For three to four years, Didomi has relied on Najar to manage part of its software purchasing. Raphaël Boukris, the company's co-founder, explains how this support helps him negotiate with vendors such as Salesforce, anticipate renewals and challenge some long-standing choices.
At Didomi, not all purchases go through the same person. Raphaël negotiates some major contracts, but RevOps, working closely with the marketing, sales or Customer Success leads, also choose their teams' tools. Yet knowing your needs does not necessarily mean knowing how to negotiate with a SaaS vendor. Some leads lack benchmarks, others consider their software too indispensable to question the terms offered. Not to mention automatic renewals, sometimes discovered too late.
With about 200 employees and a stack built over almost ten years, Didomi chose to call on specialized buyers rather than build an in-house purchasing team.
Why does Didomi outsource part of its SaaS purchasing?
Didomi's stack has developed as the company has grown. 
Salesforce has been used for almost nine years. 
HubSpot, 
Planhat and 
Qobra have also been in place for several years. Other solutions have been added according to the departments' needs.
Purchasing has thus become decentralized. Raphaël still handles the strategic contracts, but he cannot take part in every discussion. And department heads, even when they know exactly which features they are looking for, do not always know what discounts vendors are willing to grant.
“Some don't know how or don't want to negotiate, others don't know the benchmarks.”
A marketing lead may know exactly which tool will let them launch their campaigns without knowing their supplier's pricing practices. A Customer Success lead may be convinced that a solution is indispensable without having studied the alternatives. Once a contract's cancellation deadline has passed, the room for negotiation shrinks even further.
For Raphaël, these situations justify purchasing expertise, but not necessarily hiring an entire department. At Didomi's current size, he prefers to use a specialized provider.
How does Najar support Didomi's software purchasing?
Najar combines a software purchasing management platform with human support. It makes it possible to track contracts and deadlines, anticipate renewals and prepare negotiations. Its teams can also help write a requirements document, organize a request for proposals or identify lesser-known suppliers.
What Raphaël appreciates most is the experience of buyers who regularly negotiate with SaaS vendors. Centralizing spending is useful, but it does not replace someone who knows the market's sales practices.
Didomi mainly brings in Najar for major purchases and renewals. For a relatively limited contractual increase, on the order of 5%, Raphaël believes his teams can generally talk directly with the supplier. On the other hand, when it comes to challenging a long-standing vendor, launching a request for proposals or negotiating a major contract, the support becomes more valuable.
It can also lead to discovering software that Didomi would not have considered on its own. The benchmark is therefore not only about getting a better price: it also makes it possible to check that the company is still using the right tool.
Tools in this section
How does Najar's guaranteed savings model work?
According to Raphaël, Didomi pays Najar a flat fee whose amount depends in particular on its annual software spending. Najar also commits to a level of savings: if the expected results are not achieved, the fee can be reduced.
“Why do I like Najar? Because they're people who put themselves on the line”
It is this commitment that he likes. The provider does not just sell access to a platform or days of consulting: its compensation is, according to the terms described by Raphaël, partly tied to the results achieved.
Salesforce: what a specialized buyer changes in the negotiation
Raphaël gives the example of a major renewal with 
Salesforce. He was handling the discussion himself and initially thought he could manage it without outside support. Najar's involvement made him realize there was an imbalance: the vendor knows market prices much better than most of its customers.
Salesforce has visibility into the commercial terms granted depending on the company, the volumes and the negotiation context. On the other side, an isolated customer mostly knows its own contract and a few points of comparison.
Najar's buyers regularly take part in SaaS negotiations. They therefore have broader experience, without disclosing the confidential contracts of their other clients. Didomi does not know the exact terms granted to each company, but Salesforce knows that the person it is dealing with has market references.
“With Najar, you know that the person supporting you has roughly the same level of information as the supplier across the table from you.”
For Raphaël, this rebalances the discussion, especially with some American vendors. He observes that the terms offered can vary depending on how the supplier perceives its customer's ability to pay. A company that has just raised funds may thus, in his view, be approached differently from a company known for keeping an eye on its spending.
Najar helps Didomi reduce this information asymmetry.
Challenging long-standing software without underestimating the cost of a migration
Najar also helps Didomi ask whether some software is still worth keeping. Raphaël acknowledges that the company is sometimes very loyal to its tools: Salesforce, Planhat, HubSpot and Qobra have been in place for several years.
This stability has advantages. The teams know the products, the integrations work and the contracts have often been renegotiated. But the market evolves. Raphaël notes in particular that HubSpot has improved considerably since Didomi's first CRM choices. If the company had to make some of those trade-offs again today, it might look at the solutions differently.
“The reality is that today, Salesforce remains a very sticky tool. So it's a real question in terms of migration.”
Because cheaper software is not necessarily more cost-effective once migration costs are taken into account. The data has to be moved over, integrations rebuilt, processes adapted and users supported.
Najar brings an outside perspective and benchmarks to challenge these habits. Sometimes, the comparison confirms that it is better to keep the existing tool and renegotiate its contract. In other cases, it can justify a request for proposals. The goal is not to change for the sake of changing, but to avoid renewing software simply because it is already in place.
At what size should SaaS purchasing be brought in-house?
With about 200 employees, Raphaël does not consider it necessary to build a dedicated purchasing team at Didomi. Software spending justifies structured tracking, but not necessarily several full-time buyers.
He mentions 500 to 600 employees, or even 800 to 1,000, as orders of magnitude at which a more complete purchasing function could become relevant. These are not universal thresholds: it all depends on the number of suppliers, the spending and the complexity of the organization.
Today, Didomi's departments express their needs, the CFO retains financial and contractual responsibility, and Najar brings its expertise to the decisions that warrant it. For Raphaël, this setup makes it possible to professionalize purchasing without immediately hiring a procurement team. He does not claim, however, that outsourcing is always preferable to doing it in-house.
Summary of the software this article mentions in Didomi's stack
| Status | Workflow | Tool | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| In use | SaaS purchasing / Procurement | Najar | Contract tracking, benchmarks, renewals and negotiations |
| In use | CRM |  Salesforce | Legacy CRM, strategic negotiation supported by Najar |
| In use | CRM / Marketing / Ticketing | HubSpot | Some modules used; former CRM, an alternative that has evolved |
| In use | Customer Success | Planhat | Legacy software whose relevance may be reassessed |
| In use | Sales commissions | Qobra | Software in place for several years |
