How to Save On Software Management

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Transcript

 Welcome to the Spend Advantage Podcast by Varisource. Spend Advantage is the competitive advantage for your spend across 100 plus vendor categories. This podcast is all about interviewing amazing people, company, and solutions that will help you tend your top line growth as well as bottom line savings for your business. Hello everyone, this is Victor with Vera Source. Welcome to another episode of the Spend Advantage podcast. Today I'm excited to have Felix for you. Chen, who is the CEO and co-founder with Felix Sphere. With us, they are essentially an AI business management platform for everyone. Super excited to have you, Chen. Welcome to the show. Thank you Victor. Hi everyone. Thanks for having me here. Yeah, we're gonna have a lot of exciting, uh, questions for you, obviously. Um, we're super excited to partner with you guys. And obviously, when you talk about AI, you know, there's just a lot of exciting topics. So if you don't mind, maybe, um, if you can give the audience kind of a little bit of that founder and company background and story would be great. Sure. Um, my personal journey has always been at the intersection of business and technology. I spent years at companies like Salesforce and Zenefits, uh, leading large scale enterprise software projects, and we saw firsthand how companies struggle with an overload of applications. Um, the idea of this sphere really comes from those experiences. You know, modern businesses might use hundreds of different apps, including apps, right? Sometimes 400 or more in a single enterprise or company. And it just overwhelming people were wasting hours each week wrestling with software instead of focusing on their real work. Uh, we thought there has to be a simpler way. That's why in 2024, me and my team started a fixed sphere with a simple vision make make mastering business applications as easy as having a conversation. Yeah. I, uh, can't wait to kind of explore what that looks like. Obviously, you and I, you know, I'm always a, uh, very direct person. Uh, I kind of share my my thoughts, obviously. SAS management. Yeah. Uh, been around for a few years. Uh, a lot of people tried. Um, and, uh, some are still around, but that the hotness has kind of died off. But you talk about instead of SaaS management, you talk about business application management. What do you think is the difference between SaaS management and business application management? Great question. Yeah. Um, business application management is more holistic approach. Uh, compared to standard asset management because we talk about SaaS. People come from like that software services, um, or services softwares or AI applications, for example. We actually uh, we manage both business application management, traditional SaaS management software as services platforms are typically focused on tracking apps and licenses. Since like how many zoom licenses do we have? Our overspending on slack, that's important, but it's just one piece of the puzzle. It's very agile and finance centric. We do include that fixed sphere gives you complete visibility into your software inventory, usage and spend. But we go further, I think. Now that is half the battle. When we when we say all in one business application management, we mean we manage the entire lifecycle and usage of software in the business. This ranges from discovering what apps are in use, managing access and compliance, tracking spend, optimizing costs and crucially, you know, helping employees. Everyone in the business actually use those applications, including AI applications, effectively day to day. We are not just an inventory of apps. We are like assistant virtual assistant that sits on top of all your apps to help you and our team get the most out of them, because I believe you purchase applications, you spend money over them. You want to get most of most out of them. So the big difference is, is the user focused aspect that management tools might tell say, oh well, there's a waste or risk, but they don't really direct help an employee who is stuck or confused about it. So we combined management side of it and with real time support and automations. Yeah. I, um. The way you mentioned, I'm going to dig into a little bit more later, uh, this work assistant. You know, obviously there are so many ideas of AI assistant now, but but we're going to save it. We're going to save it for, you know, a little bit later. Uh, but, you know, one thing that I like to do is when we talk about, um, you know, obviously optimization or solutions, first I want to talk about the problem. What is the problem that companies have and why is it so difficult. And then we'll talk about how we're solving it. Um, but can you kind of describe what did you see that makes software management so difficult for most companies? Again, you know, most companies buy software, right? They they need it. They think they need it. They buy it. But why is it so difficult to to do software management? Yeah. I think um, that's another great question. Um, honestly, um, it's difficult for, for, for a few big reasons. You know, first is sheer volume and fragmentation. You know, companies today use a crazy number of applications and even for personal use. I use like maybe thousands of applications every day. You know, the average enterprise offer is over, according to, you know, our research is 473 different apps across the business. You know, keeping tabs on all of those applications is is a nightmare. And it's increasing, you know, year by year is increasing. So they are scattered across departments, some in the cloud, some are premiums, some adopted by teams without technologies. You