Why being independent is so important to us

If you are going to work with and trust a new procurement partner, who will sit between you and a vendor, you need to know they are impartial at worst, or on your side at best. 

After all, CFOs and procurement teams have a tough enough time with SaaS purchasing when departments’ reasoning for a new vendor is based on thinly-veiled personal preference, or arguments as flawed as ‘I’ve seen it work well elsewhere’.

The last thing they need is a third party procurement partner giving advice clouded by their own preference or interest.

But despite this logic, it remains commonplace. Many of our new customers have experienced this problem and come to Vertice to escape it, citing knock-on effects of poor tool selection, less platform usage, escalating contract prices, lower ROI - all stemming from the procurement partner’s vested interest.  

Here are some of their stories. 

“My options were narrowed because they only recommended their preferred partners.” 

There are approximately 30,000 SaaS companies globally. However some procurement partners have ‘preferred vendors’ - SaaS providers that they are commercially incentivized to recommend to customers, effectively restricting the options available. Some might be ‘best-in-class’ tools, but not always.

Sometimes, the procurement partner may feel financially compelled to recommend their preferred partner even if the vendor does not entirely match the customer’s needs.

But a vendor agnostic partner is actually better for everyone. The customer is recommended the most suitable vendor for their needs, which means the vendor sees better and longer adoption, and the procurement partner earns the customer's trust.

“The discount my SaaS spend optimization partner could get me was capped by their reseller agreement.” 

Reseller agreements not only incentivize the purchasing partner to sell the vendor into X number of companies, or to achieve $X in new sales for the vendor, but they also offer pre-set discounts to any customers that the partner brings.

At first sight, this looks like an advantage to working with a procurement partner - they can guarantee discounts theoretically inaccessible to customers if they worked alone. 

But the reality is that this discount level is all that the partner can offer. The discount available to the customer is effectively capped, no matter what ought to be possible through powerful negotiation. And the pre-authorized discount is obviously what the vendor is reasonably happy to give away to their partners - which means there is still some ‘wiggle room’ and margin left to negotiate over.

When so much benchmarking data is available on so many SaaS vendors (we, for example, have data and documented negotiation experience on over 16,000 SaaS vendors’ pricing), and there are often so many options for leverage in a negotiation that can drive costs down, why would you accept a capped discount?  

“I ended up locked in with my procurement partner, even though they couldn’t get me the best prices.” 

In some cases where procurement partners use reseller agreements, the agreement requires the contract to ultimately be between the vendor and the partner, not the customer directly.

This reduces the customer’s influence in the negotiation, and has a high likelihood of locking the customer in with the partner for fear of having to renegotiate all their SaaS contracts again.

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“My procurement partner’s reseller relationship stopped them from fixing my SaaS spend problems.”

A by-product of having a commercial partnership with a SaaS vendor is that you know what matters to the vendor commercially. You know whether their sales team is incentivized by number of users or duration of contract, or which features or packages the vendor is most interested in signing contracts for.

But what if those interests are at odds with the needs and preferences of the customer? 

If the customer is planning to grow significantly during the term of the contract, increasing their SaaS users, this would typically incur greater SaaS costs. It’s the job of the procurement partner to build a contract around these expectations and prevent runaway spend. But what if the procurement partner knows the vendor values user growth above all else? 

Another typical scenario is that a certain pre-built package is perfect for a particular customer - but with the exception of one major feature, and they want that removed and the price reduced accordingly. But what if the procurement partner knows that that feature is a major focus for the vendor this year?  

In other words, can you be sure which side your procurement partner is truly and always on? 

So why is vendor agnosticism better? 

If these are the flaws with reseller agreements and preferred partnerships, what are the advantages of vendor agnosticism and independence?

1. Unbiased access to the full breadth of vendor options, not just a preordained shortlist of ‘preferred partners’.
2. Access to deeper, uncapped discounts.
3. Contract directly with the vendor, with no intermediary blocking your access or reducing your influence in the negotiations.
4. No lock-in with your procurement partner.
5. The flexibility to build contracts that prevent your business growth from creating runaway SaaS spend. 
6. A partner who is 100% on your side, with no distractions.

Vertice is not only the leading SaaS spend management solution according to G2, but we are 100% independent and truly vendor-agnostic. Our expert buyers partner with you 1-on-1 to get a dedicated and in-depth understanding of your short- and long-term requirements, and help recommend vendors and contract structures that fit you individually.

Our Vendor Benchmarking (drawn from our database of over 16,000 SaaS vendor pricing, terms and possible discounts) help our expert buyers secure the best discounts possible, not just whatever discount is permitted by a reseller agreement.

We place a lot of value on our independence. It allows us to have a more detailed, more strategic and more impactful relationship with our customers.

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