Kill Shelfware, Invest in the Future
What is Shelfware?
Shelfware is a slang term used to describe a piece of software that is rarely or never used. Many believe in the inevitability that some software in the organization will be underused, but if addressed proactively, your company can save money by avoiding it entirely. According to a 2019 Gartner SaaD Migration Survey, typical IT operations do not use 25% of the software they purchase. A separate study by Flexera Software found that 93% of organizations have some shelfware, while more than a third waste at least 21% of their software spending on neglected software. Controlling IT cost is no longer in the radar of CIOs, whose priority has shifted to create business value in many other ways.
How do you eliminate unnecessary software spend?
The process of finding the right software for your needs requires stakeholder buy-in. For the most part, making sure that everyone gets what they need out of the decision-making process is complicated. The process is lengthy and often avoided, resulting in expensive, unnecessary software being purchased and left unused.
In the race to move operations and collaboration online, technology upgrades will doom lots of under-utilized software to become unnecessary or redundant. Without Software Asset Management (SAM) discipline, it’s pretty difficult to manage out unnecessary costs in SaaS, especially if your contract is not up for renewal for a while.
By taking action now, and managing your tech stack objectively and diligently, you can avoid wasting money on shelfware.
Olive’s three ways to kill shelfware, and invest in the future of your organization
Keeping track of your current software providers can be tedious and lengthy, creating an optimal environment for software to gather dust. Here at Olive, we can help you avoid this problem entirely with three easy steps!
1) Agile Evaluations
With Olive, managing your tech stack, and ensuring that you are not paying for products you don’t need is accessible at a glance. You can easily see a list of vendors, an overview of how they meet your business needs, and how critical each requirement is to various stakeholders.
2) Seamless collaboration
Olive allows you to collaborate and get much broader buy-in upfront. This collaboration not only ensures higher user adoption but delivers more successful implementation and much longer-term partnerships with ideal suppliers/vendors.
3) Discover Solutions
Additionally, suppose you are already in a contract that is no longer meeting your needs. In that case, Olive can help by identifying all of the other options available, giving you a much stronger case for renegotiating your contract.
Shelfware can eat away at your digital transformation budget and hides a potentially more serious issue, that you are not solving the challenges of your team accurately.
There is an old theory - hire slow and fire fast. In technology, the current theory seems to be; buy fast, never fire.
By following some basic methodologies, we can overcome many of these challenges to deliver value to our teams and ensure adoption. It all starts with engaging your stakeholders and thoroughly evaluating all potential options. I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "I don't have time for that.” That's where Olive can help.
Stop wasting up to 25% of your software budget on shelfware. Increase user adoption, discover better solutions and get ROI on your purchases with Olive.
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Acknowledgments
Part of the information in this article comes from:
Stephen White: Paying for what you use - too much to expect from SaaS? by Gartner January 2020
Christiaan Murphy, Stephen White, Jo Liversidge: 3 Best Practices to Avoid Costly Shelfware in Your SaaS Deal published by Gartner January 2020
Software Asset Management (SAM): 4 Tips to Eliminate Shelfware
