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Now that subscription-first models are standard, companies are using unique ways to assess ROI from SaaS solutions. In boardrooms, Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), churn rate and customer acquisition cost (CAC) have been the most watched indicators for years. These data points are important for SaaS firms, but they do not show the main benefit to enterprise buyers: what they get from the SaaS product.
Since SaaS tools are now integral to main business tasks, CIOs, CFOs, and IT managers focus more on results rather than the number of licenses sold. In 2025, accounting for what you pay per user is no longer enough. It’s all about linking your software investments to what matters strategically for your business.
Subscription Metrics Alone Don’t Tell the Whole Story
The subscription model has made it possible for the software industry to forecast its future and adjust to growth. But it has also created a new problem for buyers: SaaS costs are climbing fast, and it’s often unclear how much value is being gained. Zylo’s data shows that companies are currently spending $4,830 per employee on SaaS applications. According to Productiv’s 2023 State of SaaS report, organizations use only 47% of their SaaS licenses over 90 days, indicating that more than half of provisioned licenses go unused.
Most of this problem is caused by the fact that many organizations rely too much on subscriptions as their main success indicator. Having 10,000 licenses is great news for a company, but how many of those users are using the software? Above all, which technological changes actually show results by helping workers accomplish more, speed up their work, and generating new revenue streams?
Driving Value Through Adoption and Engagement
It’s becoming obvious that having subscriptions is not the only path to success. Unfortunately, these numbers can be of little use if they do not translate into real usage. It is now important for organizations to look at the question from another perspective. Instead of just considering the price, companies should judge a SaaS solution by what it achieves for the business, how it boosts main strategies, and how soon its useful effects are noticed. From this new viewpoint, SaaS platforms become things to use well, rather than try to spend as little on as possible.
A good example is when a company adopts a new CRM platform. Usually, traditional evaluation looks at how many people are active, the number of records in the system and which tier of the service each user has. Still, a better way to make an evaluation is to check if the new CRM reduces response time for leads, increases the number of legitimate leads, and improves customer retention, while selling customers more products. This gives us a much better insight into how our money is performing than just looking at how the app is being used.
Many people fail to see just how crucial adoption is for the success of an investment. The benefits you get from a tool depend on whether you use it, not to mention how well you do it. It is at this point that indicators such as feature adoption rate, how soon users take their first action and daily active users play a key role. A growing number of companies are using Gainsight, Pendo, and Mixpanel, as well as similar platforms, to monitor how customers behave and understand the customer behavior’s impact on business goals.
It is important for buyers to be more careful, too. Simply providing tools and crossing your fingers doesn’t work anymore. Companies must determine how many users they want to adopt the new tools, provide instructions and guidelines, and track those who haven’t used the app for a while to try to draw them back in. When you analyze the data from employee engagement together with the company’s financial results, the real reasons why engagement matters are easier to demonstrate for managers.
The New SaaS Mindset: Vendors as Strategic Partners, Not Just Providers
This mindset shift is driving the development of Value Management Offices (VMOs)—cross-functional groups with the responsibility to evaluate technology not just on cost, but also on how much business value they generate. There is an increased awareness that value generation is no longer an IT issue; it’s a business requirement.
Vendors must also adapt. The customer relationship cannot be dropped at deployment any longer. Their SaaS vendors should be strategic partners, not just utility providers. That means collaborating with customers to define KPIs, designing onboarding practices that deliver time-to-value, and conducting regular business reviews by outcome, not product adoption. Industry leaders like Salesforce and ServiceNow have been following this model for several years by integrating Customer Success organizations into the business, which help customers measure progress towards goals and align software use accordingly. Their customers are already doing this; the challenge is to automate it at scale. These activities don’t just drive client success—these establish vendor-client relationships and reduce churn.
Buyers should be expecting and demanding this level of engagement from their vendors. They need to ask how success will be gauged, what value milestones to expect in the first few months, and how vendors will facilitate their growth in the long term. A software provider that cannot help answer these questions is probably not ready to deliver long-term value.
The Rise of SaaS Management Platforms
Since SaaS businesses grow more complex day by day, companies are choosing SaaS Management Platforms, such as BetterCloud, Torii, and Zylo. All of this information is available in a central place for easy tracking, license management, forecasting budget needs, and renewing licenses. Additionally, they show companies which technologies add true value and which do not. For instance, an SMP could discover that two software solutions doing the same tasks have vastly different levels of user activity and ease of integration with existing processes. Because of this, IT and procurement teams are better able to choose the best renewal option, not the usual one.
AI-native platforms are accelerating the progress of how SaaS ROI is measured. Rather than only improving how much can be done, these tools are now automating decisions, customizing the customers’ experiences, and helping reduce manual work. This leads to a rethinking of how to estimate the value of trade. The key is no longer how much time a platform can save, but if it helps groups handle risks efficiently, spot risks quickly, or interact personally with many customers.
To fit this requirement, organizations should now choose software for its ability to automate tasks and provide smart solutions to help them become more competitive. Conversations about ROI need to consider better forecasting, faster decision-making, and shorter time to market, which are more important strategic benefits than operation-based ones.
In Conclusion
With the SaaS landscape evolving, it’s time to also evolve the methods used to measure results. Traditional ways of measuring subscriptions work well, but they no longer cut it by themselves. These days, real ROI is measured through strong engagement, adoption, successful results for the business, and the degree to which various efforts contribute to the company’s overall goals. While it’s interesting to see how many licenses are used, what the software actually makes possible—growth and progress in tough times—is the key point.
Today’s approach to software investment shows that innovative organizations are moving from thinking only about buying to considering how development efforts might be supported instead. We’re not seeing as many questions about prices anymore. Even so, our question should be: “What benefits do we gain?”
