InVision — Vendr Case Study

InVision is a digital whiteboard and productivity platform that brings teams together in a cloud-based environment. More than 7 million people use InVision to build design concepts, drive growth, and increase team collaboration and creativity.

The early days of building a high-growth business can create a breadth of complexity in software tools. At some point, “getting what you need” creates a scenario where you have far more than you need. This was the case for InVision, when it first implemented Vendr in 2019. At that time, IT managed around 600 applications in addition to its on-premise hardware and software. The company needed a way to streamline its SaaS holdings and optimize the money it spent on software.

The small IT team at InVision also needed to save time administering its hardware, help desk issues, and SaaS tools serving a group of 400 employees across the organization. Managing new license purchases and renewals for hundreds of licenses was beyond the team’s capabilities. 

Tessa Hamilton is InVision’s current IT Helpdesk Manager. As the leader of IT within the organization, she is focused on finding ways for the small team to administer technical needs for the company more efficiently. A growing facet of this role is dedicated to cloud-based software.  “SaaS management is a full-time job in itself,” Tessa said. “We spend up to eight hours of working time on a renewal.” 

Building on the company’s long-standing partnership with Vendr (InVision is an early Vendr customer), Tessa began leveraging the platform's newest capabilities, such as automated intake workflows and license utilization reporting to help her better manage and automate the software procurement process.

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Over the course of its partnership with Vendr, InVision has significantly pared its software stack. With help from the platform, CSM, and buying team, the company’s software count has dropped from over 600 tools to just under 160. 

Vendr serves as the preferred partner for all new software purchases and renewals within InVision. Utilizing the platform, InVision can entrust deal flow to Vendr while staying closely connected to ongoing procurement activities. “It allows one or two people internally to have visibility into all of the renewals and negotiations currently happening,” Tessa said.

Tessa has leveraged recent Workflows feature updates to create more automation in the company’s procurement process. Purchases that previously required multiple email threads and manual management now flow through a single intake form and approval process. Vendr creates a framework for ensuring legal and security review occurs for every transaction, enabling the team to follow a repeatable process with every deal. "With the addition of Workflows, Vendr is becoming not just the procurement and negotiation piece, it's the management piece as well for our approvals and things of that nature," said Tessa. 

“It doesn't matter if it's a $5,000 or a $250,000 application,” Tessa said. “We follow the same, thorough negotiation and review process. Vendr helps us meet the goal of centrally managing our stack.”

Even in cases where a stakeholder leads negotiation on a tool, they receive pricing data and context from the Vendr team. It gives Tessa confidence that the company is getting the most from every negotiation.

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In four years of partnering with Vendr, InVision has realized over $4 million in savings across $15.8 million in managed spend. Vendr’s specialty buyers ensure the company gets fair and accurate pricing for every tool in its tech stack. “We know if we didn’t use Vendr as that negotiating partner, we would be spending a lot more,” Tessa said.

Using Vendr for visibility and negotiation has also allowed the company to trim its software portfolio significantly. As Vendr’s software management capabilities increase, Tessa is able to reduce the IT stack, consolidating activities that used to happen across different tools into a single streamlined experience.

The most personally compelling advantage of Vendr for the IT group is time savings. Activities that would take hundreds of hours to complete now happen in the background. This leaves Tessa time and bandwidth for more impactful work.

With manual deal management and negotiation off her plate, Tessa turns her attention to value-creation projects such as improving user auditing, tightening internal processing controls, and connecting with stakeholders.

Building stakeholder connections is especially important to Tessa. In many organizations, stakeholders' interactions with IT may be limited to times they experience a problem or need a tool. Partnering with Vendr has given IT at InVision time to foster better relationships with internal users.

One such opportunity is new employee IT onboarding. All new hires receive a personalized introduction to the IT team and an opportunity to ask questions. It allows them to see the team as a resource while they settle into their new company and role. “I don't know we would have been able to implement this without the automation and process improvement over the last couple of years,” explained Tessa.

After several years of partnership, Tessa still looks forward to the opportunities still to come. “I'm excited that InVision has partnered with Vendr for so long. We have a multiple-year experience that continues to improve over time. It’s an amazing relationship to continue.”