Are your SaaS contracts piling up and becoming a real headache for you? The multiplication of SaaS subscriptions can lead to a loss of control over costs, with unnecessary expenses weighing heavily on the company's budget. And with so many tools, it's hard to keep track of the end dates of each contract.
Additional costs, loss of access to business-critical software and services - forgetting to renew your SaaS contract can have a significant impact on your business.
Here are our top tips to help you manage your SaaS software contracts. How to avoid missing any SaaS contract renewal in 4 concrete steps?
Missing a SaaS contract renewal: what impact will it have on your company?
Imagine that your company loses access to its critical SaaS tools, simply because you missed a contract renewal. The consequences could be disastrous, ranging from service interruptions to the loss of critical data.
Service disruption
The first effect of missing a SaaS contract renewal: losing access to software that you potentially absolutely need to run your business.
This can lead to service interruptions for you, but also for your customers, causing problems with productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction.
This last point can lead to the degradation of your company's image with your customers. Indeed, the interruption of service due to the non-renewal of a SaaS contract can lead to a stop of your customers' activity.
The image of your company will be negatively affected. Indeed, frustrated or unhappy customers could damage your online reputation.
Let's imagine that your company uses a customer service software to manage customer requests. An interruption in operation leads to longer waiting times and delays in processing requests, negatively affecting customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Additional costs
Another consequence of forgetting to renew a SaaS contract is having to pay additional fees to reactivate your account or to sign up for a new contract with less favorable terms.
When combined with multiple contracts, these fees represent a financial loss for your company. In general, it is crucial to learn how to manage your SaaS expenses.
Specifically, if your company misses a CRM contract renewal, it could face costly reactivation fees to regain access to its customer data.
Also, if your company needs to purchase a new contract in a hurry, the terms may be less favorable. You may have to pay more for access to the same features as before without being able to negotiate the terms of your contract.
Whether it is a first purchase or a contract renewal, we advise you to systematically negotiate prices with suppliers.
The loss of data
This point is the direct consequence of the loss of access to your software in SaaS. If your contract ends, you risk losing the data you have stored on the platform.
This loss can quickly turn out to be catastrophic for your company, especially if the data is critical to your business.
If your company stores financial data on SaaS accounting software, losing it can cause late payments, errors in financial reporting, and a drop in confidence from your investors and business partners.
Even after contacting your SaaS provider, recovering this data can be time-consuming and costly. Note that most SaaS providers allow you to recover your data (within a given timeframe), even if you no longer use their service.
Loss of time and visibility
This impact is ultimately the consequence of the previous impacts.
A loss of time for your employees
Your employees will have to spend time finding a replacement solution or recovering lost data, disrupting their daily work. Even if the interruption lasts only one day, the loss of time will already be significant.
Lack of visibility
If you miss a SaaS contract renewal, you may not be informed of updates and new features that could improve your use of the software. Repeatedly missing out can put you behind your competitors who are using more powerful tools.
How to avoid missing a SaaS contract renewal?
It's time to get practical with our 4 tips to avoid missing a SaaS contract renewal. The solutions we propose are very effective and can be easily integrated into your business.
1. Create a renewal calendar: to have an overview of your contracts at any time
When you sign a new SaaS contract, systematically add the renewal date to a renewal calendar.
You can detail the end dates and renewal terms (waiting period, notice periods, etc.). This allows you to plan ahead for potential contract negotiations and avoid missing renewal dates.
You can use tools like Google Calendar or Trello to create a visual, easy-to-follow calendar that can be shared with your teams.
2. Schedule renewal alerts: to be notified in real-time
Set up renewal alerts for each SaaS contract using project management tools, reminder apps, or even features built into the SaaS software itself!
You'll receive notifications before the due date to take the necessary actions:
- Data recovery and transfer in case of discontinued use of the tool.
- New contract and payment of renewal.
To create renewal alerts, you can go through a project management tool such as Asana. You can create a task for each SaaS contract you have signed up for and add a reminder alert to it.
You can also use a tool like Zapier to create custom alerts that integrate with your favorite apps.
3. Negotiate renewal: for long-term peace of mind
Before signing or renewing a SaaS contract, why not take the time to negotiate with the provider to obtain better conditions?
Are you particularly satisfied with a tool? If you know that you will use it for several years, don't hesitate to ask for multi-year SaaS contracts to smooth out your subscriptions and avoid forgetting by limiting the number of renewals to be planned each year.
Many providers will also offer you the option of direct debit for your subscription. In some cases, you can even request an automatic renewal of your contract on the anniversary date.
Note: the duration is not the only point to negotiate in the terms of the contract. You can also ask for a price reduction, an extension of the trial period, an increase of the included features, etc.
4. Subscribing to a SaaS Procurement solution: to be supported from A to Z with the management of your tools
If you feel overwhelmed by the explosion of SaaS in the enterprise, this type of solution can be an appropriate response.
A SaaS contract manager allows you to easily track expiration dates, the precise terms of contracts and their suppliers. It helps you identify potential savings on existing tools.
Subscribing to a SaaS Procurement solution such as the one offered by Najar can greatly facilitate the management of your SaaS contracts.
This solution centralizes all of your SaaS subscriptions in one place and provides detailed information on each contract, including renewal dates and payment terms.
You can also monitor spend and users on each SaaS contract, so you can optimize your costs and adjust your subscriptions based on your actual needs.
Managing your SaaS contracts is essential to avoid the negative consequences of not renewing. The impacts of service interruption, additional costs, data loss, lost time and visibility can be severe for your business.
For peace of mind, take the trouble to track contract end dates, negotiate pricing and service levels with vendors and store your data securely.
You can also use contract management tools to help you monitor your SaaS contracts and effectively manage your software spend. Need a professional? Check out Najar's contract tracking feature now.
And find out what your SaaS costs are really like with our online spend calculator.
