The Ultimate Coda Handbook for IT Teams

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The Ultimate Coda Handbook for IT Teams

Save money by replacing tools

3 ways Coda can support your tool consolidating efforts.

Whenever I talk to friends in IT or colleagues at one of our customer accounts, the same thing is on everyone’s mind: tool consolidation. During the pandemic, there was this trend of “purchase whatever you need to get the job done,” and at the time, that was probably the right move. But now, belts are tightening. IT teams are forced to make difficult decisions on what tools they keep and what tools they cut.

While we’ve taken a look at specific tools we aren’t getting value from, I’m fortunate enough to not “be the bad guy” and cut out tools people are using. That’s primarily because on Coda, we run on Coda.

Let me explain. Coda can help you save money in a few different ways.

1. Less tools equals more money saved.

What differentiates Coda from other productivity or project management tools is that you can make anything with it. And not just you, a technically-inclined IT manager, literally anyone in your organization. As you’ve probably seen in this writeup, you can put unstructured text, next to structured tables, next to data from other tools, add automations, and place an app-like user interface on top. This lets you replace hundreds of different apps with one, Coda.

Because Coda is so customizable, it can serve as your project tracker, wiki, knowledge management hub, OKR app, note-taking surface, and thousands of other uses cases. So instead of addressing each use case with a separate tool—e.g. your Asana, Airtable, Notion, Confluence, Wrike, Basecamp, and more of the world—you can consolidate them into one doc that can do it all.

Coda empowers our team to create the tools we need to do just about anything.

It's the flexibility of the surface that we love. Blending databases, wiki, visualizations, text editing, UX/UI, automations, and formulas all in one place.

— Matt Johnston, Head of Product Design and Research at Zoom

Candidly, I think we’ve all been a bit scarred by the 3-in-1 body wash-shampoo-conditioner combos we see at the grocery store. Because when I tell IT teams Coda tackles all of these scenarios in one doc they usually assume: “Well, if Coda can do all these things, it must not do them all well. I’m going to be sacrificing functionality, and our teams won’t perform as well.”

But it typically ends up being the opposite. The tools I listed above and so many more sell you one solution to fit all of your needs, so teams end up fitting their scenario into that tool’s “solution.” Like I mentioned before though, Coda’s building blocks let you customize the solution to your job, so you always have the right tools at your finger tips.

For the tool stack of IT teams.

As a personal aside, what I mentioned above mostly dealt with making decisions that impact other teams. But this applies to our function too. Instead of paying for specific IT apps that help us manage company hardware/software, vendor renewals, support tickets, etc, I created and manage these systems in a Coda doc. If you’re interested in learning more about how I did this, I’d be happy to chat live!

In fact, knowing that a lot of teams are evaluating their spend right now, I created this

SaaS Spend Reduction Tool⁠

that can help you run a tool consolidation process for your own team.

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SaaS Spend Reduction Tool⁠

2. You don’t pay for every user.

I’ll start with a stat: Coda’s Maker Billing model typically saves our customers ~80% compared competitors. Really. (Candidly, I knew we saved teams money, but honestly didn’t know it was this much until I ran the numbers for this writeup.)

If you’re team is paying for Coda today, you probably know that Coda bills differently than your typical SaaS vendor. When I introduce Coda to friends, they almost always ask “why are you guys so expensive!?” But as you can see, that’s not really the case.

Coda’s billing model isn’t one-to-one with others. We only charge for Doc Makers, so everyone else in your organization can view, comment, edit, and collaborate for free. We almost always end up costing less than other project management tools.

A general rule of thumb that I advise prospective IT and procurement teams is when you’re first adopting Coda, make ~15-30% of your total team/organization Doc Makers. We’ve found that this strikes the ideal cost-to-value balance. But of course, I’m not the expert on your team. One of the members of our sales team can consult to give you the best estimate. You can reach out to them

here⁠

if you’d like.

3. Coda can replace your under-utilized, expensive seat licenses.

And finally, the third way Coda can save your organization money and make you look like a hero is by reducing the number of seats you pay for in other applications. Let me give an example.

Recently I was working with one of our Enterprise customers in the tech space who didn’t fully understand this capability but were looking to cut their software spend. I started with two questions:

What are the most expensive tools in your tech stack?

How many of those seats go under-utilized? Are you granting full seats to employees who only read-only permissions, for example?

The answer to question one was the usual suspects: Salesforce, Jira, Asana, Airtable, etc.

And paraphrasing the response to question two, “Yeah, but as soon as I revoke permissions, it seems like I have to re-grant access. Relying on others to share SFDC reports or Jira updates creates bottlenecks.”

This is where Coda can help. Taking advantage of Coda’s Packs + Maker Billing, you can get rid of under-utilized software seats by pulling data from these expensive apps into a Coda doc and sharing with your team. So, you can pull in Salesforce reports, Jira issues, Asana, and Airtable task tables into a shared doc, so that these team members can get the info they need without having to directly access the app.

Most of our Packs have two-way capabilities too, so those users can send updates back to the service through a shared account too.

In my opinion, this is Coda’s best kept secret for IT teams. Nothing’s more satisfying than finally getting rid of those hanging seats.

Customer examples

If you’re interested in learning more about how Coda has helped other customers consolidate their tools, I’d recommend these case studies.

Meesho saved $165k switching from Asana.

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Learn more

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Plato saved $200k by consolidating 5+ apps.

⁠

Learn more

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Need some inspiration?

I’d recommend trying my SaaS Spend Reduction Tool to help you evaluate your tool stack. If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear it!

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SaaS Spend Reduction Tool⁠

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If you want to learn more about how Coda can save you money through tool consolidation, check out our Ultimate Guide to Tool Consolidation.

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