Cloud software license tracking - how and why

The global pandemic has made cloud SaaS usage a priority for many organizations, leaving them with hundreds of SaaS tools used by the employees, teams or on an enterprise level. Recent Gartner research has estimated that SaaS cloud solutions would generate more than $120 billion in revenue for 2021.

As organizations become more and more dependent on SaaS tools for everyday operations, however, they start facing a key challenge: the need to establish a reliable software license tracking process, allowing them to:

• meet all security and compliance regulations
• control the risk
• avoid unnecessary spend for unused or duplicate applications
  
  

The importance of taking action towards efficient software license tracking

Even though most of the world has gone into Covid-triggered recession, corporate financial reports are showing that SaaS spend is actually steadily increasing. With companies encouraging remote work and most employees expected to continue working from home even post-Covid, SaaS tools are now more needed than ever to guarantee continued communication and collaboration between remote workforce. From video meetings to project planning and management, the usage of SaaS tools has grown exponentially. On-premise software is quickly abandoned in favor of easy to sign up and easy to use cloud software.

But, the exploding usage of SaaS applications is making the already existing SaaS license tracking issues even worse, particularly for big organizations. Many tools are left underutilized and duplicate subscriptions are unreasonably wasting a big portion of the SaaS spend. Given the lack of centralized approval on all licenses, IT is losing visibility and control over the SaaS stack and security issues are likely to hit back.

Benefits of a SaaS License tracking platform

SaaS License tracking platforms like Viio offer huge benefits for the organization and its IT department, like:

Removing unused or duplicate functionality SaaS applications

This is one of the biggest and most considerable benefits of SaaS management applications. Nowadays companies are using hundreds of SaaS tools and many of them, particularly focusing on file sharing and storage, collaboration and communication, have overlapping functionalities. It would be a very time-consuming and unattractive task to manually review all apps from the organization’s SaaS stack, one by one, in terms of functionality, and identify the apps that overlap in features.

Instead of performing a manual, error-prone review, the AI-based Discovery functionality of Viio SaaS management system will automatically detect and highlight your duplicate functionality tools. This will save IT employees’ time and will let them focus instead on examining the terms of the app subscriptions, so only the more favorable one(s) would stay.

Eliminating subscriptions for tools that are no longer used

As an organization develops and expands, part of the tools it is using get outgrown. Staying signed up for a tool that no longer works and has been abandoned by the employees does not make sense. Thanks to Viio, obsolete, unused or rarely used tools can easily get detected based on last login date and duration of login, and action can be taken to cancel or downgrade the active subscription.

Using your available user seats in full

If employees are signing up for SaaS tools, they reduce the buying power of the organization and are generally faced with less favorable EULA terms compared to ELA terms available for enterprise-level subscriptions. With centralized license purchases, organizations can benefit from enterprise licenses with a lower cost per seat. Using a SaaS management platform, IT departments can then easily monitor the seats available within an enterprise software, the allocation of those between employees as well as the extent to which seats are being used. They can then take action to rightsize the available license seats as needed.

Managing license renewals proactively

Working with multiple SaaS tools is becoming a standard for organizations. And there is nothing wrong with it, so long as the company manages to set up a reliable license renewal process. 

Setting up even simple renewal alerts and basic reviews on the software used would help prevent expensive renewals and money poured down the drain.

Allowing employees to choose from a pre-approved stack of SaaS applications

Self-service for SaaS applications can take the burden of license renewals and reviews off the IT department’s shoulders. Such self-service is available in SaaS management platforms like Viio via the list of pre-approved applications they offer to employees. So, rather than go through IT, employees can go directly and sign into the pre-approved tool they need.

This results in faster action and more flexibility for employees and teams, while keeping IT in control of license approvals, purchases and renewals.

Having a software license tracking process in place is a must for every company

As the organizations’ SaaS spend continues to expand and work becomes more and more remote, having a SaaS management platform becomes critical. Thanks to SaaS management platforms like Viio, software license tracking is a smooth and fast process that enables easy tool adoption while keeping the spend under control.

Eager to learn more on how Viio SaaS Management can streamline the software license tracking in your own organization as well? Book a personalized demo!