Disha Gupta
As more organizations turn to cloud-based solutions, SaaS has become “mission-critical” for the modern enterprise. Globally, the average organization uses over 100 applications — but some surveys of large enterprises have even recorded over 400 SaaS tools in use.
This uptick in software adoption can lead to ‘SaaS sprawl’ if not managed properly, a term used to describe the uncontrolled usage of software with little oversight or quality and security control from the company.
With over 65% of IT professionals discovering employees using unapproved SaaS tools in their workflows, there’s a crucial need for systems that can help businesses standardize governance policies across their SaaS ecosystems. There are also challenges of providing end-users training, supporting end-users, driving digital adoption, ensuring compliance with vendor policies, and tracking software usage to get the most value and maintain security.
This is where a SaaS management platform comes into picture.
What Is SaaS Management?
SaaS management catalogs, manages, monitors, and governs an organization’s SaaS applications to centralize software asset management and reduce SaaS waste. This involves actively tracking and managing the software stack, procuring new tools, monitoring existing licenses, managing purchases, subscriptions, negotiating with vendors, and renewals, creating self-help resources to support in-house users, and efficiently offboards applications when they’re no longer needed.
What Is SaaS Waste?
SaaS waste is the unnecessary or inefficient purchasing of cloud-based software. This often happens when companies purchase SaaS tools they don’t need or use. SaaS waste can also result from employee underusing applications, failure to terminate subscriptions when teams change, and general mismanagement of SaaS inventories. This issue is especially pervasive with sales, marketing, customer success, and analytics software.
Fortunately, IT teams can eliminate SaaS by developing robust software management strategies and conducting regular audits to improve usage. Several software management tools on the market aim to resolve these issues and maximize software return on investment.
Common Types of SaaS Waste
- Duplicate subscriptions of similar tools: It seems like for every workplace problem, there are a range of software solutions. Team members in different departments unknowingly purchase the same tool under different licenses, resulting in even more unnecessary costs, onboarding, and overage fees.
- Unused or underutilized licenses: It’s common for teams to need to properly train employees on how to make the best use of the SaaS applications at their disposal. A clear software asset management strategy can make managing software licenses, evolving teams, and training needs easier.
- Over-licensing: Teams can accumulate and pay for more SaaS licenses than is necessary. This can result in overspending, overprovisioning, and underutilization. Without complete visibility into the organization’s software and licensing data, IT teams miss opportunities to recognize excess capacity and fail to adjust resources to match the true needs of their teams.
- Continuing legacy systems alongside new applications: When IT teams retain outdated systems, they can prevent their organization from leveraging the full benefits of their SaaS applications. Because legacy systems often have limited scalability and integration capabilities, their continued use can lead to underutilization of SaaS. This can also pose issues for security and compliance because they need more potent features found in most modern SaaS applications.
Risks of SaaS Waste
- Paying for unused software: Investing in a software subscription that will reap benefits and a high ROI is one thing; throwing money away on unused software subscriptions is another. When IT teams lack the proper visibility into the status of their software assets, they risk paying for more licenses than necessary or continuing to pay for subscriptions that employees don’t find helpful for their job functions.
- Reduced technology ROI: A lack of streamlining, oversight, and governance structure can lead to application overpurchase, which can bog down productivity with redundant features, inefficient integration, and security concerns. These problems and a lack of end-user training can cause confusion and software avoidance, leaving applications underused and reducing the overall return on SaaS investments.
- Lack of integrations and data silos: When an organization’s SaaS applications and systems don’t integrate, organizations get settled with data silos that result in redundant efforts and other efficiencies. It also leads to poor visibility and reporting, hindering software asset management efforts.
- Misallocation of IT budget: When SaaS waste is not monitored, it can result in various issues, like misallocating IT resources and budgets. On top of overlicensing and redundant tools, SaaS waste prevents IT teams from adequately monitoring and reporting on SaaS usage and performance, preventing the optimization of SaaS-related costs.
- Compliance and security issues: Unauthorized SaaS and shadow IT can result in security breaches and noncompliance issues, which put the organization at risk of fines and other penalties. Poor integration of SaaS systems and inadequate security monitoring can compound these problems.
What Is a SaaS Management Platform?
A SaaS management platform empowers organizations with tools to help monitor, manage, and optimize software operations and performance across their application ecosystem. From analyzing the need for new software to initiating SaaS procurement and maintaining ongoing budgets, a good SaaS management platform enables enterprise SaaS management to help companies manage resources efficiently and assign points of accountability.
Use Cases for SaaS Management Platforms
1. SaaS usage management: Organizations can effectively track how they utilize existing SaaS applications and licenses. This enables organizations to track software license usage and digital adoption levels.
Use case: A sales operations team can use Productiv’s platform to evaluate how different sales team members utilize systems like their CRM. Analyzing these usage patterns can help point out users who engage with these applications less frequently to reduce the number of active licenses.
Application owners and IT managers can take this further with an application analytics tool like Whatfix Product Analytics. Capture custom events and user actions, analyze product usage with Journeys and Funnels to identify areas of user friction, optimize business processes, and maximizing SaaS ROI.
2. SaaS spend management: These platforms help companies monitor, report, and optimize costs and budgets for SaaS subscriptions, licenses, and operational expenses.
Use case: A finance team at a growing startup could use Spendflo’s platform to keep track of existing SaaS licenses and new requests for SaaS subscriptions. The company can then present accurate information to department managers if duplicate tools are discovered or if there are opportunities to replace fragmented applications with a more comprehensive platform that can help streamline costs.
