How Do I Manage a SaaS Vendor?
Positive and productive vendor relationships are often the backbone of success—but how do you develop and maintain them? Learn more in this article.
Positive and productive vendor relationships are often the backbone of success—but how do you develop and maintain them? Learn more in this article.
Would it surprise you to learn that some businesses use 100 different SaaS applications on a regular basis? Not only is it true, but the average is closer to around 130 unique software tools. Yes, that’s a lot of software—it’s also a lot of unique vendor relationships to manage, contracts to deal with, and different things to troubleshoot. It can also be a security nightmare.
That being said, you’re probably somewhat familiar with SaaS management already—especially if you’re one of the unsung heroes of IT who keep the ship steady at your organization. If you’re looking to learn a little more about how to keep these relationships positive and productive, you’ve come to the right place. In this, our brief guide to SaaS vendor management, we’re looking at what it takes to maintain great vendor relationships—and how doing so can benefit your company in a number of ways, in both the short- and long-term.
SaaS vendors are the companies behind the applications your business is using every day. Even if you’re a small-to-midsize business startup, chances are that you likely have dozens of active vendor relationships. Of course, if you work in IT you already know this—but you may not realize how easy managing these relationships can be. When you consider all the applications you’re using—from the CRM to sales, marketing, project management, and beyond—it’s tough to overstate the importance of vendor management.
Vendor management is exactly what you would assume—the efficient and effective management of various vendor relationships. Creating an effective vendor management process empowers organizations, and IT teams especially, to get the most bang from their tech budgets and keep costs low. Ideally, this will happen without leaving any team or department under-served. Comprehensive vendor management closely tracks contract details and life cycles as well. This also helps with maintaining continuity and security, while identifying and addressing duplicate or under-used applications, security vulnerabilities, and more.
Ultimately, the objectives of SaaS vendor management are simple:
Because every vendor is unique, so too is every vendor relationship. That being said, there are certain best practices you can use to consistently create an effective vendor management strategy. Here are the most important vendor management process steps to get right:
Whether you have 12 or 120 vendors to manage, one of the best ways to manage those relationships and optimize the SaaS applications your organization is using is to leverage a SaaS management platform—like Lumos.
This type of platform provides a centralized interface for managing various applications and vendor relationships. Yes, it’s another piece of SaaS technology, but it’s so much more than that. The Lumos platform, for example, provides a one-of-a-kind SaaS management and identity governance solution that can be used to:
Vendor relationships are too important for your business to leave to chance. Lumos provides a single, comprehensive platform you can use to manage apps, access, and vendors—all in one place. We’ve empowered a wide range of customers with the tools and insights they need to achieve positive results that go well beyond mere vendor management.
These include things like cutting software costs, streamlining and automating access reviews, and too many other outcomes to mention here. Visit our website to see just what Lumos might be capable of doing for your business. If you prefer to see it for yourself, we don’t blame you! Why not request a demo to see the platform in action?