know, this leads to the second reason a lack of visibility and control. You know, often no single person or system has a full picture of what's being used and how that has real cost. Yeah. Then there's like a human factor. Employees get overwhelmed bouncing between so many applications, you know, and so they also keep lobster, you know, in the sea of like applications. And we actually try to um, we're trying to provide them like a centralized approach to manage ad out here of the applications usages. Yeah. I, um, you know, I definitely I think those reasons you mentioned are. It sounds so simple. Um, you know, I think it's actually kind of like, um, I think if, if everybody look in their own homes, uh, they'll see a lot of stuff that they over bought over the years, and they don't even know where it is. They find these boxes. I sometimes I find boxes in my, uh, storage. And then I open and I'm like, wow, I still have this thing, like. But I just bought a new one. I didn't even know I have one. It's just, I mean, imagine now, I mean, SAS is literally like you said, um, that that problem doesn't go away. But here's another interesting one that I want to get your expertise on. So a lot of time, obviously, you know, people leave the companies and things like that. But what companies don't realize is even when the employee leaves the company, sometimes their email, they can still log into those applications. And that's obviously a cost problem. That's obviously a security problem because you have somebody who doesn't even work for the company, but still able to use the email to get into certain tools. And so can you talk about, um, you know, when somebody, uh, why is it difficult for companies when, let's say, an employee leaves the company to manage those licenses they have access to. And what are some suggestions you have to kind of solve that? Yeah. So, you know, that's actually one of the most common and critical blind spots we see in companies today. So when someone leaves a company there's like Salesforce or Zoom, access doesn't always have to live with them. It's not just like a, you know, cutting cost risk, but also security risk, you know. So we actually we think, you know, we connect directly with with companies, HR systems and other providers like Google Workspace, Okta, bamboo HR. And the moment someone's employment status changed, you know, Fedex automatically begins the offering process which is preconfigured or maybe like, say, by using I, Fedex, I work assistant it immediately flags and deactivate the user access across all integrated applications. And for example, if you integrate Salesforce Notion or Google emails in Salesforce, in Fedex sphere platforms, and no more manual edit checklist or forgetting to. Yeah. And also we do not stop there. And you know, we actually continuously update user access across all your apps. So even if someone switch roles months ago, maybe they switch from sales to marketing. Or maybe if like a contractor teams, you know, quietly expired their term, quietly expired, fix the auto, catch those cases and suggest revoking their accesses or change their accesses. You know, think of it as like autopilot, full access hedging. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, versus is focused on savings for companies. And the number one, if number one or number two categories that we drive savings or that most customers are interested in is software. Right. It just like you said, it's yeah, it's constant overcharging. Companies coming to you and say, hey, I'm gonna raise 5%, 10% and you can do nothing. All you, all you can do is just pay for it because you need the software. It's it's pretty daunting for these customers. And that's why we're so excited to partner with you guys. Um, but so the next topic is where we start to get in a little bit of this AI. So walk me through. I mean, I, I think you and I talked about earlier. AI sounds nice, it sounds futuristic. But in practice, in most people's daily life or even companies, obviously we're still early. So meaning they still don't know how to fully utilize AI to drive value, to drive true value, to drive true productivity. So what is your kind of vision of how Felix Sphere can, uh, you know, a different approach to the AI agent or this kind of work assistant that you talked about? Yeah. So personally, I am a true believer of the I can play a bigger role in the business in the near future. You know, thinking about like the foundation model is progressing exponentially every days and allows so many, um, talent, people working on that day or night. And algorithms, algorithms, computation powers, you know, support resources pouring into those areas. So I do believe in the future everyone maybe have like 5 or 6, uh, you know, AI assistant AI interns doing the routine works for them. So that's why I is also at the heart of how we, uh, help customers get stuff done in physics sphere. We have this design of Felix, uh, our AI work assistant, to take on the repetitive or complex tasks across your software stacks so you don't have to write. We know that every employee in the company may have access to dozens of applications. Um, so the experiences is intentionally as simple as having a chat with Fedex. There are no clunky, um, menus or Dragon jobs workflow builders. You just describe what you want and flex will talk to you, trying to get your intentions and trying to clarify it and trying to test it and run it. For example, you could literally message a Fedex say hi onboard our new heroine, give her access to email, Salesforce and HR systems Banbridge Workday and schedule her orientations. Fedex understand that requests to all those applications if they are integrated into the Felix sphere in