3. SaaS vendor and procurement management: Companies can use SaaS management tools to streamline processes, documentation, and data related to SaaS vendor and purchasing activities.
Use case: A large enterprise can use platforms like CloudEagle to inform SaaS procurement negotiations across different departments better. The platform would come in handy to centralize documentation for vendor comparisons or even provide market data with its built-in vendor database.
4. SaaS identity security: Teams can use SaaS management to enforce security compliance policies for access management and data privacy across the SaaS stack.
Use case: An e-commerce company that handles sensitive consumer information must be cautious when onboarding and offboarding SaaS users to ensure private data isn’t in the hands of unwarranted parties. The company could implement Keepit’s platform to back up and retain data from retired software licenses without vendor interference or non-compliant information transfers.
5. SaaS lifecycle management and operations: Organizations use SaaS management tools to manage the end-to-end SaaS deployment and retirement lifecycle.
Use case: A customer support team can use a SaaS management platform like Torii to set up automated access control workflows when onboarding new software. Customer support managers can define and implement role-based access levels and approval workflows to shorten new hire ramp-up times and decrease ticket resolution times.
IT owners can take this further with Whatfix DAP to create in-app guided experiences like Tours, Task Lists, and Flows to assist end-users through workflows and tasks, driving user adoption.
Key Features of SaaS Management Platforms
Before implementing a SaaS management platform in your organization, identify the capabilities that will help prove the need and impact of your software investments. Most end-to-end SaaS management platforms include features like:
1. Centralized visibility and inventory
Saas management platforms provide a centralized dashboard or inventory of all SaaS applications used within the organization.
This feature allows IT administrators and managers to have a clear overview of all the SaaS products in use, who is using them, and the extent of their usage. It’s crucial for managing licenses, understanding software costs, and ensuring that the organization’s software portfolio is fully optimized.
2. License and subscription management
BetterCloud reports that the average organization uses 130 SaaS applications—a 1,525% growth rate since 2015—while Productiv’s State of SaaS Sprawl report puts the figure significantly higher at 254 applications per organization.
With such a large footprint, buying multiple redundant subscriptions or overlooking unused licenses getting auto-renewed is easy. According to Productiv, 53% of all SaaS licenses go unused.
SaaS management helps you document all active licenses across your organization, determine which ones should be renewed, paused, or canceled, prevent duplicate subscriptions, and help you keep your workforce compliant with relevant policies.
SaaS management platforms enable efficient management of software licenses and subscriptions. They track renewal dates, usage rates, and compliance status, helping organizations avoid over-licensing or underutilization. This feature assists in cost management by ensuring that the organization only pays for the software it needs and uses.
3. Usage analytics and reporting
These platforms provide analytics and reporting tools that give insights into how SaaS applications are being used within the organization.
Data such as login frequency, feature utilization, and user engagement metrics can be tracked. This information is valuable for assessing the value and impact of each SaaS application and making informed decisions about software adoption and discontinuation.
4. Analyzing and optimizing SaaS spend
The figures for SaaS procurement and waste (mostly due to underutilization) are fuzzy and estimates vary wildly, but Zylo’s shows that the average organization uses a mere 56% of their active SaaS licenses. Spending ranges between $7.9 million/year for firms with <500 employees to $224.8 million for those with 10,000+ workers.
Based on that data, we can calculate that a 44% waste rate translates to anywhere between $3.476 million to $98.9 million annually.
Small, medium, and large companies waste a considerable amount of their software budget on unused SaaS licenses. A SaaS management platform enables organizations with the capabilities to manage SaaS renewals, negotiate with vendors, analyze SaaS spend, and identify areas of waste.
5. Overseeing SaaS renewals
SaaS vendors have mastered the subscription revenue model. You simply navigate to the pricing page, choose a plan, and enter your card details. From then on, it’s “set-and-forget.” They’ll bill you monthly, quarterly, or annually without any service disruption, as payments are automated. This continues until your card expires four years later, ensuring you never have to worry about making monthly payments manually. That’s led to a 58% annualized growth rate for SaaS renewal spending.
But, that easy-to-a-fault model quickly becomes a drain through which companies that use SaaS products bleed cash, and it becomes a more significant challenge the larger your organization becomes. Since you don’t have to remember to renew your subscription, it’s easy to forget you ever created it while billed tens of thousands of dollars for unused products over several years.
When you have thousands of employees with licenses across hundreds of applications and then account for the fact that just under half of those (47%) subscriptions won’t be documented, you’re looking at a significant number of runaway renewals and subscriptions that continue on autopilot, washing away millions for years on end.
SaaS management platforms centralize renewal conversations, allowing IT to procure new tools and negotiate new contracts.
6. Security and compliance monitoring
In August 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that they’d levied $1.8 billion in penalties against a handful of the world’s largest banks—Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS, Morgan Stanley, etc. Their crime was “failing to honor their record-keeping and books-and-records obligations…”.
In simpler terms, they used WhatsApp and personal email for work-related communication.
Regulated industries like finance (PCI DSS), health (HIPAA), energy, law, and technology (GDPR, SOC 1 & 2) have stringent rules guiding the handling of customer data, sensitive financial information, health records, etc. As a result, using uncertified SaaS applications can attract legal liability and crippling penalties if their usage flouts industry standards—whether intentionally or unintentionally.
