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What is SaaS management?

TL;DR SaaS management is basically keeping tabs on all the software your company uses. Similar to a software librarian, SaaS management is the concept of cataloging everything, making sure SaaS is being used efficiently, and preventing unnecessary spending.

So, let’s dive into what exactly is SaaS management, who’s responsible, what challenges does it solve, and overall best practices?

Two women and a man discussing SaaS Management Platform features

It’s so easy for anyone with a credit card and an email address to sign up for a SaaS program. And, to be frank, the newest, shiny tools tend to get a lot of signups. But what if that program overlaps with existing SaaS subscriptions? Is that program sanctioned or not sanctioned? There are so many questions both the C-Suite and IT are going to ask.

SaaS subscriptions need to be managed – they’re easy to sign up for and not easy to control. They can be like herding cats on a Greek island sanctuary. Cute, fun, and kind of expensive. And, they’re a huge distraction. IT professionals need to spend their time focused on strategy not mind-numbing tasks.

Leading organizations are going beyond the traditional tactical responsibilities of IT teams and thinking critically about innovation and new business opportunities."
Matt Mead

And yet, the emails keep coming from HR about folks that have been hired, promoted, and let go. Also, the CFO wants to know how much your company is spending on software, Alex needs help changing their permissions in HubSpot, and you’re getting texts from the new guy on how to get into the Slack channel. Without sounding like a modern Calgon commercial, how do you manage your organization's SaaS stack without losing your mind?

You can’t. There isn’t enough time in the day to perform all of the SaaS-related tasks manually. You need help. You need a SaaS management process.

TL;DR SaaS management is the process of managing User Onboarding & Offboarding, File Security, Help Tickets, and Budgetary Spend, often associated with automating these processes with a SaaS management platform.First, let’s briefly review what constitutes SaaS.

First, let’s briefly review what constitutes SaaS.

What is SaaS?

Gone are the days of libraries of floppy discs and license keys written on the back of the original boxes. Thanks to the pioneers at Salesforce, we’ve been in the SaaS era for over twenty years. Software as a Service – SaaS is licensing (service) the use of a program (software) that you don’t physically own. Essentially, anything you pay for monthly or annually from the “cloud” is considered Software as a Service (SaaS).

We pay for SaaS because of the value it brings us. We don’t need to wait in the mail for the product. We can take out our credit card, sign up, and use the program now. And SaaS provides the instant scalability that startups need.

This technology model provides agility and adaptability and allows organizations to respond quickly to changing market conditions, making SaaS a key component of digital strategies and helping businesses stay competitive and innovative.”
Datamation

What is SaaS management?

SaaS management is the administration of software-as-a-service (SaaS) programs including setting up accounts (provisioning), user permissions (access), evaluation of service requests (from employees and C-Suite), as well as analyzing and optimizing budgetary spend.

Setting up accounts includes a wide variety of tasks from creating a company email for a new employee with an email signature to setting up their file permissions and access. With that new email account, a user also needs to join the company’s Slack channel – with appropriate user permissions. They may need an account on the website – with appropriate user permissions. This email user may also need access to the CRM – with appropriate user permissions.

You get it. You’ve done this. It’s a lot. (And you just found out that there is a hiring event next week. Oh boy!)

All of that done manually brings you to 4:00 PM and you still have to evaluate service requests. Evaluating service requests is more than just comparing features between existing SaaS apps but also includes comparing license types and pricing per users or features, in addition to assessing the security risk. That’s quite the work week. And SaaS management isn’t your whole job.

Manage SaaS Security, Sprawl, Cost, Onboarding, and Offboarding with BetterCloud. It really is that easy.

Screenshot of BetterCloud's Google Workspace onboarding workflow

Who is responsible for SaaS management?

The burden of SaaS management typically falls on the IT department. Though many members of the C-Suite are involved with budget approvals from department heads, giving user access to a new hire, for example, is a designated (and dreaded) IT task. But do these tasks really need management? Of course.

Why do SaaS subscriptions need management?

SaaS subscriptions are easy to acquire.
Anyone with a credit card can sign up. Shadow IT poses a huge risk to the company.

SaaS subscriptions are hard to vet.
Who is managing the code base? What security issues does this pose? Are employees actually using the software or are they not using it enough to constitute a license?

SaaS subscriptions aren’t always compliant.
Hospitals and doctor’s offices need programs that comply with HIPAA, FinTech needs to comply with FINRA, and almost everyone needs to comply with SOC 2.

SaaS subscription prices are easy to ignore.
Are you still paying $6.99/month for a Netflix account that you never watch? How much is your company wasting on SaaS apps that you never use?