the background and boom, the consecrated permission granted orientation meetings is scheduled, and the meetings scheduled are done through a single conversations. So we essentially built an AI concierge with virtual assistant that can handle requests and, you know, um, across all your applications. And it's available 24 by seven. Wow! So yummy! I love these kind of examples and the show where I can really provide, um, true value. So I mean, why do you think, um, most companies haven't experienced, you know, explorer because you have Microsoft, right? Google selling their, their co-pilots. And obviously that's still not very successful. Meaning as big as Microsoft, they're having a hard time selling their AI. Um, and why do you think I think I've heard a lot of companies also mention they, they are maybe worried that agents will do something wrong and they don't know how to check it. Meaning at least if a human does something wrong, you can kind of check it and then go talk to the human about it. Yeah. What do you think that causes that? That fear? Is it just because the technology is new, or how do we give customer the confidence that I can do the job right, uh, to kind of get that true value? Yeah, that's a very great question. We know that right now. Even foundational models, you you if you use, um, ChatGPT or cloud from anthropic, they have hallucinations. Right. And you keep talking to it and maybe it doesn't respond to you with the right numbers, you know? Right. Um, answers. But as we discussed. Right. So they are progressing every days. And we think that as you know, it will be resolved eventually. And data and the privacy compliance security is a top priority for the businesses. We truly understand this. That's why, you know, like, you know, dealing with privacy data. And we actually have other technology help you to keep your data in your businesses. You know, other AI models or AI companies, they also, you know, we actually have information about their compliance record and their security track record. And we will try to work with you across various sites. Also have a lot of experiences on them as well maybe. So we work together trying to build like a great, you know, uh, secure, secure and reliable, you know, business, AI environment for our businesses. Um, yeah. So I think, you know, we, we, we see the companies who are using our, you know, platforms already see a great, you know, uh, ROI from like, uh, make AI as IT assistant or maybe the AI as, like a knowledge expert to answer people's questions. For example, our clients, one of our clients panel electric, measure a 50% boost in productivity and a 90% faster response to issues after they started using Felix Sphere. You know, 50% productivity. And just thinking about it is like turning a ten person teams into a 15 person teams in terms of output without having anyone. So any direct issue they used to take, say, an hour to resolve now get handled in minutes. Right. And another example similar I, which also one of our clients, they actually replay their JIRA service management with fixed eye concierge because they saved on the licensing cost of that too. And their internal helpdesk tasks because far more efficient. They just talk to the eye and I will, you know, just like, you know, put up the information in a very personalized, tailored message and answer people's questions so they don't have other people to do it. Of course, we see the cases. That is you know, I feel like, okay, this is the questions I don't have knowledge about. I don't have expertise on it. So they will create ticket on behalf of the person who ask questions and find out that the person in the company, in the department, in the team who had the best knowledge to answer it, who may be the application and means, or who has used these applications most often. Because remember, we actually have the company to monitor the usage of each application. So we know the usage pattern of different people, and we in our systems can guess who may be the expert on these applications. And we we have that person who asked questions. Find the right person to ask questions too. So it is, you know, really the last, you know, result, you know, the person will reach out to. So it saves tons of time so they can focus on much more important tasks. I love those examples. Um, you know, that goes into I think that's a great segue into because obviously the our podcast and our entire business is about driving savings for companies and optimization. And so we talk a lot about ROI. You know, like ultimately if they buy Felix Sphere, like I think those examples you gave is great. Can you give me maybe 1 or 2 top use cases or ROI that you've seen you talk about time savings? Uh, you know, for for it, uh, would you say time, you know, are there any other, uh, big kind of ROI use cases that you've seen when people maybe should think about Felix Sphere? That's a great question as well. You know, well, when I when we talk about ROI and in fixed sphere to our potential customers and our within customers, we like to look at two angles. You know, had other savings and productivity gains or maybe the term ROI. You know, we deliver on both. You know, but the quickest big win is usually cost savings. Most companies are shocked when they see how much they have overspend on services. Remember that I mentioned, um, you know, like for enterprise, you know, service, you know, for company, middle sized company, they have maybe more than 400 applications, you know, and there's another number like up to $80 million a year wasted in enterprise software in enterprise companies. That's the proof of saving the target, you know, by using fixed sphere along with various source. You know, we have our customers