SaaS management platforms help ensure that all software applications comply with relevant security standards and regulations.
They can monitor for unauthorized applications, manage data access controls, and ensure data security protocols are adhered to, thereby helping to mitigate risks associated with data breaches and non-compliance.
7. Integration and workflow automation
Many SaaS management platforms offer integration capabilities with other tools and systems used by the organization, such as HR systems, ERP, or identity management systems.
They can automate workflows related to onboarding and offboarding employees, granting and revoking application access, and syncing data across systems, which enhances operational efficiency and reduces manual workload.
30 Best SaaS Management Platforms for 2024
1. Zylo
Review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Zylo for tailored pricing
Zylo is a SaaSOps tool that equips enterprises with a centralized solution for managing SaaS inventory, optimizing software licenses, and tracking SaaS renewals. Teams use Zylo’s AI-powered engine to gain more visibility into software spending, application utilization, and renewal terms. With these insights, IT and operations managers can build IT governance, procurement, and software asset management workflows.
Zylo’s data intelligence capabilities help teams surface and sort their entire software application library, minimizing spending on underutilized tools. The platform’s AI engine also enables automation and predictive insights like security risk scores, license removals for inactive users, and alerts before renewal deadlines.
2. G2 Track
Review rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Get started for free
G2 Track is a SaaS management platform that helps businesses of all sizes optimize software spending using G2.com’s robust product classification system. The platform simplifies the SaaS discovery process with features for identifying software overlap and eliminating undetected IT tools.
G2 Track has the advantage of its comprehensive product taxonomy data, which helps companies find and filter the most relevant software transaction data. On top of that, contract information such as renewal dates and terms are also passed through a human Contracts Concierge team, adding another layer of accuracy to an organization’s SaaS management.
3. Zluri
Review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Zluri for tailored pricing
Zluri’s SaaSOps platform gives enterprises a cloud-based solution for managing many SaaS applications while maintaining strict IT security standards. The platform has a large network of integrations to support large organizations managing software deployment across departments. It’s a SaaS management tool with over 800 integrations, 250,000 apps, and AI-powered features to forecast licensing costs.
Zluri’s identity governance and administration tool aims to help enterprises implement security protocols faster with AI-powered automation. Teams can automatically trigger software approval and removals based on whether an employee has joined, left, or moved departments. The platform also has no-code workflow builders for automated access reviews and compliance checks.
4. Vendr
Review rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Up to $98,000 a year for enterprises. Contact Vendr for tailored pricing.
Vendr is a SaaS procurement platform that helps companies manage their end-to-end software procurement process — from initiating purchase requests to purchase approvals and renewals. Teams can use the platform to centralize purchasing documents across different vendors and suppliers, automatically assign tasks to different departments, and set alerts based on contract renewal timelines. The platform also integrates with accounting, contract lifecycle management, human resources, and SSO tools.
Businesses can drive vendor procurement decisions with Vendr’s Premium Intelligence platform, unlocking access to rich supplier data. Inform software purchasing with pricing benchmarks, AI-powered contract analysis, and real-time negotiation advice from the Vendr team.
5. Better Cloud
Review rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact BetterCloud for tailored pricing.
BetterCloud helps businesses streamline SaaS operations management with features to discover active and inactive SaaS applications, automate administrative IT tasks, and monitor security vulnerabilities. The platform is designed to tackle routine IT administration bottlenecks across the entire software application and user lifecycle, whether that’s consolidating licenses, detecting risky applications, or scanning content for sensitive company data.
IT and operations teams can also use BetterCloud to centralize software onboarding, offboarding and support ticket processes. Sync employee data from your human resources information system (HRIS) to automatically grant or revoke access to shared apps and resources. The platform also has self-service portals and integrations with tools like Jira and ServiceNow to help users resolve issues with fewer manual dependencies.
6. Torii
Review rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Torii for tailored pricing.
Torii is a complete SaaS management platform for businesses to detect software applications, monitor and budget SaaS spend, automate user lifecycle tasks, and administer complex application lifecycle workflows. The platform helps businesses cut SaaS spending with features that automate license downgrades, shut down abandoned apps, benchmark license costs, and provide savings recommendations based on organizational trends.
Torii suits businesses that want to build a flexible SaaS infrastructure that works seamlessly with their technology stack. The platform’s open API allows developers to integrate the tool with their external systems, use readymade plugins, or build their own plugins to share with other developers.
7. Airbase
Review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Airbase for tailored pricing.
Airbase is a software procurement and expense management platform that helps businesses centralize payment policies, workflows, and reporting. Build and automate custom procurement approval processes with pre-determined rules for each department, software category, or request type without any code. These workflows integrate seamlessly into communication channels like Slack or email. Airbase also has in-app communication threads that teams can comment on to answer questions or boost visibility.
The platform enables faster expense tracking and reimbursement. Businesses can approve reimbursements across 44 countries and 14 currencies. Teams can also promptly submit receipts by taking a photo with the Airbase mobile app so it can be automatically parsed into an expense request.
8. Lumos
Review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Lumos for tailored pricing.
Lumos is a complete SaaS management and operations platform for businesses to optimize SaaS budgets and implement faster identity governance processes. The platform has over 80 integrations and an API to enable streamlined data from vendor relationships, accounting, HRIS, and security administration tools. Teams can then identify shadow IT, report on software spend, automate software onboarding and offboarding, and more.
