As SaaS apps like Zoom and Slack have made it easier for companies to collaborate and communicate online, SaaS sprawl has become a huge headache for IT executives. But companies can get their SaaS tools under control if they follow these four practical tips, shares Jody Shapiro, CEO and co-founder, Productiv.
How many SaaS applications do you use in a typical workday? Off the top of my head, I can count two dozen SaaS tools that I use daily for work. They’re so embedded that I can no longer imagine what my day-to-day life would look like without them, and I know I’m not the only one.
SaaS apps have become essential to our work life, despite the fact that the first public cloud was launched only 15 years ago by Amazon. Since then, we’ve witnessed an incredible boom in SaaS apps used for work. And with the pandemic-spurred work shifts of the past year and a half, the B2B SaaS industry has soared to new heights. Gartner projects the SaaS market will reach $123B this yearOpens a new window and $145B next year.
Today, SaaS tools are mission-critical for all enterprises — key to ensuring their distributed workforce can remain productive while working in different locations. Now that more businesses are adopting a hybrid or flexible work option for employees, SaaS apps will only continue to proliferate and implant themselves in enterprise operations.
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The Challenges of a SaaS-Heavy Workplace
More than 60% of companies now use at least 100 SaaS applicationsOpens a new window . While SaaS apps like Slack, Zoom, and Box allow teams to collaborate in real-time and improve productivity, they are inevitably creating more work for IT teams. With hundreds of SaaS apps used by thousands of employees, IT must manage millions of licenses in real-time to keep pace with the needs of the business.
The resulting SaaS sprawl is not inherently bad, although it can increase the challenges of keeping up with all of those SaaS apps. Having such a large SaaS portfolio means IT must oversee a more complex tech stack, including:
- Managing and budgeting SaaS spend
- Provisioning and deprovisioning licenses and license types
- Tracking contract renewals
- Understanding employee usage
- Ensuring app security and compliance
There’s also the consideration that many departments are now making SaaS purchases outside of IT. Business units are buying tools based on team needs, employees are expensing app purchases, and individuals are signing up for free products or trials. In those situations, IT should take on a proactive partnership approach to continuing to ensure fiscal prudence, security, and compliance.
SaaS sprawl also makes it challenging for companies to answer important questions about the apps they’re paying for: How are employees using provisioned SaaS tools? Do employees even have access to the right tools? In fact, many organizations currently tackle these questions sporadically and manually, which leads to wasted time trying to collect this data and error-prone results.
4 Ways to Tackle SaaS Sprawl
Here are four practical tips that can help companies improve visibility into their SaaS portfolio today and prepare for a SaaS-filled future:
1. Take inventory of all SaaS apps currently in use
Take the time to regularly audit all SaaS apps being used across the business, IT-approved or not. Upon completion, you’ll have a much better idea of what your SaaS portfolio looks like and any apps within your organization that aren’t managed by IT.
One option is to manually audit your apps, which will be a time-consuming process. You can also leverage software with IT workflow automation capabilities, which can pull in data from HR and financial systems as well as connect directly to your SaaS apps.
To ensure you don’t miss apps not managed by IT, I recommend using a variety of methods to conduct a comprehensive audit, including:
- Looking at single sign-on (SSO) data
- Monitoring the network for unknown apps
- Reviewing app-specific usage data within each app’s portal
- Comparing app-specific usage data against HR data to understand which teams use what
- Surveying employees about what SaaS tools they use
- Partnering with Finance to catch app-related purchases on company credit cards or employee expense reports
2. Track app costs and evaluate tool usage
Once you have a clear picture of all SaaS apps being used across your business, you should look at the costs associated with each app and user behaviors. This will help you identify where spend is higher than expected and compare that to how employees are using the SaaS apps costing you the most.
You may be surprised to find out just how much you’re paying for a tool. Perhaps you’ve had to purchase a number of additional licenses, or you may discover that multiple teams are using the same app, but only one team has a contract in place.
Likewise, you may find some unexpected results once you dig into employee usage data. For example, you could learn some users never log into a tool that’s been provisioned to them. Digging into the data helps you determine where you might be paying for too many licenses, whether you need to renegotiate for more licenses, and if you need to spend more time training employees on a specific tool to increase adoption.
3. Improve employee onboarding
Leverage your SaaS audit and analysis of app costs and usage to explore how you can improve SaaS app onboarding for employees. If a tool has low usage across the board, that may mean employees need better training on how to leverage that app in their daily work. You can use that insight to develop an improved training program for new employees as well as run a follow-up training session for current employees.
IT can also work to create a more transparent onboarding process. It may be helpful for new employees to know which apps they have access to or what other team members are using. In that case, IT can create a repository or library of SaaS apps for employee usage. If you onboard a large number of employees regularly, then your IT team might also look into software that will streamline the onboarding experience.
4. Automate renewals and workflows
Tracking contract renewals and provisioning/deprovisioning licenses can be incredibly time-consuming when IT is juggling a large number of SaaS apps. Many teams rely on one massive spreadsheet to monitor this information, but that leads to missed renewal negotiation periods and no clarity around license requirements. Deploying a SaaS Management Platform (SMP) or another tool can help simplify license management and automate renewal-based tasks. That frees up valuable time for IT to focus on activities that help drive business growth.
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Say Goodbye to Saas Chaos
Armed with the right information, your business can conquer SaaS sprawl and develop better processes for managing your SaaS apps moving forward. Optimizing your SaaS portfolio is one of the best decisions you can make to ensure employees have the right tools they need to be productive. You’ll also free up IT’s time to focus on the important transformative company initiatives that increase revenue and help the business stay competitive.