How On streamlined software renewals and negotiations with Deel

When Edouard Pannel joined On about three and a half years ago, the company’s procurement team was three people managing everything. Sastrify was already in place, brought in to help with software spend and procurement challenges.

But that platform arrived at a turning point. On was in the middle of significant growth. Over the next three years, the software budget expanded 4x in three years. The tool count exploded from about 350 applications to 500. That growth created a new problem: every new tool meant a new contract to manage, every contract meant a renewal deadline, and every renewal meant scrambling to prepare. Without contracts properly documented and without visibility into what was coming, renewals often became urgent fire drills rather than strategic opportunities to negotiate better terms.

The manual process consumed everything. For the first year, the software management platform sat mostly unused because the team was drowning in reactive work. Contracts were scattered across multiple repositories. Renewal deadlines appeared without warning. The procurement team had no way to look ahead and plan proactively.

“If we had a renewal we needed to take care of in two weeks and didn’t have time to prepare or negotiate, that kept me up at night,” Pannel explains. “We had a lot of software for which we didn’t have a contract and didn’t have the end date. We were always being reactive instead of proactive.”

The turning point came about a year into Pannel’s tenure. He made a deliberate decision: spend time getting the house in order. The team gathered every software contract they could find, updated the ones that were out of date, and uploaded them into the Software Management platform alongside their own internal repository. That foundational work took effort, but it unlocked everything that came next.

With contracts documented, the Software Management platform became what it was always meant to be: a sourcing planner. Now, when Pannel and his team look at the platform’s calendar, they can see exactly what needs to be renewed in the next six to nine months. They look ahead, they identify stakeholders, and they start working on negotiations early. Renewals shifted from urgent surprises to planned projects.

The impact was immediate. The team now manages more than 10 renewals a month—and they’re no longer scrambling. They have the data, they have the timeline, and they have room to negotiate. For bigger deals, like multi-million-dollar RFPs, they have the breathing room to do the work properly. The Software Management platform also provides visibility into what’s being worked on. Every time the team creates a procurement request, Pannel can see exactly what’s happening and follow the progress.

“The main thing that changed is the sourcing planner,” Pannel says. “I have a clear view of what’s coming. I can organize my team’s work around upcoming renewals. We went from being reactive to being proactive, working on renewals six to nine months before they’re due.”

The shift from reactive to proactive translated into hard numbers. Software Management generates quantifiable value in two ways. First, the team delivers measurable financial savings. Second, it frees up time. With better planning and visibility, every renewal negotiation is better prepared, every deal is smarter, and every contract renewal delivers better terms than reactive scrambling would allow.

Pannel justifies the platform’s investment to his leadership team on three pillars: the financial savings it enables (which reach into the millions), the hours it frees up (tracked monthly), and the burnout prevention it provides. He doesn’t have to choose between hiring someone to coordinate renewals or burning out his current team. Software Management handles the coordination.

More strategically, the platform shifted what his team spends time on. Instead of reacting to surprise renewals and hunting for missing contracts, the team now focuses on negotiation strategy, cost optimization, and tool consolidation planning. In fact, they’re currently working on a consolidation proposal designed to identify opportunities across the 500-tool portfolio. That kind of strategic work is only possible when the operational chaos is under control.

“The tool itself isn’t the real value,” Pannel reflects. “What matters is the support, the partnership, and having people who understand our business helping us think through software spend. The platform gives me visibility and organization, but the real ROI comes from having a team focused on strategy rather than putting out fires every day.”