Lumos’ identity governance features automate access reviews and IT help desk requests so teams can access necessary software when needed. The platform’s self-service access requests reduce IT support ticket volume and prevent app administrators from bottlenecking daily operations. Teams can also use Lumos to build workflows that protect users and enable privileged access with security-compliant multi-stage approvals.
9. SailPoint
Review rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact SailPoint for tailored pricing.
SailPoint strengthens IT operations and identity security so companies can work with an enterprise-grade ecosystem of software applications. It’s recognized as an Identity Security Platform with features designed for teams to build automated workflows for granting and managing user access controls, integrate across their entire technology stack, and inform decision-making with AI-powered security insights.
One core feature is the platform’s data modeling capabilities that automatically create software roles and adjust application access accordingly. Businesses can also maintain SaaS reliability by using SailPoint to transform user access data into standards for identifying security anomalies and providing security certification recommendations.
10. Productiv
Review rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Productiv for tailored pricing.
Productiv equips organizations with data intelligence and analytics to track and optimize software spending. IT, security, finance, and procurement teams can use its AI-powered features to analyze app usage, track software compliance, define purchase approval workflows, and forecast renewal factors like license usage and pricing.
Productiv increases visibility into the entire software lifecycle so teams can identify risks and opportunities during procurement, renewals, and day-to-day usage. The platform automatically surfaces recommendations based on usage and budgeting data to prevent application overlap or risky purchase decisions. These alerts can estimate the number of licenses a team needs, flag tools compliant with security policies, and identify trends for license negotiations.
11. Apptio Cloudability
Review rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Get started with a free trial. Contact Aptio for tailored pricing.
Apptio Cloudability gives organizations visibility into SaaS expenses with detailed reporting, budgeting, and financial operations tools. It’s a spend management platform that helps IT, finance, and operations optimize investments and decision-making for cloud infrastructure platforms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. It has rich forecasting and automation capabilities, including features like its Reserved Instance Planner, Container Cost Allocation, Anomaly Detection, and Rightsizing.
Apptio Cloudability helps enterprises accurately calculate cloud spend with proprietary data analysis models for personalized recommendations based on real usage data. Teams can also automate routine cleanup, shutdown, and startup tasks to maximize cloud savings.
12. CoreView
Review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact CoreView for tailored pricing.
CoreView is a SaaS management platform for organizations to streamline their operations across their ecosystem of Microsoft 365 business applications. It has features to help IT departments and team managers automate software governance processes like self-service support, policy compliance, security threat alerts, and pre-defined workflows for security resolution.
Enterprises can use CoreView to manage disparate IT organizations, like applications in different workplace branches or remote teams. The platform allows businesses to delegate Microsoft 365 administration so different teams can manage their users and permissions without risking policy non-compliance or being bottlenecked by a single IT administration.
13. Spendflo
Review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Starts at $1,500 a month.
Spendflo is a SaaS spend management platform that streamlines spend analysis and management across an organization’s entire technology stack. Businesses use Spendflo to inform SaaS purchasing decisions with the help of the platform’s procurement advice, vendor catalogs, pricing benchmark data, and employee feedback collection tools. It acts as an organization’s single source of truth for SaaS purchases so teams can centralize processes and documentation for SaaS purchase requests, approvals, request tracking, as well as contract and license management.
On top of these financial analysis capabilities, teams can also report on traditional SaaS usage and identify software duplicates within their system. Spendflo integrates with applications like Slack, Zapier, Pandadoc, Docusign, and more.
14. NachoNacho
Review rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Get started for free.
NachoNacho is a SaaS marketplace and management platform for small and medium-sized companies to discover new applications and manage all subscriptions. Instead of fragmented payments and manual subscription tracking, businesses use NachoNacho to pay all SaaS vendors with a single virtual card or payment source. This gives teams a single dashboard to view all existing subscriptions and identify expenses across IT and business departments.
With its SaaS marketplace, teams can accelerate software discovery with a single place to find new apps, view tailored software product recommendations, and participate in peer-to-peer discussions about different products.
15. Substly
Review rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Starts at $22 a month for 5 users.
Subtly helps small and medium-sized businesses manage a growing SaaS technology stack. Teams can use the platform to centralize data on SaaS usage, licenses, expenses, budgets, and more. Automate alerts for software off-boarding and license cancellations based on triggers like employee statuses and license expiration dates.
The platform is a great choice for businesses that want core SaaS management features in a single location for a predictable cost. It also has an easy-to-use interface that small and growing teams can implement quickly and customize with integrations, plugins, and custom APIs.
16. Certero
Review rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Certero for tailored pricing.
Certero for SaaS is an enterprise solution that helps organizations maximize ROI from SaaS subscriptions. The platform gives businesses a single interface to view all SaaS vendors, renewal deadlines, licenses, and access controls. Optimize software spending with tools to consolidate contracts, rightsize licenses, and identify unauthorized software spending.
The Certero platform is a holistic solution for IT asset management designed to help enterprises consolidate data and workflows for on–premise legacy software and cloud infrastructure. With their Saas management solution, teams can also govern SaaS vendors with enterprise-grade policies in a single platform.
17. CloudEagle
Review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Starts at $2000 a month.
CloudEagle is an end-to-end SaaS optimization platform for managing software procurement, SaaS stacks, and user lifecycles. Finance, IT, and procurement departments use CloudEagle to identify opportunities and duplicates within the software ecosystem, minimizing unnecessary spend and non-compliant SaaS installations. Organizations can install the platform’s browser extension on employee devices to ensure correct software usage, prevent risky downloads, and give customers tailored discounts or vendor insights.
