Technology and technology led innovations have impacted all the business functions, and procurement and vendor management ​have not remained untouched.  IT procurement has become more complex with most of the IT purchases shifting from capex to opex model. IT software purchases have moved from one-time licensing to recurring subscription-based model, which has increased the complexity and high growth in volume of transactions in procurement.
On the other hand, procurement process has become an ​integral part in the overall business functions and decision than conventionally being only a purchase entity. As technology has become the core of business, technology procurement has become a critical function. With the shift to opex model and recurring subscription software, ​IT procurement has become complex and requires more technology skill sets.
According to Gartner study, by 2020, all new entrants and 80% of historical vendors will offer subscription-based business models, regardless of where the software resides.
In such a scenario, it will become imperative to look at purchase function and buying process in a more holistic way and modernize them.
Earlier, the process from purchase requisition to procurement followed a one-dimensional series.

With the advent of new communication channels, availability of information and need for speed, the interaction and flow are now multitouch points.

Creating a unified platform 
It is imperative to manage the life cycle of IT procurements, especially subscription based softwares. Business teams on the other hand would require cyclic budgeting data as the requirements will vary periodically. Compliance audits would be more complex and tedious as the technical advancement would vary depending on the technology and project. The technology teams who have flexibility to choose would require to be more vigilant with respect to the right usage of the resources.
Let’s look at some of the key elements for subscriptions life cycle management:

• Subscription certificate management: enabling enterprises to have a record room for all the subscriptions purchased
• Subscription allocation: enabling demand-based allocation and utilizing the resources to the fullest
• Subscription deployment: knowing the available resources real time to better optimize them and ensure faster return on investments

Renewal cycle

The new-age approach
Octosum – a new-age platform developed by Ashnik, offers a new way of subscription procurement and engagement internally and externally. It offers extensive functionality from –

• Vendor discovery and engagement
• Purchase order requisition to receiving subscriptions
• Subscription certificate management
• Subscription allocation, deployment, discovery of deployed subscription
• Compliant vs non-compliant deployments
• Project wise, business unit wise spend on subscriptions and vendors

Key benefits
With procurement function becoming more focused on delivering value beyond savings, it becomes more important for them to be more informed. Octosum, a unified platform, helps all functions like business, IT, procurement, and compliance come to a place which shares information uniformly for ease of operations. Let’s check out some key features of Octosum:

1. Optimize subscription utilization
2. Calendarized upcoming & pending renewal details
3. Regularly updated overutilization report for better compliance
4. Faster procurement cycle
5. Access to technology vendor marketplace
6. Detailed reports and analytics for data driven business decisions
7. Manage team allocation and reallocation with ease
8. Unified platform for procurement, IT, Business and compliance teams

As an example of what you get from Octosum, the above graph shows what an enterprise needs to know about their subscriptions. A clear picture of purchased, allocated, and deployed subscriptions can help organization wide compliance and audit team in just one glance.
To get more value out of your software subscriptions, start your free 1 year full feature trial on www.octosum.com or write to us at contact@octosum.com.
Try it for FREE till JUNE 2021