VISSA - Vuram's Infrastructure and Software Subscription Advisor

VISSA helps organizations to track and manage their SaaS (Software as a Service) & IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service) subscriptions to control spending, reduce costs and optimize the utilization

1) Process of building:

Pain points of Enterprises in managing software licenses:

Handling Unoptimized licenses and Inactive licenses
Disorganized SaaS renewal management
Increased complexity
Less user level security
Lack of visibility/overview of centralized data about subscriptions
No track on billing and subscription dates
Enterprises end up paying for unused licenses

What VISSA Tool provides:

Tool to track active subscriptions,
Track license Usage, expiry, who and how they are used, which feature of a software is used mostly
Integrations with tools to get the user and license details,
Identify Potential overlaps,
Track Payments - how much spend, total savings,
Smart recommendations on unused, underutilized licenses & instances along with potential savings.
Single platform to get the comprehensive overview of all the subscriptions with utilization reports.
Track least used applications, reminders on license expiry and much more

Flow of the application

Integrate SaaS applications, sync up both user and license details via API & RPA
Add more information - Payments, Renewals, And more
Manage connection credentials to integrate with software tool
Report and Investigate on budget vs spent, usage towards the daily spent threshold, unused licenses, and much more
Reminders/Alert - Get notified on the license expiry, unused, underutilized.

Modules:

Dashboard/Home page - Right on the landing page you get all the below,

1.1) KPIs on active applications, user & license details, Total spend & Saving.

Graphical report based on software usage - Normal, Nearing & Underutilized. Expense by departments.

1.2) Total spend on infrastructure based on different time offsets and total savings across different software applications.

1.3) Calendar notifications on Subscription expiry and usage tracker on least used applications.

2.Utilization tracking - SaaS & IaaS

2.1) SaaS Utilization - Track & trace the usage based on features, licenses and allocated budget. Details on User of the software, billing and features

2.2) IaaS Utilization - Track all IaaS applications with total allocated budget, spend, over payments and Over budget usage.

2.3) Update and maintain payment details, get clarity on Usage of the application across the months, regions and service/features.

3.Recommendations/Alerts

3.1) Intelligence of the system sends the recommendations for the user on the unused licenses, deactivated users, underutilized subscriptions. It also alerts on the usage that hits the daily/monthly limits or threshold.

4.User Information

4.1) This gives clarity on all the users across different applications and its licenses.

One step down on the user record takes us to the all list of applications that the user/employee is using in the organization.

4.2) Easily allocate and revoke licenses right from user dashboards.

5.System Configurations

5.1) Manage applications - Onboard SaaS & IaaS applications with user, features details, either manually or through API/Bot integrations.

5.2) Add licenses - License details of any software and its features can be manually updated to the system or the RPA Bot can automatically read that the software tool and update it to the application

5.3) Manage connections - Configure all applications and its integration connection details right from application. This includes the Connection methods like OAuth, API, connection token ID and secret keys to dynamically connect with the software application.

Key features:

Discover - Add & manage SaaS inventory, Monitor flow of new boarded SaaS & IaaS applications
Optimize - Eliminate inefficient purchasing, reduce application overlaps and redundancy, Right-size via automated update of user & license details
Plan - Forecast future spend with actual utilization data, Renew SaaS apps with data-driven insights, Alert owners to upcoming renewals

Benefits:

Tailor your license management into the organization fabric by easily defining the departments, User based privileges.
Centralized license management, you get all software subscription, license, usage and billing details on one platform along with alerts for unused or underutilized subscriptions.
Analyze reports and data to take managerial decision to leverage optimized usage of software licenses
Track ROI, Cost optimization and Risk management
Manage multiple applications both software & infrastructure subscriptions
Add users to platforms, allocate and revoke their subscriptions at ease.
Improve visibility of subscriptions, spend management and user access.

Roadmaps:

Employee help desk,
FAQs on billing and renewals
Security & Compliance
Invoices & payment integrations
Virtual cards for instant usage on renewals
AI/ML recommendations
Department & User group management
Synchronize the user management of platform with software
Enhanced reports on utilization, spend and user engagement

2) Inspiration

Our own IT team - we were in hunt of a hackathon idea, we discussed with few of our internal teams in the organization. And thus we came to know about the need of automation in the subscription and license handling processes of our IT team. As our organization often procures multiple software and infrastructures for our business needs, it becomes cumbersome to track and manage funds & subscription costs aligning with the budget allocated to IT. Frequently our IT team ends up spending for unused licenses. From our market research as well it looks like a lot of organization are facing the same issue. So we nailed an idea to develop a Subscription Advisor platform on Appian which can help our IT team to organize and manage all our software & infrastructure subscriptions.

3) Technologies used

Appian BPM, Appian RPA, Blue Prism - RPA, API integrations

4) Challenges faced

Integration with software tools - Some SaaS software provides multiple APIs for user data, some provide separate APIs to get usage or license data. Availability and scope of that API becomes challenging here.
Dynamic connection - To establish the connection with VISSA with the third party tools, we have action on our application to ‚ÄúManage connections‚Äù, we are dynamically passing on the connection authentication tokens, every time dynamically connecting is not possible on Appian, it was challenging. The work around will be JWT tokens or go with custom smart services in Appian.