Teams can also use CloudEagle’s automated workflows and data intelligence to accelerate vendor research and negotiations. With a database of over 900 vendors, inform decision-making with an all-in-one solution for SaaS pricing, peer reviews, and on-demand buying assistance from the CloudEagle team.
18. ActivTrak
Review rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Get started for free.
ActivTrak helps organizations drive SaaS adoption by increasing employee engagement and productivity. Manage a growing software ecosystem for hybrid and remote workforces with reporting tools that identify how team members utilize key SaaS applications to reach their goals. Managers use ActivTrak to inform SaaS spending and training programs by analyzing the applications contributing to team efficiency and distractions.
In addition to workforce productivity features, the platform also has core SaaS management features to identify underutilized licenses, duplicate software, and security compliance risks in new applications.
19. Keepit
Review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Get started for free.
Keepit is a SaaS security platform that equips organizations with a vendor-independent infrastructure to back up software data and minimize losses from cybersecurity threats. As an independent cloud provider, businesses can ensure access to crucial software data when SaaS vendors experience downtime. With a single source for SaaS data from past and existing licenses, teams can optimize IT resources otherwise spent on prolonging retired licenses for data access and manual workflows to migrate and protect that data.
Teams can use Keepit to manage SaaS security compliance when retaining software data. The platform is GDPR and NIS2 compliant and deploys blockchain technology, system segregation, and features that prevent the alteration of backup data.
20. LicenceOne
Review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Starts at approximately $11 per month
LicenceOne is a SaaS spend management platform with a simple installation process and affordable pricing structure. Teams can integrate the tool with over 12,000 software, accounting, and payment systems, such as bank accounts, finance software, and virtual cards. LicenceOne matches spending data with payment activities across different applications to help teams categorize and report on software subscriptions.
Teams can track application usage and employee logins through LicenceOne’s browser extension and a native integration with Google Workspace to ensure up-to-date activity. Drive decision-making on software spending by reporting active user numbers, usage patterns, and license renewals across paid and free SaaS applications.
21. Cledara
Review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Get started for free.
Cledara helps finance teams manage SaaS spending and automate administrative tasks for software payments and budgeting. Organizations can use it to build and route complex workflows that span IT and business departments to accelerate purchase approvals, assign tasks to multiple stakeholders, and standardize approval policies.
Finance teams can use Cledara to designate virtual cards specifically for software purchases. Equip each SaaS application with an individual payment source to avoid failed payments, unexpected charges, and security risks related to shared credit cards. These virtual cards can also be integrated into your approval workflows to streamline information capture and compliance checks.
22. Genuity
Review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Starts at $29.99 per month.
Genuity is an IT management platform and marketplace designed to help businesses find and manage all technology assets — software, hardware, and telecom. Its SaaS management capabilities allow teams to collect and centralize information about software vendors and spend, giving teams a holistic view of their entire technology infrastructure. Genuity’s software asset management tools give IT departments visibility into SaaS records to improve audits, monitor vendor performance, and assess compliance with company-wide IT protocols.
Genuity equips finance and IT teams with automated features to drive SaaS spend analysis. With its Vendor Spend solution, businesses can promptly point out purchasing patterns and optimize savings based on recommendations from the platform.
23. Sonar
Review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Sonar for tailored pricing.
Sonar is a change management software that equips IT, revenue, and operations teams with tools to better integrate the Salesforce CRM into the entire SaaS stack. Teams use Sonar to implement data governance policies that ensure the quality and security flowing in and out of the Salesforce platform into other tools. Businesses can use features like Sonar’s Salesforce Blueprint to identify bugs and automate IT response workflows while the tool’s event monitoring feature enables proactive network and event monitoring.
Enterprises use Sonar to gain deeper visibility into how changes within Salesforce impact the organization’s technology ecosystem. IT teams can automatically create change logs for Salesforce audits to maintain a single source of truth when investigating broken integrations, data inaccuracies, and unexpected outages.
24. Trelica
Review rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Starts at $299 a month.
Trelica is a SaaS management tool that empowers IT teams with tools to discover shadow IT, manage software expenses, and optimize operations across the SaaS and user lifecycle. The platform has native integrations across over 250 business applications, identity and SSO providers, and accounting systems. Implement trigger-based workflows to stay on top of manual operational tasks like de-provisioning unused tasks or notifying IT teams about risky access to software applications.
The platform has features for IT departments to set up employee onboarding and offboarding tasks, like creating app checklists to provision for new employees and automating those approvals. Businesses can also minimize the installation of risky non-compliant applications by giving employees a directory of approved apps to browse and access.
25. PayEm
Review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact PayEm for tailored pricing.
PayEm is a spend management platform that gives businesses visibility into all organizational expenses and payment sources. IT departments use PayEm to streamline SaaS procurement and budgeting workflows with company-wide policies for payment approvals, invoice processing, and expense tracking in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
PayEm’s core features are approval workflows, audit trails, and a real-time expense tracking dashboard. Businesses can add to the platform with additional modules for customized request forms, corporate cards, budget management and purchase order creation. The tool also has AI-powered invoice processes that automatically extract data from invoices to drive SaaS payments forward with more accuracy.
26. Flexera One
Review rating: 3.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Flexera One for tailored pricing.