SaaS programs can have overlapping features
with pre-screened, pre-negotiated, and sanctioned SaaS that your company already uses.

Nearly 3 in 4 companies ran past their estimated cloud budgets last year, according to a Forrester estimate published in April. Though providers have built tools and processes to curb overspending, broader cloud use rationalization remains elusive.”
CIO Dive

What challenges does SaaS management solve?

IT teams have a lot on their plates when it comes to managing SaaS apps. From keeping costs in check to stopping the app explosion and making sure everything is secure, it can be a real headache.

The latest State of SaaSOps Report from BetterCloud showed the biggest concerns with managing the SaaS stack included securing SaaS apps, managing SaaS app license costs, and keeping up with operational tasks.

The top concerns managing the SaaS stack for IT

SaaS management tools can help with all of that. They keep tabs on licenses, rein in the app sprawl, and make sure sensitive data stays safe. Plus, they automate a bunch of tasks, so IT teams can focus on bigger things.

How automating SaaS management makes your life better

SaaS management automation allows IT folks to focus their efforts on important strategic initiatives and less on routine SaaS management tasks. Automating SaaS management makes your life better because you can easily sleep at night knowing that your processes are in place – doing their jobs. You don’t have to worry about licenses expiring on a Saturday and coming to work on Monday with a load of help desk tickets, for example.

Even better is that employee satisfaction remains high since new hires have immediate access to the tools they need, security protections are in place, and your house is in order. This is the power and peace that automation brings.

Not only that but automating SaaS management improves the employee satisfaction of the IT department, too. They can now focus their intellectual energy on strategy instead of routine, mundane tasks. Important strategic IT initiatives include creating an effective disaster recovery plan, prioritizing cybersecurity measures, increasing adoption of digital measures, as well as maintaining a working inventory of IT hardware.

Disaster recovery plan

Whether your organization is located in an area prone to natural disasters or has digital vulnerabilities (read: everyone), IT is responsible for creating a disaster recovery plan. The Cloudstrike issue has brought this need to the forefront of our minds. For example, Website hosting companies need to have contingencies and redundancies in place to keep their clients’ sites online. Instead of being weighed down with time-consuming tasks, IT admins should focus on disaster recovery plans and tabletop DR exercises.

One of the challenges modern IT admins face is a lack of control. When your cloud region goes down, there is little you can do if you didn't plan for disaster recovery ahead of time."
Joseph D'Antoni

Prioritizing cybersecurity

The more we rely upon the Cloud (hello, SaaSOps), the more we need to prioritize cybersecurity. Every login and connected device is a potential point of failure. That’s a scary thought. Cybersecurity includes endpoint management, password management, and more. Freeing up your IT admin to strategize and plan cybersecurity instead of creating user accounts in SaaS, is crucial.

Attackers are getting more sophisticated, and all it takes is one mistake for them to get in. Assume that attacks are inevitable.”
Juan Orlandini

Cybersecurity doesn’t stop with external hacks, either. You also need to be concerned with the leaking of company documents. With BetterCloud, you can set up targeted scans to alert you when Personal Identifiable Information (PII) or other sensitive company information is shared from Slack, Google Drive, Office 365, and more.

BetterCloud Alerts Manager Dashboard

Increasing digital adoption

Every industry has a department head who is a bit of a Luddite. They use a calculator instead of formulas in Excel, still have a landline at home, and backup documents on a flash drive. They take photos of documents, paste photos into Word, and then download the doc as a PDF that they print and email someone. We love these folks, but we really want them to start using OneDrive, not their flash drive and hacks. IT admins are the company advocates responsible to get stakeholders and the workforce using sanctioned programs, not workarounds.

Today, with a vast portion of the workforce now remote, employee experience of digital technology has gone from ‘nice to have to ‘the only way work gets done.’ Consequently, it's getting the problem-solving focus it likely long deserved."
Melissa Swift

SaaS license costs can really add up

Saas licenses can often be free (at first) but those costs add up. That’s why it’s important to pick your tools carefully. If you’re paying for Adobe Cloud, you wouldn’t want an employee using (and paying for) Canva, for example. It's like buying two pairs of the same shoes.

SaaS licenses, while straightforward in concept, can become intricate due to compliance requirements. Legal should ensure that copyright risks are mitigated, for example. A robust SaaS management platform helps you manage SaaS license renewal dates, number of users, costs, compliance, and complexity.

