Bennie Relies on Tropic Contract Management and Negotiation Services to Drive 2.77x ROI

About Bennie

Bennie is committed to helping companies create a healthier workplace. Bennie’s global benefits platform helps employers, employees, and their dependents thrive through modern solutions, including consulting, insurance, coaching, and training. The NYC-based company has helped companies such as Airbnb, Formstack, and Warby Parker build well-rounded benefits. Bennie is your one-stop solution that goes beyond traditional benefits and includes employee coaching, training, P&C insurance for your business, and more.

Daniel Brundige, Vice President of IT at Bennie, oversees the strategic integration of technology to align with enterprise goals. Brundige’s understanding of building successful organizational systems comes from decades of experience at companies of all sizes.

The Challenge

Efficiently manage the software purchasing process to ensure the best value

Bennie is led by a team of experienced startup professionals who already understand the need to keep their business lean—including the tools they use and purchase. 

"I quickly realized that we needed something to help centralize and manage software purchasing,” Brundige said. “From the perspective of IT and security, we needed something that could help keep software purchasing under control … something that could help with contracts, contract isolation, management, lifecycle, renewals, and visibility."

The Solution

Gather necessary compliance information early in the evaluation process

Bennie’s finance team oversees the overall cost of a software purchase but Brundige noted that it’s imperative to get IT involved early because they review purchases through a security and cost lens.

Brundige’s team evaluates compliance criteria such as whether the software meets minimum security requirements, transmits sensitive data, and whether the supplier has completed a SOC2 audit. When these requirements are surfaced late in the purchase, it slows the process significantly. 

Tropic’s dynamic intake forms capture the necessary information and workflows automatically create tasks for IT based on intake answers, ensuring that critical compliance needs such as single sign-on are addressed early on.

“Having those boxes checked allowed us to feel better about the process and understand what's going on,” added Brundige. “The last thing we want to do is get a solution that has already been signed and have to see if we can get them to back out of it if we feel that strongly about it.”

Use one platform to store contracts and manage renewals

It was important to Brundige to find a platform that could easily store the team’s software contracts and receive renewal reminders, as he knew it would save the team a significant amount of time.

“Who in their right mind thinks it's a good idea to hunt for contracts, for renewal conversation notes?” Brundige reiterated. “And why would you want to put yourself through a situation where you have to do that?” 

The Bennie team now stores over 100 software contracts in Tropic so that all information can be searched and referenced in one place. Tropic sends renewal reminders early so the team can reassess their needs before renewal. As a result, Bennie hasn’t missed an auto-renewal deadline in more than two years.

“We need centralized management. We need to be organized… You don't become successful in a startup world by being inefficient,” Brundige added.

Trust specialized procurement experts to handle negotiations

Brundige quickly realized that most of his department leaders didn’t have the bandwidth or desire to manage software negotiations. Bennie has trusted Tropic to handle more than 50 negotiations, driving more than $240,000 in savings. 

Although he evaluated other providers with negotiation services, Tropic was the only provider that advised beyond simple cost-saving techniques. 

Tropic’s negotiation experts are specialized in designated software categories. When reviewing an actual upcoming software negotiation for Bennie, Tropic recommended additional purchasing strategies that ultimately gave the software more value to Bennie than just a lower cost of ownership.

“That approach felt, to me, like Tropic knew the solution. They didn't just care about the bottom line,” Brundige added. “I like being educated on the whole story, and it felt like Tropic really had a good handle on the market, the spend, and the value — and what else we can do to make things better.”