Aerospace firm gains vital savings with SoftwareOne

An urgent need to cut software costs

An important SoftwareOne customer for several years, the aerospace company urgently needed a new level of support when airline travel came to a near halt due to the outbreak of COVID-19. It was spending many millions of dollars on industry-critical software but suddenly had almost no airline revenues to help cover those costs. It needed to make big changes and fast.

With its deep understanding of costs, licencing and contracts across the market, SoftwareOne was able to rapidly identify many opportunities for reducing the organisation’s software expenses. It used its Digital Supply Chain services to optimise software usage across the business, negotiate discounts for licence renewals, manage end-of-life software and gain insights into current and predicted software spending.

SoftwareOne’s existing relationship with the company also helped. Having already worked for many years as essentially an extension of the company’s procurement team, SoftwareOne was able to couple its knowledge of the company’s business operations with its deep software industry expertise. SoftwareOne used this understanding to reduce licence purchase and renewal costs as much as possible, while ensuring the company had the modern software it needed to get planes back in the air when the industry recovered.

“What did we bring them that they couldn’t do on their own?” asks a SoftwareOne dedicated Account Director who works with this business. “Better pricing and understanding of the software vendors’ licencing models and agreement types. We know when they’re getting a good deal. We also know when we can push the vendor to get better pricing and that was key during the pandemic.”

Throughout the crisis, SoftwareOne helped the company right-size its estate through rationalisation of applications and suppliers. It examined the organisation’s existing agreements, particularly around costs, to identify opportunities to work out payment plans or extend payment terms with vendors. All of this helped the company to reduce its business risks and meet its goals during a time when its revenues were severely reduced.

Ongoing support for optimised software usage

With SoftwareOne’s support, the company was able to reduce its software costs significantly and weather the deep crisis that COVID-19 created for the aerospace industry. By applying Digital Supply Chain principles to its software use and spending, the business saved more than USD 5 million over a 24-month period.

Today, SoftwareOne continues to support the business by notifying it 120 days in advance about software that’s coming up for renewal, including how much that will cost, and whether software is approaching end of life and needs to be replaced. SoftwareOne also works daily to help the company control and, where possible, drive down costs. And its advice and expertise mean the company doesn’t need to hire additional in-house procurement team members, which also saves expenses and adds significant industry expertise to the company’s procurement service.

“That’s where Digital Supply Chain services can provide a lot of value,” says SoftwareOne’s Global Practice Lead, Digital Supply Chain Services. “It’s effective for manageing long-tail software vendors – rather than large vendors like Microsoft where a lot of eyes are focused on optimising usage and costs.”

The aerospace company also gains valuable insights by using SoftwareOne’s PyraCloud platform for reporting. By providing a single place in which to view invoices, past spending and software consumption history, for example, the PyraCloud portal helps the organisation’s finance team with accrual-based accounting.

Such support is especially valuable now that markets have started recovering from the COVID-19 crisis and inflation has become a growing economic concern.

“The level of control we help provide over the software supply chain is really critical right now as we enter this next phase of the global economy,” says the SoftwareOne Global Practice Lead, Digital Supply Chain Services.

“SoftwareOne provided vital support when we needed it most,” adds an executive with the aerospace company. “Their team has been great to work with and is always ready to help.”