Flexera One is an IT management solution that gives enterprises an end-to-end platform for on-premise, software, and cloud assets. With its SaaS management capabilities, teams can stay on top of license usage and software expenses in a single dashboard. Teams can easily track software spend by department, monitor suspicious activity across the software ecosystem, report on unsanctioned SaaS spend, and more.
The platform has rich reporting capabilities that show organizations a complete portfolio of their IT assets, making it a good choice for teams who want to see how they’re deploying all IT assets across the entire organization. Flexera One’s AI-powered IT visibility features help businesses map the right applications to the right dependencies, minimizing infrastructure downtime and error-filled migrations.
27. Snow
Review rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Snow for tailored pricing.
Snow helps IT departments gain visibility into the SaaS ecosystem to optimize software subscription spending and ensure regulatory compliance. The Snow platform is designed to help teams manage a diverse range of IT assets across hybrid cloud environments. With SaaS discovery and reporting features, teams can keep track of license utilization across the entire technology ecosystem thanks to integrations with over 23,000 SaaS applications.
IT departments also use Snow to enable self-service technology requests and provisioning workflows. Companies can give employees a comprehensive user portal to streamline critical IT resources and accelerate service delivery across the entire organization.
28. Augmentt
Review rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Snow for tailored pricing.
Augmentt is a SaaS security platform that gives teams visibility into security policy compliance and threats in the software application stack. IT departments can use Augmentt to set up real-time alerts for suspicious activity and view important information about each threat within a centralized dashboard. Businesses can view the application that received the threat, the severity of the threat, and the user account that is impacted. On top of security monitoring, the platform has features to eliminate shadow IT and keep inventory of all applications.
With the Augmentt platform, businesses enable frictionless application usage by giving IT support agents the tools to resolve routine IT tickets right within the platform instead of using Microsoft or Google Workspaces. Support technicians can reset passwords, edit licenses, add users and more.
29. Sastrify
Review rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Contact Sastrify for tailored pricing
Sastrify is a SaaS procurement solution companies use to define and implement standardized software purchasing processes. The platform gives procurement teams easy-to-use templates, workflow builders, and pricing benchmarks to manage different vendor requests and prepare for negotiations. Businesses can also use Sastrify’s marketplace to buy SaaS products with enterprise discounts.
They can then turn the platform into a single source of truth for all software contracts and documents. Its SaaS optimization features allow teams to track software subscriptions, prevent unwanted automatic renewals, and identify opportunities to save on SaaS tools.
30. Basaas
Review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing: Get started for free
Basaas helps organizations prioritize tasks across different SaaS applications with a unified view for app notifications, documents, and action items. Basaas is especially beneficial for organizations that work with Microsoft 365 tools. It acts as a digital hub that allows users to connect external applications to systems like One Drive, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Office.
The platform has a clean and user-friendly interface optimized to help users navigate between different applications, search for information across the app ecosystem, and manage daily SaaS operations. Teams can view all apps in a sidebar within their browser and can use shortcuts to launch different application tasks directly from any website. Basaas also has features for IT and operations managers to distribute software access, securely send shared resources, and track software usage.
Benefits of Implementing SaaS Management Solutions
SaaS management solutions don’t just benefit IT, finance, and operations departments. The effects of an organized and efficient software application ripples across all business functions.
At the end of the day, employers and customers alike will not be productive if they’re interacting with a network bogged down by poor cybersecurity, technology proficiency, and cost management. Implementing a SaaS management solution gives businesses benefits such as:
1. Lower software operating costs
Gain visibility into cost-saving opportunities like underutilized licenses, duplicate software, and shadow IT. By optimizing software usage and eliminating redundancies, teams can better utilize budgets more strategically.
2. Ensure software uptime and reliability
SaaS management platforms allow teams to stay on top of consistent software application maintenance and optimization. Teams can effectively track software update tasks, monitor network irregularities, automate IT tickets, and more, within a centralized platform.
3. Save time on routine administrative tasks
Teams can use SaaS management solutions to automate repetitive tasks such as pre-defined approval workflows, user onboarding and offboarding checklists, and license renewals. These automated processes also help teams maintain the accuracy and timeliness of recurring procedures.
4. Maintain a single source of truth for business data
SaaS management platforms allow teams to seamlessly integrate data across an organization’s software stack. These integrations eliminate information siloes and help teams across different departments and business applications work with up-to-date data for performance reporting, trend analyses, and more.
5. Streamline vendor relationships with SaaS vendors for better pricing and service quality
Teams can use SaaS management platforms to log and centralize vendor activities and documentation. Vendor management capabilities, present in many tools listed above, are critical for helping teams optimize procurement decision-making, enhance negotiations, and track vendor performance.
6. Standardize user access policies
SaaS management platforms assist organizations in enforcing consistent workflows for user access management and license provisioning across different business functions. Process automation and streamlined IT information ensure smoother stakeholder approvals and faster access to necessary tools.
7. Adhere to industry regulations and compliance
Organizations can enforce standardized security policies with capabilities such as visibility into SaaS application usage, setting up approval workflows, managing IT tasks and deadlines, and more. Without SaaS management platforms, it becomes harder for IT and operations teams to implement guardrails surrounding factors like the proper installation of SaaS applications, managing data on company servers, or granting the appropriate levels of access to enterprise systems.
Common Challenges of SaaS Management
SaaS management comes with its own set of unique challenges. Successfully navigating these obstacles is essential for getting the most out of cloud-based applications and maintaining a smooth IT environment.