can identify and use or underutilized licenses and eliminate that waste. You know, so the second and sometimes even more impactful ROI is on the productivity side. The times we save people's time. Time is ROI as well. When employees and aren't bogged down by software issues and not have to learn, relearn and try to find the answers in different applications. They can get a lot more done right? So, um, we have another number. You know, like on average, an employee spent like nine hours trying to figure out, okay. So just searching for information, you know, trying to learn the applications, trying to find the people who can answer the questions about their software's, about how to use it in a narrow way. You can imagine, you know, nearly a full workday lost every week because knowledge is scattered. You know, people, sport is stretched thin is crazy. So all that context fishing and hunting for data is just frustrating. So that's why, you know, we actually also work on, you know, boost people's productivity inside the companies. And like the two examples I elaborated, you know Panda Electric and similar. So those are lies. You know, like they have they have seen and gained in their own business, really changed their like businesses. And that's why they're growing very fast. And and they, they saved on the licensing tools, licensing cost of the tools and also their internal activities like IT, productivity, HR, productivity, knowledge export activities also become. Far more efficient. So in a nutshell, our AI comes from multiple angles. Direct cost costs improve efficiency and benefits like happier employees and faster. You know, people's, you know, pace of work. It's, uh. No. I love what you guys are building. It's it's definitely unique. And I think it's such a great angle and, and different take on SaaS management because I feel like SaaS management is maybe version one and you guys are taking it to like, you know, version two, version three of the promise of what SaaS management was supposed to do, but didn't deliver on that promise or the complete promise. Um, you know, obviously you are you're big on AI. You guys are implementing a lot of AI. Where do you feel like, obviously right now you're focusing on application, you know, management and automation. When you look at the landscape of agents and, you know, there's just so much innovation happening every single day, every single week. Like, I can't even keep up with it. It's it's so crazy. Where do you if you have to, um, give kind of your future thoughts in the next 12 months, 24 months, where do you think this agents or, um, you know, I guess also including Felix Sphere is headed what's going to be possible for companies, you think? Okay, I hope I have a crystal ball. You can tell us, you know. Yeah. Tell me the lottery number at the same time. The next 12 months, it looks like. Okay, I bet you if I had it. Okay. And by the way, I really like you. I really like the idea. Like a dedication. Management is management 2.0 or 3.0. And that, you know, that's great. Uh, you know comment. Yeah. So speaking like I agent or. No, I, uh, research in general that, you know, we actually keep reading. You know, we keep researching on different papers around like a foundation models. You know, like how I can work with other AIS, how I can work with other peoples. And, you know, in those papers, in the in those newsletters, we see real examples from different, you know, AI companies, for example, you know, a company called manage AI, they actually can really make your computer work for yourselves just by talking to them. So just like our, you know, Felix, you talk to Felix, you match the Felix and Felix trying to understand what you are trying to do, and keep asking questions and trying to plan it. They have their plan, agent. You know they have planning the whole plans for you and then the security. And in the execution they figure out which AI agent can really do this work well. And they reach out to that AI agent. And also they have a, you know, like a monitor AI agent trying to monitor. You know, the work has has been done by that AI agent. If it's not doing great, they will try again or maybe find another agent to do the same work. So we see like the people actually starting like a booking, you know, like planning their trips first and then they just start planning their trips, maybe from, you know, USA to Paris. And then they have you have a flight plan agent trying to plan the whole, you know, trip for them and trying to ask a question, do you want me to book ticket or do you want to book the hotels? And they also ask about their preferences and boom, you know, all the plans is. You know, it's finished. And then they have the ticket booked, flight ticket on the hotel ticket and the zoo ticket. And they know they have children, you know, like going to have a trip with them. So they booked the zoo ticket for them. And also they have it's round trip, of course, round trip tickets. So people say, oh wow. So you understand me and you plan it well, just like a real like, you know, travel agent, you know, like a tour tourist agent. And you have me finish all the works, and I don't have to do it. I just just keep telling you. And if something changes in the return, they can still ask, you know, the I and I planning it and finding out the I agent to do the specific works and change the whole plans accordingly. That's a huge right. Think about it. If you have something that can help you to to do the work in your real life, in your business, you know, you know, in some I can probably talk to you and you want to, you know, from simple what you ask, you ask AI to come up with a report of last week works across different, you know, marketing