
In other words, efficiency is the name of the game for companies that want to weather the economic storm ahead. And a key element of honing efficiency is to make sure the money you spend on digital workplace technology—the software that your employees use to execute on goals every day—is aligned with the value you’re getting from that tech. The amount you’re paying should also be optimized to best serve the interests of the business as a whole.
So how do you know if you’re spending too much (or in some cases, too little) on internal-facing software? How can you make the best possible decisions about technology and have the clearest possible understanding of the value it adds to the business? Pendo for Employees provides robust analytics that help you answer these and related questions with rich insights about software usage and how efficient that usage is. Below, we’ll take a look at two ways in which Pendo does this: Portfolio View and license utilization.
Portfolio View: Be done with duplicative apps
Pendo’s Portfolio View gives you a window into which applications employees are using, and the amount of time they’re spending doing so. Presented in an intuitive, visually-striking way, you can examine different departments within your company and see which apps they’re using most often and how they divide their time across your internal-facing portfolio. You can also break down usage by apps, or segment usage data by metadata (role, location, etc.) and behavior (e.g. whether it’s someone’s first time using an app). Below is an example of what this can look like.
As you examine usage data, you may start to gain insights about how to manage your internal-facing app suite more efficiently. One key driver of the problem of SaaS sprawl, for example, is duplicative apps—apps that provide the same functionality or serve the same purpose to one another. Is your general operations team using one app for project management while your engineering and marketing teams are using another? Does one of these apps provide some specific value to a team that they can’t get from another? You can use Pendo to answer these and related questions, and ensure you minimize disruption as you migrate users off redundant platforms and drive adoption of desired ones.
See Pendo in action: Take this self-guided tour to see how to use Portfolio View to glean insights about software usage and flag potentially wasteful spending.
License utilization: Pay for what you need, nothing more, nothing less
Once you have insights about the apps your employees are using, Pendo lets you dig one level deeper and consider whether that app usage falls within the bounds of your contracts with vendors and aligns with what you’re paying for. License utilization allows you to set the number of licenses you’re contracted for and see what percentage over or under that usage limit you are within a particular time period.
If you see that you’re consistently coming in at usage well under the license seats you’re paying for in an agreement, that’s probably a sign you’re paying too much and should renegotiate your contract. Alternatively, having early knowledge of over-utilization empowers you to get ahead of the problem and proactively avoid penalization by your vendor.
In other words, the insights Pendo gives you about usage translates into real negotiating power with your vendor. Traditionally, companies paying for apps have been hostage to the usage data the vendor provides. For example, let’s say a vendor comes to your company and reports that you’re using 100 more licenses than what you’re contracted for. Using Pendo, you may discover that many or most of these excess “active users” have spent all of one minute in the app over the past 90 days. That gives you real power to go back to the vendor and arrive at a deal that works best for your company.
Want to learn more about how Pendo for Employees can help you optimize your company’s software spend? Schedule a custom demo today.