Let’s explore some of the most common challenges and how to tackle them.
1. Managing the risks of Shadow IT
If you think the SaaS adoption and SaaS waste figures we quoted above were surprising, Zylo’s 2023 SaaS Management Index report has even higher bounds, ranging from 172 (organizations with <500 employees) to 664 applications (organizations with >10K employees) per company.
If anything, that figure will only grow as small businesses, medium-sized firms, and enterprises move to the cloud and abandon on-premise software and the intricacies required to manage it.
And here’s the kicker: roughly half (47%) of these purchases were unsanctioned—that is, an employee simply took out their expense card, visited Figma’s (or Trello, Linear, DocuSign, Adobe, Outreach, LaunchDarkly, etc.) pricing page and upgraded to Professional or Organization without checking with IT to see if there were any active licenses for the same or similar products. Just $12 ($45 for Figma’s Organization tier), right?
Now, picture a scenario where half of all your employees—which could be hundreds or thousands of staff—are doing this, paying for annual, recurring licenses for several applications they may use a few times a year—and it quickly becomes a significant financial burden.
SOLUTION: Use a centralized SaaS management platform to manage and inventory all SaaS applications. Centralizing your SaaS management is like giving your IT team a bird’s-eye view of all software operations. Managing everything from one platform gives you a clear picture of software usage, costs, and compliance. This simplifies monitoring and control, significantly reducing the risks of unauthorized software use and shadow IT. Encouraging transparency and collaboration between IT and other departments, regular audits, and clear software procurement policies help organizations reduce shadow IT. Implementing a comprehensive SaaS management platform that provides visibility into all software used within the company helps maintain control. It ensures that all applications meet your organization’s security and compliance standards.
2. Overseeing and controlling SaaS costs
Managing costs with SaaS can be tricky due to the subscription model. Without careful oversight, unnecessary expenses from unused or underutilized licenses can quickly add up. Automatic renewals for services no longer needed or multiple teams subscribing to the same service independently can worsen the problem.
SOLUTION: Regular audits and detailed reporting on software usage help identify unused subscriptions and opportunities for consolidation, ensuring efficient cost management. Think of regular audits as routine health checks for your SaaS applications. They help you identify unused or underutilized licenses, allowing you to cut costs and better allocate resources. Regularly reviewing your SaaS usage ensures you’re only paying for what you need, avoiding unnecessary expenses. Implementing a SaaS management solution that monitors usage patterns and license utilization helps keep expenses in check. By negotiating better pricing based on actual usage and regularly reviewing SaaS expenditures, organizations can avoid budget overruns.
3. Ensuring data security and compliance
Ensuring data protection and regulatory compliance is a continuous challenge for IT departments. Storing data in the cloud can expose organizations to risks like breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance issues. Each SaaS application brings potential vulnerabilities that have to be managed and secured.
SOLUTION: SaaS providers offer different levels of security and compliance. Thoroughly vetting each provider to ensure they meet the required standards is essential. This vetting process can be daunting and time-consuming, but it’s necessary to prevent severe legal and financial repercussions from data breaches or non-compliance with regulations.
Regular security assessments and compliance checks for all applications, along with a centralized platform for managing data access and permissions, help maintain data security. Partnering with providers that have robust security protocols and compliance certifications is a strong tactic for protecting sensitive data. This proactive approach reduces risks and ensures regulatory requirements are consistently met.
4. Achieving seamless integration
Integrating multiple SaaS applications into a cohesive IT ecosystem can be challenging. Different tools often have varying APIs, data formats, and integration capabilities, making it hard to ensure smooth data flow between them. This can lead to data silos and inefficiencies that hinder otherwise seamless business operations and processes.
SOLUTION: Investing in integration platforms or middleware that facilitate seamless data exchange between SaaS applications is essential. Organizations should prioritize SaaS solutions with robust APIs and integration capabilities. Regularly updating integration strategies ensures new tools fit well into the IT ecosystem, maintaining operational efficiency and data consistency.
5. User training and adoption
Getting employees to use and adopt new SaaS applications effectively is a common yet significant challenge. With proper training, they might be able to understand new tools, which can slow productivity and hinder ROI as users fail to leverage the applications’ full capabilities.
Ongoing training and support are vital for getting the most out of your SaaS applications. Effective user education ensures employees understand how to utilize the software, reducing underutilization and frustration fully. Training programs should cater to user needs, offering initial onboarding and continuous learning opportunities.
Different users also have varying levels of technical proficiency, which affects how quickly they adapt to new applications. Providing adequate support and resources to meet these diverse needs is key since a lack of proper training programs can result in resistance to change and reliance on outdated processes.
SOLUTION: Invest in a digital adoption platform (DAP) like Whatfix. DAPs like Whatfix streamline end-user onboarding and training when implementing new software or onboarding new employees by enabling new users with in-app guidance and on-demand support. Analyze how users engage with flows and tasks to identify areas of friction and launch new in-app tutorials to overcome inefficiencies and drive process adoption. DAPs enable application owners and IT teams with:
- Interactive walkthroughs: Guide users step-by-step through new SaaS applications, facilitating hands-on learning.
- In-app guidance: Offer real-time, contextual help within the application with tooltips, pop-ups, and Smart Tips.
- Task lists: Provide customizable paths for new users to learn essential functions in a structured sequence.
- Self-help widgets: Give users on-demand access to FAQs, video tutorials, and articles without leaving the app.