SaaS license types include:

  • Named User: The license only applies to the payee or registered user.
  • Evaluation: There is a defined trial period for this license.
  • Volume: Based on the number of users and often includes discounts for larger quantities.
  • OEM: Original equipment manufacturer licenses include firmware for devices like watches, tablets, computers, etc.
  • Processor: The license is per processing unit (CPU) that is essentially rented by the license.
  • Enterprise Agreements: Customized for larger organizations with specific licensing needs.
  • Concurrent: This license sets a maximum number of users who can use the program at the same time.

If your company has a SaaS stack with multiple licenses, that can make SaaS vendor management an unmanageable task. When do licenses expire? Are there overlapping licenses?

Are there deprecated programs? For example, does HR even use Indeed anymore or are they using Workday? Is Marketing using HubSpot or Salesforce still? (This is also why it is important to poll the workforce before October budget planning takes place.)

If you still manage SaaS Vendors and Licenses with an Excel spreadsheet, we offer you our condolences. But also, an easy-to-integrate solution.

What is Saas vendor management?

SaaS vendor management is crucial to all areas of the organization: notably, Legal, Human Resources, and Finance. Why? Because SaaS makes subscriptions sign ups way too easy.

Your well-intentioned new Head of Marketing may have just purchased a software license that overlaps with an existing SaaS app in your organization (sanctioned). Or, they may have overlooked the negotiating power of the C-Suite with better license and pricing terms and now the marketing budget is blown.

The road to complicated SaaS vendor relationships is paved with good intentions. BetterCloud brings clarity and flexibility to those relationships.

A SaaS vendor management strategy is critical to tackling underutilized software programs, discovering overlapping applications, managing SaaS subscriptions, and negotiating favorable terms with vendors.”
BetterCloud

What does SaaS management actually look like?

Effective SaaS management includes user management, spend management, cloud file security, and help desk integration.

User management

Eliminate monotonous, tedious tasks like creating email accounts, email signatures, and user accounts for accounting programs. Not only is this not a good use of IT’s time, but it delays the productivity of both new employees and recently-promoted employees. Delays in offboarding users can also result in data security issues.

You’ll also be able to quickly analyze which SaaS subscriptions are increasing your organization’s productivity in an easy-to-read dashboard. It’s not just about onboarding and offboarding but can also pinpoint areas of improvement with training and adoption.

Instead of me sitting at my desk at 5:30 pm on a Friday for two hours offboarding a user, I know that the workflow is going to run and work and have all the user’s information and accounts backed up and stripped of licensing”
Jason Cosma, FIRST’s Global Manager of IT Support

Spend management

With the AI boom promising to increase productivity, businesses are rapidly adopting SaaS programs. This adoption rate is great if you’re investing in AI, but not so great if you’re trying to curb SaaS sprawl. This includes the AI tax – upgrades that nickel and dime your organization to death.

A robust SaaS management platform makes you not just aware of upcoming license renewals but also alerts you to overlapping or duplicate subscriptions. If your sales team uses Salesforce, for example, you don’t also need HubSpot for email marketing. Just as important as overlapping subscriptions is license reclamation and downsizing.

[The ACME Network] saved $15,000+ in unused license costs and was able to automate the process of securely offboarding and transferring the data in these applications, before deleting the licenses."
BetterCloud

Cloud file security

Sharing documents outside of an organization is a risk that needs to be discreetly and effectively managed. But you can’t just delete users willy-nilly.

Access to the documents, drives, and files that Jane Doe created need to be transferred to her supervisor. And what about large layoff rounds? Sadly, this is a huge burden on IT and it falls under SaaS management.

BetterCloud highlights Shadow IT (i.e. applications in the tech stack that are either unknown or not sanctioned by IT).

Without BetterCloud, we would fail our compliance because there’s just so many manual steps that need to happen. I have full trust in my team, but when you’re offboarding and onboarding hundreds of people, there is a possibility of missing a step. For me, my company failing means my team is failing and that is not an option.”
Elliot Grossman, Director of IT at BARK

Help desk

How do you keep track of requests for software access for the new marketing department? Imagine consolidating tickets and saving 85% of your time with a streamlined workflow.

A robust SaaS management platform includes this must-have feature. Employees and department heads will thank you. And IT will be pleasantly surprised – improving their work satisfaction rate.

BetterCloud allows us to drive solutions faster from a holistic standpoint on the service desk. By doing what used to take hours, in minutes, we can drive service to the business immediately. In terms of an IT services delivery standpoint, we’re adding efficiency every day."
Matthew Perry, Manager, IT PMO, FleetPride

You need a better SaaS management platform. You need BetterCloud.

Honestly, we thought you would have signed up way before you got this far down the page, but that’s okay. Being analytical is a good thing. We’re very happy to demo our platform.

Manage your users.
Manage your time.
Manage your security.
Manage your budget.
And get back to your actual job.