Episode 11

full
Published on:

5th Oct 2023

11. Why licensing 170 SaaS tools is a great idea!

In this episode we discuss the topic of: Why licensing 170 SaaS tools is a great idea! Our special guest is Joe Aurilia, Jr., Senior VP Operations at Cyware. As a former CIO, Joe comes at the COO role from a really interesting angle. We discuss the following:

  • Why 170 SaaS applications in an organisation with 270 employees?
  • What does best practice look like in the procurement process? What should it look like in a smaller organisation?
  • How do you ensure ownership ensuring the organisation is receiving the expected value from a given tool?
  • How do you ensure you don't miss a critical feature or integration requirement?
  • What are your pet peeves when it comes to vendor support?
  • How has your previous role as CIO informed your thinking as COO?
  • How do you not slow down by putting so much process in place?
  • Do suppliers need to have both SOC 2 and ISO certification?
  • What tools do you like in the cross-functional space?
  • When would you recommend getting an organisation wide orchestration tool?
  • How are you handling renewals and the increase in costs? 
  • If you had to cut your SaaS spending by 20% tomorrow, what would you do? 
  • What do you think about sales tools where there is often a lot of overlap in functionality but they also tend to do one thing quite well? 
  • How do you ensure data integrity from a COO lens, if you don’t have direct ownership of the rev ops data stack? 
  • What are your favorite SaaS apps that you can’t live without? 

References: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephauriliajr/


Biography: Joe is a seasoned operations executive with over 20 years dedicated to technical and operational leadership.  He has served in a wide variety of roles in both corporate and startups all focusing on core technology and operational excellence.  Throughout his career Joe has executed operational and technical strategies key to business expansion, successful funding rounds, and extensive company growth.


While a technologist at heart, Joe’s most recent ventures have placed him in core roles responsible for enabling operational scalability.  A focus on successful team alignment has resulted in explosive people growth and international expansion.


Joe has led a variety of Operations teams including Technology Operations, Contract Operations, Revenue Operations, People Operations, Security Operations, PMO, and Talent Acquisition. Key to success of each has been the empowering of teams to reach beyond expected boundaries and achieve higher limits.


When not working you will find Joe enjoying the exploration of new places, hiking local trails, and chasing his little one around. He is also a firm believer there is no such thing as rewatching Marvel movies too many times.



This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
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About the Podcast

The Operations Room: A Podcast for COO’s
We are the COO coaches to help you successfully scale in this new world where efficiency is as important as growth. Remember when valuations were 3-10x ARR and money wasn’t free? We do. Each week we share our experiences and bring in scale up experts and operational leaders to help you navigate both the burning operational issues and the larger existential challenges. Beth Ayers is the former COO of Peak AI, NewVoiceMedia and Codilty and has helped raise over $200m from top funds - Softbank, Bessemer, TCV, MCC, Notion and Oxx. Brandon Mensinga is the former COO of Signal AI and Trint.

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