- Analytics and insights: Track user interactions and provide data to adjust training programs where needed.
- Content personalization: Create personalized content tailored to different user roles and skill levels.
6. Managing software licenses across applications
Keeping track of software licenses for various SaaS applications can take time and effort. It demands meticulous attention to managing license counts, renewals, and compliance with licensing agreements. Over-licensing leads to unnecessary expenses while under-licensing can result in non-compliance and legal issues, making license management a critical aspect of SaaS management.
SOLUTION: A SaaS management platform that provides real-time insights into license usage and compliance can streamline management. Automated renewal alerts and reporting on license utilization help organizations stay compliant and optimize software investments. In contrast, regular license audits ensure your organization remains within its licensing agreements, avoiding unnecessary costs and compliance issues. By automating routine tasks like license renewals, user provisioning, and compliance checks, you boost efficiency and reduce the risk of human error. This allows your IT team to focus on more strategic initiatives.
7. Monitoring SaaS application performance
Ensuring SaaS applications perform well is crucial for meeting organizational needs and providing a positive user experience. Performance issues like slow load times, downtime, or glitches can disrupt workflows and reduce productivity. Identifying and addressing these issues promptly is essential for maintaining user satisfaction and operational efficiency.
SOLUTION: Implementing a centralized monitoring solution with real-time alerts, detailed analytics, and user-friendly dashboards can provide comprehensive insights. Regular performance reviews and proactive maintenance ensure applications run smoothly and meet organizational needs. This approach helps to identify and resolve performance issues quickly.
8. Effective vendor management
Managing relationships with multiple SaaS vendors can be complex. Each vendor has different support processes, contract terms, and service level agreements (SLAs). Coordinating support, renewals, and negotiations across vendors can be time-consuming and lead to inconsistencies in service quality, making vendor management a critical challenge in SaaS management.
Open communication with vendors informs you about new features, updates, and potential issues. This lets you quickly address problems and take advantage of new opportunities to enhance your SaaS environment. Effective vendor management ensures you get the most value from your SaaS investments while minimizing risks and disruptions.
Vendor lock-in is also a common concern. Relying too heavily on a single vendor can limit flexibility and increase risks, as significant disruptions can occur if a vendor changes its pricing model or discontinues a service. Diversifying vendors while effectively managing these relationships allows for maintaining a flexible and resilient SaaS strategy.
SOLUTION: Regular review of vendor performance and contract terms, clear communication channels, and well-defined SLAs can significantly improve service quality. Diversifying vendors to avoid lock-in and negotiating favorable terms based on usage data can enhance the overall SaaS strategy and ensure organizations maintain flexibility and resilience in their SaaS management practices.
Track SaaS usage with Whatfix Enterprise Insights and overcome areas of digital friction with Whatfix’s in-app guidance and end-user support
SaaS management isn’t limited to looking at software asset management tools, tracking licenses, and ensuring your tools comply with your use cases. It also involves ensuring that you extract as much value as possible from your software investments, including:
- Limit your employees’ software purchasing autonomy to ensure SaaS applications are no longer bought and used in a vacuum.
- Create visibility for your existing stack, suggest alternatives, and require a strong argument before employees can approve new software licenses.
- Create contextual end-user onboarding experiences to walk employees through how every product across your stack works, specific to different roles and business units.
- Provide on-demand end-user support with detailed SOPs, in-app support, step-by-step guidance, and more.
With a DAP like Whatfix, maximize your software investments with a no-code platform that allows you to analyze your digital processes and overcome friction areas by creating engaging, in-app end-user onboarding, reinforcement training, and performance support experiences such as:
- Contextual guided product tours and in-app checklists that provide new users with an overview of new SaaS investments and a task list that helps them become proficient in a tool quickly that contains role-based onboarding on key processes for different end-users. These product tours support successful SaaS change management.
- Interactive, step-by-step walkthroughs, contextual UI tooltips, and UX hotspots provide role-based support and guidance in the flow of work, reducing technology friction and providing support in the flow of work.
- Self Help resource centers that crawl and aggregate your end-user support content, SOPs, training docs, third-party resources, and videos into one embedded help center.
- Field validation that ensures end-users enter data in the right format.
- Content localization that translates UI text into 70+ languages to personalize for end-users.
This provides contextual support to reduce time-to-proficiency for new end-users, but goes far beyond standard onboarding. Use Whatfix Mirror to create replica sandbox environments of your mission-critical enterprise software to provide hands-on training to your end-users without risking live software use.
With Whatfix’s DAP and Product Analytics, analyze your digital processes to understand friction points based on user events and cohorts, and map user journeys to create optimal workflows. Use this data to influence new in-app content that creates frictionless experiences, optimizes processes, and drives technology adoption.
With Whatfix, embed Smart Tips, Flows, and Field Validations at moments of friction to improve process governance and provide guided experiences for your end-users, driving employee productivity, organizational efficiency, and enterprise software ROI.
Request a demo with Whatfix today to get started!
What Is Whatfix?
Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that provides organizations with a no-code editor to create in-app guidance on any application that looks 100% native. With Whatfix, create interactive walkthroughs, product tours, task lists, smart tips, field validation, self-help wikis, hotspots, and more. Understand how users are engaging with your applications with advanced product analytics.
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Whatfix's digital adoption platform empowers your employees, customers, and end-users with in-app guidance, reinforcement learning, and contextual self-help support to find maximum value from software.
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