Quolum and Brex: Why It’s a Game-Changer
Imagine this: You’re sifting through a stack of old mail and you come across a bank statement. On it are charges for a subscription to a once-beloved streaming app that has long since fallen out of use—and it’s been draining your account for months.
The frustration and shock you feel are all too familiar, but this scenario isn’t exclusive to individuals. Companies too have been caught off guard by the rapid rise in subscription services over the past decade.
Picture a busy IT manager juggling multiple SaaS platforms, only to realize that they’ve been shelling out thousands of dollars for an underutilized design tool that’s been collecting digital dust. This is more common than you think.
Like consumers, companies are grappling with the daunting task of tracking and managing an ever-growing list of subscriptions, each with unique terms and renewal dates.
It might surprise people outside the industry that a lot of these services aren’t bought through a formal procurement process with oversight and tracking, but instead are bought on employee expense cards. Tracking and assessing SaaS services through expense card statements is truly stretching the capabilities of a system originally designed for charging things like travel, food, and ad-hoc technology expenses.
Modernizing expense cards
There’s a reason why employees buy SaaS services on their expense cards rather than going through the procurement process. Expense cards might not be perfectly suited for the job, but traditional procurement is even less suited to the dynamism SaaS brought to the game. As a result of this (and other factors), purchasing has become decentralized in many companies, putting demands on expense cards they weren’t designed to handle.
Brex is one firm working to modernize tools like expense cards, which is why we’re very excited to be integrating Quolum’s SaaS Management product with Brex.
With just a few clicks, Brex’s 50,000 customers can connect to Quolum, which then ingests and annotates spend data by adding product name, product information, vendor information, product users, license information, contracts, and feature usage.
With Quolum’s tools connected, customers can get a straightforward picture of their organization-wide SaaS spending and easily identify and resolve sources of waste. Over time, Quolum will detect duplicate products, duplicate spend, expiring contracts, and opportunities to get better rates during renewal. With this information in hand, we think Brex’s customers have the potential to save $1.2B over the next two years.
Modernized SaaS procurement
While traditional procurement has its own sources of inefficiency, it offers a level of control and insight that has been lost as purchasing has decentralized to expense cards.
It would be impossible to go back to a 100% centralized Procurement where the approval stops with a handful. Thanks to business agility, a changing workforce, and a hybrid world after the pandemic, the role of procurement has become supervisory. Trust and audit are the flagpoles rather than command and control. In the Quolum/Brex integration, we’re bringing all of that control and insight as well as new capabilities over to expense cards themselves, opening up a mode of purchasing built for the realities of a SaaS-drenched world.
Cloud applications promise and deliver a lot, but they also present new and growing challenges for budgets, security, and overall efficiency. With Quolum integration, Brex customers now have an effective tool for finding and eliminating the hidden SaaS expenses that silently burden their budgets.
Quolum and Brex – Take it for a Spin
If you are a Brex customer, it’s a no-brainer. The ability to isolate and optimize tech spends, in a matter of minutes is revolutionary.
In less than 60 seconds, here’s a sneak peek, but if you’d like a detailed demo, coupled with a free waste assessment, reach out to our savings experts who can get you setup in minutes.