Hercules Capital Saves Time and Simplifies SaaS Management with Vertice

The Challenge

Hercules Capital provides senior secured venture growth loans to technology and life sciences companies looking to expand their businesses. Over the years, the company has grown substantially, using a wide variety of software vendors to support its growing operations.

Richard Hanna, the Director of IT at Hercules, was responsible for managing many of these vendor relationships, often negotiating contracts on a case-by-case basis:

“As we expanded, managing an increasing number of SaaS vendor contracts became a significant time burden on our internal teams. Negotiating renewals and keeping contracts updated on a case-by-case basis was inefficient and limited our visibility. Without clear benchmarks, it was challenging to understand how much we could be saving compared to similar companies," said Richard Hanna, Director of IT at Hercules Capital.” 

The Solution 

Hercules Capital turned to Vertice to address these challenges and streamline its SaaS vendor management. 

Vertice offered a comprehensive platform that consolidated all of Hercules' software contracts into a single dashboard, allowing the IT and operations teams to track vendor spend, contract terms, and renewal timelines. The platform’s user-friendly dashboard provided visibility into all of Hercules' software vendor contracts, giving the company a clear picture of its overall spend and vendor landscape.

Vertice’s Procurement Managers managed the contract renewal process from start to finish, freeing up Hercules' internal teams to focus on higher-priority tasks. The partnership allowed Hercules to approach each contract renewal with flexibility, whether working with resellers or directly with vendors. The platform's benchmarking capabilities provided valuable insights into market pricing for competitive solutions, which helped inform contract negotiations, even if Hercules chose to stick with its existing vendors.

The Results 

Partnering with Vertice has been transformative for Hercules Capital. Renewal negotiations and new purchases are now seamless, with time savings emerging as a key benefit. By offloading contract management to Vertice, the IT team is freed from tedious, case-by-case negotiations and can focus on strategic priorities.

Christian Follmann, COO of Hercules, called this shift a "game-changer," highlighting how outsourcing time-consuming negotiations has empowered the team to drive bigger-picture decisions.

The team is also harnessing Vertice’s Intelligent Workflow capabilities, streamlining stakeholder approvals and consolidating contract-related documentation into a single platform. This reduces email clutter and simplifies processes.

With Vertice, Hercules has unlocked greater operational efficiency, sharper visibility into contract terms, and the flexibility to tailor vendor negotiations to its unique business goals.

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