Rogue spend: it sounds ominous, and it is. It can suck your company's money right from under your nose, and you may not even know about it. What's more, rogue spend or rogue spending often occurs in software and through areas such as the cloud, which can mean a big headache for those who are working to keep costs down.
Rogue spend or rogue spending is where you have a list of suppliers and vendors that are not being used through normal procurement channels. Employees purchase products without "being on the books." It may seem small and simple, such as piece of cloud software, but the costs add up quickly and can seriously affect your bottom line. According to ITBusinessEdge, some 54 percent of those who answered the survey admitted to purchasing software "rogue."
The more obscure the product is, such as software, the more likely there is to have rogue spend occur. In fact, when it comes to places such as the cloud, it's likely that people will purchase software and packages they do not need, thus wasting the company's money.
]]>We are setting out to help companies better understand where SaaS deployments are in their environment and facilitate greater transparency in the spend associated with these cloud based applications.
We believe that it will allow companies to better manage their expenses. Sometimes applications are being paid for, but aren’t being utilized by end-users. In other scenario’s a functional manager may have purchased a SaaS application without adequate IT or Procurement involvement. SpendAgent wants to help address these common business situations by uncovering where and when cloud apps are being used, so that IT & Procurement managers can make strategic decisions on what to pay for and how to support it.
This is a big task! So, we're focusing on a niche and role that we feel has been ignored for a long time, SaaS expenses and catering to the needs of Sourcing Professionals.
We're starting with SaaS or cloud services, because the problem we found in our conversations within companies is one that is systemic. We have developed a solution where we use the company's own data to develop new metrics, that demand a conversation or action.
Sourcing professionals at any level need better tools to view, review and learn about the SaaS services being used by their company. We believe our approach will cause less friction between the Sourcing professional (doing their job) and the employee using the cloud service (also someone who needs the service to do their job).
We are currently in private beta, so if you're interested in having us chart your Saas activity and gain insight, please get in touch with us and learn more.