Introducing the Productiv Enhanced Recommendation Engine

The strategic IT leader knows that investing in SaaS tools can make or break an employee’s ability to get their job done. But, as that leader, how do you know if you’re spending the right amounts, on the right tools? And more importantly, how can you always have this knowledge at your fingertips, without dozens of hours of manual reporting, ad-hoc data, and occasional employee surveys? 

The reality is that most IT teams are guessing when it comes to what their companies actually need in software licenses and the appropriate SaaS tier. That is, until now:

Today we’re happy to announce the Productiv Enhanced Recommendation Engine, as part of the Productiv SaaS Management Platform. The Recommendation Engine gives you, real-time recommendations on your SaaS subscriptions based on license tier and license count.

The powerful outcomes we drive come from two, fundamentally differentiated capabilities within Productiv. 

1. As opposed to being driven just by license counts and logins, Productiv is driven by individuals’ usage activity at the feature level. These billions of data points give us unprecedented insight into what people are actually doing within any piece of software.
2. Productiv understands the packaging of each software, as well as how your contract is structured. That means you can make (or automate!) fine grained decisions on what software is actually right for each employee, as well as your business. 

We have been already using this new,  improved Recommendation Engine with our customers and have seen concrete outcomes such as:

• Maximize the value of SaaS contracts based on actual feature and usage data
• Improve conversations with vendors driven by billions of data points
• Align with line of business on what software they actually need
• Save hundreds of IT hours on manual data collection efforts 
• Easily deprovision and create automated flows within Productiv

With Productiv, fine-tuning your SaaS licensing no longer requires you to stop what you’re doing to hunt down the right data: you always have the right information to lead better discussions around SaaS planning.

Billions of Data Points leads to better recommendations

Understanding why our recommendations are different requires understanding a bit about our platform. Productiv’s SaaS Management platform leverages billions of data points to ensure you have the most accurate recommendations. These data points go beyond log-in data and capture individual feature interactions that each user has with an application. The result is an accurate picture of how employees are using each feature, and hence, each application. 

Productiv sees application usage for 20,000+ applications, giving us the breadth to ensure we can add value to your organization. In addition, our platform has specialized integrations with over 50 of the top SaaS applications for deeper engagement analytics. 

Now you can see if half of your employees are actually using the premium features you paid for (like recording a meeting in Zoom, or meetings that last more than 40 minutes). We integrate this detailed usage information with half a dozen other data sources, including SSO data, finance data, and contract data for a holistic view of your SaaS needs. The result is the most detailed view of application usage on the market.

Your recommendations data includes a buffer so you can adjust for new users and projected growth. You can mark certain employees as exempt and refine the data even further. The end result is a concrete set of recommendations that matches your specific organization.

Aligning Real-time Feature Usage with License Tiers

Productiv’s Recommendation Engine next matches detailed feature usage to specific license tiers. How many people are actually using premium features? Can you downgrade any from Pro to Basic? Many SaaS management platforms use only single-sign on (SSO) data for log-in information which will not help with specific license-tier recommendations. SSO data can tell you if users are inactive, but Productiv enables you to take it a step further and see activity level matched to specific features.

For example, you may have 3 different tiers of Salesforce. Our recommendations align specific feature usage with each of the 3 tiers, so you can accurately assess which level is right for each employee. All on one screen so you don’t have to search through contracts or an old spreadsheet.

User-Level Insights

Our goal is make sure that you feel confident with the recommendations. Want to see what drives each recommendation? Or see a specific list of inactive users? Our Recommendation Engine lets you dive deeper into the data. All of you have to do is click on each area and you can see detailed information down to the user and feature level. For example, see the exact Zoom users are not using Pro features and deprovision or re-allocate licenses accordingly. Easily decide if you need to right-size license tiers, or if you need improve employee training on specific features.

Tailored to your Contracts

Each of your applications and contracts are different. Unlike generic recommendations that might be based on list pricing or best known pricing, our data is based specifically on your contract. Each vendor may have different license tiers, and some you may pay by the month, while others you pay yearly. Some contracts are based on usage, while others may be based on seats. Productiv’s Recommendation Engine offers enhanced flexibility to factor in all of these differences. Our goal is to make sure you have the right recommendation for each SaaS contract, not a one-size fits all solution.

We have continuously refined our recommendations in some of the largest enterprises and challenging environments to ensure that it matches each scenario. Whether you’re a large company like Uber with over 1,000 applications to security-focused companies like MobileIron, we want to make sure that your recommendations match your company’s size and growth-stage. 

Improved Discussions with Vendors and Lines of Business

Now you can better prepare for vendor negotiations with a clear picture on how many of your licenses you are actually using and what features are most valuable. No longer do you have to solely rely on employee surveys or vendor data to try and determine the right level of license. 

You can also lead conversations with each line of business around the software tools they need. Help each department re-allocate spending based on feature usage. If a specific department is not using new premium features, it might represent an opportunity for training. Productiv’s recommendations can be an important starting point for strategic discussions with each department around software budgets and requirements moving forward. 

Time Savings and Automation

Finally, Productiv’s Recommendation Engine helps streamline your SaaS management process and save you time. No more lengthy audits and struggling to pull together disparate data for SaaS negotiations. In the past, you might have spent weeks trying to oversee employee surveys and verify vendor data. Now your team has one platform with real-time information driven by billions of data points. 

Productiv also helps you automate the process and save time. The Recommendations Engine allows you to set up rules and customize what happens based on activity-level. If someone is not leveraging the premium features, you can get alerts, or even automatically deprovision or downgrade.  

Free your IT resources to focus on strategic discussions. Now instead of combing through data or maintaining spreadsheets, your team can lead conversations on how to maximize your SaaS budgets.

Improving your SaaS resources and allocation

The growth of SaaS will only increase moving forward. We want to provide the tools to ensure you can maximize the value of your SaaS portfolio and improve allocation of your resources. Our Recommendations Engine provides concrete data based on billions of data points to help lead SaaS strategy in your organization. Match detailed feature usage to license tiers and see who is using premium features. Now you can improve conversations with vendors, manage licenses more efficiently, and save valuable IT resources. See how Productiv can help you take SaaS management to the next level.

Our Recommendation Engine is available in both our Essentials and Enterprise Tiers. If you would like to see everything available within Enterprise, request a demo.