New Productiv App Procurement Hub Takes the Friction out of Procuring Software

Solution replaces frustrating, complex manual activities with automation and data-driven collaboration, making it easier for stakeholders to align on software and services intake and renewal decisions

• Now companies can transform siloed, disconnected software procurement processes into automated, customizable workflows within minutes – and avoid up to $275K in license costs annually¹

• According to a recent Total Economic Impact study, Productiv turned incomplete purchasing and renewal data into a single source of truth, allowing teams to align and decrease time spent on renewal preparation by 65% in year one, by 70% in year two, and by 75% in year three²

• Additionally, customers used insights based on benchmarks, vendor intelligence, app usage data and license recommendations to negotiate confidently and minimize risk– and save over $130K annually³

Productiv, the leader in SaaS management, unveiled the App Procurement Hub, an add-on to the company’s SaaS Intelligence™ Platform. Generally available now, the new module provides a frictionless software procurement experience at a time when businesses are struggling with hundreds of applications, dozens of cross-functional stakeholders and more complex portfolio rationalization decisions.

Procurement, finance and IT teams are under tremendous pressure to optimize software spend and eliminate waste while also driving higher value during purchases and renewals. But existing approaches of spreadsheets, meetings and one-off online conversations no longer work at scale or meet the needs of the modern procurement leader because they don’t align the right people at the right time to make data-led decisions. On average, seven disconnected tools are used to support procurement decisions and existing ERPs have hard-to-use capabilities that make it difficult and costly to drive software intake and renewals across an organization. Meanwhile, 6-10 employees are involved in each purchasing and renewal decision, making collaboration more complex across hundreds of applications and services. Organizations are increasing business risk due to missing assessments of vendors – and can also miss out on up to 30% in cost savings because they don’t have benchmark prices for their apps.

Read More: Appcues Named Leader In Customer Onboarding By The Product Marketing Alliance

The Productiv App Procurement Hub automates software procurement processes effectively and consistently with ease. Unlike other solutions, the new App Procurement Hub makes it stress-free for companies to orchestrate data-driven intake and renewal reviews and approvals across stakeholders in multiple departments as well as negotiate renewals confidently and minimize risk with data and insights.

Key capabilities of the App Procurement Hub include:

• Workflow builder: This no-code workflow builder enables companies to easily create workflow templates for intakes, renewals and other processes – something that otherwise could take months for IT to prioritize and implement – without the need for expensive licensing in other tools. Workflows can be integrated with ticketing, contract management, ERP and vendor assessment systems.
• App renewal requests: Unlike other solutions, this capability helps companies review app usage and license recommendations to understand how an app and licenses are currently being used so stakeholders from multiple departments can align on renewals, discussions and decisions. Unique pricing benchmarks by app and license SKU help application owners know whether they are paying more or less than their peers for licenses.
• Two-way Integration with Slack: In an industry first, the App Procurement Hub allows stakeholders to better align around notifying, collaborating and discussing application purchases or renewals in Slack channels – which is how many teams work together today. A dedicated Slack channel is automatically created when the app renewal is initiated and two-way updates between Slack and Productiv keep discussions, documents and task statuses in sync, all of which are stored in Productiv for future reference.
• App intake requests: This customizable intake form and integration with Productiv AppCenter streamlines the intake request process and saves time when managing, tracking and fulfilling requests for new software and services. The App Procurement Hub also provides pricing benchmarks by app and license SKU to better understand what’s a good price.
• Vendor risk assessments: A new risk assessments feature provides a central location for vendor business health data, security, privacy and compliance questionnaires and vendor-related documents and internal intelligence, such as previous issues raised by employees or missed service-level agreement (SLA) targets.

Read More: SalesTechStar Interview with Jason Smith, CEO at Klue

“Buying and renewing software never stops – but it’s a stressful process. We’ve heard from many businesses that procuring software is broken, causing unnecessary friction for the teams who are responsible for purchasing decisions,” said Alok Ojha, chief product officer of Productiv. “Our App Procurement Hub changes the game by enabling companies to easily automate procurement processes, align stakeholders around trusted data and better negotiate using our unique insights with usage data, recommendations, benchmarks and vendor intelligence.”