even as other corporations had been slicing jobs to store the bottom line in 2020, media conglomerate viacomcbs discovered financial savings through overhauling its spending on zoom licenses.
in february 2020, earlier than lockdown regulations had even come into pressure in many countries, zoom introduced it had already delivered greater new customers within the first two months of 2020 than it had in all of 2019 added more new users .
as lockdowns had been brought in north the usa and throughout europe closing 12 months because of the pandemic, businesses sold up zoom licenses en masse, regularly with little due diligence or long-term planning by way of those shopping them. that rush helped make zoom's videoconferencing software a cross-to solution for remote workers who had to stay related.
James Moy, global senior director for tech asset management at ViacomCBS.
it additionally supposed many companies wound up spending more than important to license zoom (and different software program) in the rush to maintain their commercial enterprise up and jogging. now, many are looking returned at their spending over the past yr to find financial savings. ViacomCBS,, the usa media conglomerate, is amongst the ones auditing their saas spending; it cut annual zoom expenditure via greater than 32% by finding and casting off unused zoom licenses, amongst many different areas of it spending.
james moy, international senior director for generation asset management at viacomcbs, talked about his role on the company and the way lively it asset control helped viacomcbs cut costs.
(this interview, organized by the ITAM Forum,, a international trade institution that advances the it asset management enterprise, has been edited for length and readability.)
what was your employer’s approach to software program deployment earlier than the pandemic?
"prior to the pandemic, we approached it asset control (itam) very systematically. rolling out a tool will never restoration your problems. all people thinks there may be some type of silver bullet, however from a software program asset control attitude, it truly is in no way the case. there are 3 things you need to bear in mind: people, procedure and the technology that you use, and everything we do right here is based totally off a gold fashionable for [IT Asset Management].
"from the top down, our cto needs belongings, each hardware and software program, to be managed effectively, because he realizes that once we do that, we get our roi. we became very conscious that rather than reducing people, you may simply make big savings off software program via dealing with what you spend on it without having to reduce sources or lose jobs. this have become specially applicable for the duration of the pandemic in which everyone was cutting fees, because they weren’t making the same amount of sales, however there is a price optimization and financial savings possibility within the software program international, especially in saas."
when it came to overhauling your saas deployments, how a lot of the manner become pushed with the aid of the want to discover financial savings due to the pandemic, or become this some thing you’d commenced before 2020?
"earlier than the pandemic began, we started out searching at the saas spend and observed a variety of duplicity across a couple of feature equipment. net conferencing become one among them, collaboration gear become any other, along crm, infrastructure and software program; more than one equipment inside the space that feature the same manner. we approached it as an optimization exercise, searching at the forty five or 50 gear we had ... and acknowledging even though everybody makes use of them in a different way, they all function the same way. the query became,
how can we power those 50 tools down to 3 and make the right selections [based on] wherein is that this business enterprise going?
"if you're going toward the saas version, and you go in towards a quicker provisioning process, it really is the manner to move. you have to rationalize the tools, examine the tools and make sure the rate factor is accurate as you roll this out. there's loads of debate internally, that has to take place with certain stakeholders because change is inevitable, and those don't like change in popular."
can you communicate us thru the manner of streamlining zoom licenses?
"whilst we began searching at zoom, we realized that like many businesses, we were buying lots of saas merchandise however there was no centralized control of the contracts. all those brands that make up viacom cbs were handling their licenses one after the other and there has been plenty of shopping in the saas international via procurement cards or company playing cards.
"we used a third-celebration, saas control platform called Zylo to centralize all of the saas contracts and we found there have been 3 structures where we ought to make financial savings, one of which become zoom. what have been occurring turned into licenses had been purchased both on a contract and on procurement cards. there was no management of licenses, there has been no re-harvesting regulations inside the zoom console, and haphazard deployment, that means human beings had been just willy-nilly giving out the pinnacle tier of licenses.
"zoom offers users the selection of different tiers, which include a complete corporation license and a fundamental account, which might be loose, and host calls as much as forty minutes. while we dug a bit deeper, we determined 289 pro customers with paid-for pro licenses that have been not the usage of those debts at all, so we eliminated them. we had a similarly 459 people who had pro licenses but have been using those licenses as if they have been primary debts, that means their conferences had been no extra than forty minutes and with much less than five humans. so we removed the ones and moved them to the loose tier. we also put a re-harvesting rule in vicinity that stipulated that if you have not used your account in ninety days, we’re getting rid of your license and giving it to someone else.
"in the end, we harvested about five,500 licenses and ended up creating a saving of around 32%."
what was the reaction from colleagues?
did you receive pushback from people who had their pro debts taken away?
"there has been a little pushback from positive human beings, however we have the information to again up our decision making. we also provided an easy manner for folks who were moved to the loose tier to get their pro account again if necessary. distinctive departments want to attempt to claim person obligation for his or her budgetary decisions, but we had to inform them, ‘it’s now not your finances, it is the corporation's price range.’ people had to understand that we weren’t trying to impede how they work. we’ll offer you with the gear you need, however on the equal time, in case you don't use the device we're going to reclaim it."
besides from having to win over your colleagues, have been there another demanding situations you got here throughout when implementing this new way of working?
"i think human beings had been greater skeptical than whatever else, typically due to the fact human beings did not accept as true with that we could manipulate saas licenses in a centralized manner. people accept as true with itam specialists are bean counters, but we’re not — we see a lot of things, mainly inside the dealer control and procurement area, as well as coping with a full lifestyles-cycle of hardware and software program property, which literally impacts the bottom line.
"every time a person is skeptical approximately a program we're seeking to roll out, we always ensure we've the numbers to back it up. it's far hard and once in a while it is able to be sincerely challenging, but there’s never a stupid second.
"it begins at the top, you have to have someone that backs this system at the c-suite level because without that, you are actually jogging round spinning your wheels. however, after you roll it out from an company scale and those understand the why and start seeing the results, it makes the process easier. you simply need to create that vision so humans should purchase into in.
"but, whilst you pitch it as: 'we can both shop expenses via alas letting human beings cross or we are able to search for other methods to store money, which includes reducing our saas spend,' then people have been extra inclined to get on board with it."
you said that along zoom, there had been two other saas structures that were ripe for fee savings. how are you drawing near the ones?
"every other platform we looked at changed into salesforce. we plugged it into zylo and determined approximately 30 times of salesforce in our surroundings, so we began to consolidate our salesforce licenses across the agency, which we’re nonetheless inside the process of doing. now, we have a miles better view of how many human beings are the use of it, after they use it, and those are not able to burst off and haphazardly buy extra licenses. by means of using statistics and analytics and constructing a outstanding courting with the writer, we've got been able to force down pricing."
what recommendation do you have got for different companies that are seeking to reflect your cost-saving efforts and streamline saas deployments?
"do your due diligence when comparing your saas tools. do not accept as true with in any sales pitch, usually do a p.c or evidence of idea. consider it like shopping for a automobile. when you go to a vehicle dealership, the shop clerk will let you know the whole lot precise approximately the automobile and although you may ask them questions, you certainly don't know if the automobile plays how you need it to until you attempt it out.
"the closing aim for the business enterprise should be to store money and with a purpose to that, you want statistics and analytics. not handiest will that assist you physically see how plenty cash you could store, it’s also an critical start line for any future negotiations with software providers."
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