teams. You know, they actually summarize the report and give you suggestions what you can do, what you can do differently. And you know and. Starting from there, you ask? Yeah. Okay. Give me like a just like a Shami. Like a plan for the next character marketing campaigns. And if you plan it according to the, you know, previous data, you know, activities and then they will ask, okay, do you want me to do more social social marketing or maybe, uh, email marketing and different agent comes in and execute works and you have another AI monitor people in AI agent works and trying to fine tune the work that they have done. And you have an army of marketing, right? So they're going to do the works for you for the next quarter. Maybe you want to try them for the next month, but they can start working on that. And you have people along with them. And the people you know can also, you know, like help you to manage the AI agent armies and trying to help you to have a better, you know, like a churn rate or maybe not. Not generally, I would say maybe like a better, you know, conversion rate of the of the customers, you know, from the untouched, you know, see. Right. So I would say like, say, um, you know, add technology advanced every day. And as the real examples, real feedback from customers in the market. And we see that as, you know, like we just need terms and opportunity for the business to start trying, you know, the technologies. And when they start adopting more technologies and then they start in like keep giving the feedback to the companies who are working on those technologies, those applications, everything will iterate very fast. And the inventory which businesses adopt, I, you know, in early stage they maybe can gain much more advantages over others. Now they actually they know what the AI can do and can do more for them, and then they know which area they can put in more put more AI resources or, you know, work on with AI so they can get much more productivity at early stage. I mean, I know you and I can always talk for hours about this topic. Um, yeah. I mean, you know, you have companies that are AI companies now with like ten employees and they're making like $100 million. Uh, part of that, obviously, is because the they're providing AI, they're providing, like you say, this automation, uh, to some degree that automate a lot of where you have to hire a lot of people for before. And it's, uh, and also things that you're talking about or you've been talking about the last few minutes. We thought it would happen in five years. Ten years. And yet, like, it's happening like next week and the week after. And it's like the pace of innovation is just so exciting. Um, so yeah, I mean, we're super excited to partner with you guys. You guys have an amazing solution. Um, we always have this final question. Okay, uh, that we ask our, uh, guests. You you've been you've worked at large companies. You build your own startup. You've seen a lot. Um, if you have to give people maybe one personal or business advice that you're passionate about. Um, do you think that I'd be. Okay, that. Yeah. This question is hardest question in this podcast session. I would say, um, um, yeah. So, um, take them take me as an example. Right. So I work on different companies, on different projects. I work with a lot of talent, people in the industries. And, um, one license I learned from this journey so far is I always look ahead about what the future looks like and what the future really look like and, and need to do the research by my own to, um, to find out. Okay. People talking about the future. Maybe there are, you know, different aspects of a future, the same future. Or maybe they are totally different future. So I will do the research by my own, and then I will try to talk to different stakeholders who are maybe they are experts in particular areas. And I will synthesize all the information and do the, you know, you know, and trying to figure out, okay, what the futures look like. From my perspectives, you know, and then if the future is clear, even though there are so many challenges, you know, uh, um, you know, you can see a lot like challenges, blockers, overhead. But if you believe it, just do it. So, um, I think it's a great opportunity to, um, to, you know, to look, look for the futures and figure out, you know, what do you need, what you can do and, okay, what the challenges are and trying to figure out the solutions, you know, trying to trying hard maybe try your best to, you know, to conquer the challenges and eventually you will gain a lot. Maybe it's not something that you imagine that you have can, but you are If you look back, you are taking a lot. You have learned a lot. You have achieved a lot. I think that is a great journey and you will not. You will never be regretted about the journey, the actions, the challenges and the people and the and the achievement you have. You have been achieved and you have done. And that's great. I love it. Spoken like a true entrepreneur and, uh, yeah, no. Super appreciative of you joining the conversation. And we're excited to partner with you guys. Same here, Victor, and thanks for having me. And I'm looking forward to working with you guys with the resource. And also I'm looking for like to bring more technologies and activities. You know, first I want to have more conversation with you guys in the products in the future. Thank you very much. That was an amazing episode of the Spend Advantage podcast, where we show you how we can help you, techniques, your bottom line savings, and top line growth for your business. Hope you enjoy the conversation and if you want to get the best deals from the guest today, make sure to send us a message at sales@varisource.com