How Benepass cut software spend by 30% without a procurement team

TL;DR

Benepass cut software spend by up to 30% using SpendHound’s free benchmark data and negotiation support. Without a procurement team, they were relying on spreadsheets and guesswork. Now they save time, money, and mental energy with SpendHound’s benchmarks and expert procurement support.

‍Meet Benepass: Fast-growing and lean FinTech‍

Benepass is a New York-based benefits and rewards platform serving high-growth tech companies like OpenAI, Monday.com, Workday, and Notion. The 70-person FinTech helps benefits managers consolidate employee spending through a flexible ledger system that handles everything from HSA and FSA accounts to customized perks.

Zach Sexton, Benepass’s Full Stack GTM System Administrator, owns the go-to-market tech stack—Salesforce, Outreach, Sales Navigator, and everything sales and marketing teams use to do their jobs. While he’s responsible for software procurement decisions across these tools, negotiating with vendors was never his favorite part of the job.

The problem: DIY procurement—no data, no leverage

Before SpendHound, Zach tracked software renewals in a Notion document linked to a spreadsheet. The system worked fine for knowing when renewals were coming. But when it was time to negotiate, Zach was missing leverage.

He’d spend hours researching pricing data, posting in RevOps Slack groups asking if anyone knew what other companies paid, or accepting whatever discount a vendor offered because he had no leverage. “I’d post to my network asking, ‘Hey, D&B just quoted me $20K for 50,000 credits. Is that good or bad?’” Zach explained. “Whatever I could find within an hour, I’d go with.”

Without benchmark data, Zach never knew if he was getting a good deal. “Before, it was like, 'This seems expensive, but I don’t know what else to do,’” he said. “I don’t have to play the game if I have the data.”

Zach had used a similar tool at a previous company and saw the value. But that platform cost $30K-$50K annually, and getting budget approval at a fast-growing startup meant competing with dozens of other priorities. Without a dedicated procurement team, Benepass operated in what Zach called the “Wild West” of software purchasing.

The solution: SpendHound made negotiations easy (and free)

Zach found SpendHound through LinkedIn. The pitch was simple: free spend management software powered by benchmark data from hundreds of companies, plus access to procurement experts who’d help negotiate better deals. Zach understood the give-to-get model—Benepass would share its anonymized spending data in exchange for visibility into what everyone else was paying.

“When SpendHound came along, I didn’t know something like this was available,” Zach said. “They said, ‘We’ll organize your software and help you with negotiation by giving you benchmark data.’ It wasn’t a hard sell because we don’t have to set up a procurement process. I don't have to get dollars for it because it’s free. It’s all upside.”

Now when Zach needs to negotiate a software purchase, he turns to SpendHound. Within a day, the team delivers a benchmark report showing what other companies pay, pricing ranges across customer segments, and specific negotiation recommendations.

“They’ll give us a report showing five customers. One is paying $24K, another is paying $50K. Here’s the price range, and here’s the recommendation,” Zach explained. SpendHound’s procurement experts share which vendors offer discounts, when to hold firm, and what leverage points to use. And they’ll even draft the negotiation email.

The results: Lower costs, faster deals, less stress

• 10% average savings on software purchases through better negotiation leverage
• 2 hours saved per negotiation on vendor research
• $7K saved on a single upgrade through pricing insights
• Zero budget required (free platform eliminated investment hurdle)
• Faster deal cycles (reports delivered in a day, accelerating decisions)

On a single upgrade, Benepass saved $7K through smarter negotiation. The vendor initially wanted to charge more for adding to their existing package, but SpendHound's benchmark data gave Zach the leverage to push back.

Across all purchases, Zach estimated SpendHound saves Benepass at least 10% on software spend—a conservative figure, he noted, since some negotiations yield 20-30% discounts when the timing is right. “Every time we've brought a purchase to SpendHound, we've gotten a better discount than we could have negotiated on our own,” he said.

The time Benepass saved matters just as much. What used to take two hours of research and back-and-forth now takes minutes. Zach reviews the benchmark report, sends an email, and moves on. “Negotiation went from a frustrating to positive experience,” Zach said. “It’s saved a lot of time and mental bandwidth, not needing to do the research myself.”

SpendHound’s benchmark data proved more trustworthy than crowdsourcing or Google. The reports show real pricing from real companies, anonymized but verified. “It’s more trustworthy than going to Google or a Slack group and saying, ‘Hey, what’s everyone else paying?’” Zach noted. As Benepass heads into major renewals for Salesforce, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Outreach, Zach plans to leverage SpendHound for those high-value negotiations.

Zach also noted SpendHound’s responsiveness. Questions in Slack get answered within hours, benchmark reports arrive in a day, and the team is easy to work with. “Everyone is very responsive. I don’t think it ever goes over a day without a response,” Zach recalled.

You’re probably overpaying—see how much, for free

Stop guessing what you should pay for software. SpendHound gives you the benchmark data and expert support you need to negotiate better deals—for free. 

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