Imagine a day at your organization sans SaaS applications.
No Slack. No Zoom. No Workday. No Microsoft Teams.
How would anyone get anything done?
Simply put, SaaS helps us do just that: get stuff done. From managing projects to managing payroll, countless tasks can be streamlined or simplified with SaaS. It allows us to work smarter, not harder — and enables all teams across the business to be more collaborative, proactive, and strategic.
But on the security side of things, SaaS actually creates more complexity. Think: data sprawl, compliance issues, and security vulnerabilities. (And many more challenges.)
So, what do you do when the SaaS apps that were brought in to enable the business start to hinder the business, at least from a security standpoint? You take a step back and rethink your approach to SaaS management.
The SaaS challenges at hand
Sixty-six percent of IT and security professionals spend more on SaaS apps today than a year ago, according to our recent survey. And with that immense rise in adoption and spending has come a slew of new challenges, including:
- Understanding which SaaS apps are being used — and if they’re properly managed
- Ensuring employees are properly onboarded and off-boarded from apps
- Securing sensitive data stored and shared across SaaS apps
- Monitoring SaaS providers’ compliance
- Optimizing spend, rightsizing licenses, and eliminating redundancies
At the core of these challenges? The need for a modern, effective, collaborative, and comprehensive SaaS strategy.
And at the core of that? Ownership.
SaaS management: It starts with ownership
Strengthening your SaaS strategy starts with understanding how the apps are owned internally — including how they’re procured and managed.
But it’s no secret that SaaS ownership is complicated. SaaS app owners span multiple departments — HR, finance, sales and marketing, R&D, customer support — and these teams all leverage SaaS in different ways.
To solve for SaaS ownership, IT and security teams must partner with app owners to understand business goals, reasons, and pain points about why teams use SaaS apps the way they do. Collaboration isn’t just key here — it’s vital.
How a modern SaaS management approach can help
Solving SaaS ownership challenges and increasing cross-team collaboration and alignment are great initial steps towards controlling SaaS complexity. What’s also needed, though, is a modern, comprehensive approach to SaaS management.
We dive deep into the various SaaS challenges across different departments, why ownership is so complicated, and how a modern approach will streamline and improve your organization-wide SaaS strategy in our latest ebook.
Download the ebook, “Let’s Talk SaaS: A Comprehensive Strategy for Controlling SaaS Complexity”, now.
