Software Utilization: How Efficient Is Your Team?

There are a lot of ways you can track how efficient you and your team are at work.

Are you consistently crossing off every item on your to-do list? Are you exceeding every goal you set for yourself? If yes, chances are you’re pretty efficient!

But when it comes to the software within your tech stack, it can be harder to gauge if your employees are efficiently using the tools you’re paying for. If not, you could be over allocating your software budget, contributing to wasted SaaS spend.

In order to know for sure, you need to find the perfect balance between proper utilization and a positive user sentiment. And for that you need G2 Track.

Why it's important to drive efficiency with software

Your organization can go over its SaaS budget in the blink of an eye.

How much you’re paying for each tool within your tech stack can get out of control fast. To avoid this, it’s crucial that you take the necessary steps to identify where your company has wasted spend or areas of inefficient software use. Otherwise, you’ll quickly lose control over your software spend.

To maintain control and visibility over your company’s software stack, you need to be as proactive as possible to stay on top of your spend, which is where a SaaS system of record like G2 Track comes into play.

What is utilization and how is it achieved? 

For a 360 degree look into how efficient your company’s software usage is, you need to master utilization.

Utilization provides a deeper look into how the tools within your software stack are being used and which of the applications are being accessed the most versus the least. Single sign-on (SSO) solutions, which are usually deployed to ensure greater security and tighter access to applications, also provide the benefit of giving IT admins a single pane of glass view into applications and their login activity.

This also simplifies how your IT team manages software, especially since not all applications are being logged into, but they’re still being used daily. Think of the popular video conferencing software Zoom. Your employees may use Zoom multiple times a day, but they’re not inputting a username and password each time.  

What makes it even more complex to rely entirely on login/logout and activity data from your SSO platforms is that there’s little or no way to know which of your employees are actually wasting a paid license and can be downgraded to a free license. 

Going back to our Zoom example, what you’d really need insight into for managing  your Zoom licenses effectively is to identify which of your users that are holding a paid license aren’t necessarily hosting meetings that last beyond 40 minutes, since Zoom has a 40-minute meeting limit for those on the free plan.

The good news is that G2 Track also integrates with line-of-business applications such as Salesforce, Zoom and Microsoft 365 to help identify exactly this. Thanks to these integrations, you can identify each employee with a paid license, track their engagement metrics, and determine whether they merit it or not. 

To sum up, if you’re looking for a lower resolution, but a wider picture into the utilization of your application portfolio, you should use G2 Track’s integration with SSO tools. G2 Track integrates with Okta, Azure AD, Jump Cloud, Duo, OneLogin and LastPass to help you achieve this. If you want a high resolution, deep dive into specific applications, G2 Track has you covered on this front as well.

“G2 Track gives us a complete view of our SaaS spending. I love that it tells us how many users are using the tools we purchase. For example, if we were using Zoom and paying for 30 licenses, but only 10 are in use, G2 Track alerts us and we can adjust our license count.”

G2 Track Review
Zack W.

How to take efficiency one step further

Once you have data surrounding which applications are being used the most, which ones are being used the least, and if your employees are making good use of paid licenses, it’s time to take software efficiency one step further.

After knowing how software is being used, consider how your team feels about using it. For that, you need user sentiment data.

Having crystal clear visibility into your company’s utilization data becomes even more critical to efficiency when paired with how users actually feel about the products they use day in and day out. It can be common for companies to see high utilization or engagement across a variety of tools, but that doesn't necessarily mean your teams enjoy using them. For an increase in efficiency and productivity, you need to be sure employees are using the right tools for their daily responsibilities, not just ones you think are necessary.

This data can also help you to pinpoint wasted SaaS spend. You may be paying for two different products that do the same thing, for the sole reason that your marketing team likes Product X but your sales team likes Product Y, only to find out they do the same thing and you’re unnecessarily paying for both.

“Employee surveys of software products are displayed in a grid that shows how critical and helpful the tools we use are. It's helpful to know what people like or don't like about products so we can learn different ways to utilize these tools.”

G2 Track Review
Carla S.

Blending both together with G2 Track

When utilization and user sentiment data come together, you’ll get complete visibility into how efficiently your team is using its tech stack, and whether or not it’s time to take your software budget elsewhere. 

Remember that just because a user is logging in each day doesn’t mean they want to. There’s more to having login data, as it’s not the only factor that’s important for a decision-maker at your organization to gauge whether or not software is being used effectively.

A user logging in and logging out isn’t the only metric that’s important for a decision-maker to gauge whether the software is being used effectively. Because G2 Track integrates with such a long list of software solutions, you’ll always have top-notch visibility into engagement and utilization, which goes even further when paired with user sentiment.

When everything comes together in an easy-to-read dashboard, the datasets make it possible to reach smarter decisions regarding your software and your SaaS spend.

Taking efficiency to the next level

When you take a look at your SaaS budget, the last thing you want to find out is that barely anyone is using one of your most expensive applications. Thanks to G2 Track, you’ll always remain in the know about every single tool that your company uses.

Ready to be efficient on a budget? Use G2 Track Essential to learn what software you use, who is using it, how they feel about it, and how much your peers are paying for it – for free.