Six steps towards successful SaaS management

From the first-generation SaaS to a skyrocket-speed ecosystem

The first-generation of SaaS appeared in early 1990’s. Since that time, SaaS has significantly shifted towards a modern business solution with high visibility throughout entire company. What’s more, SaaS became a skyrocket-speed growing ecosystem, where today nearly 38 % of companies work almost entirely on SaaS, and 51 % of organizations run most of their operations using SaaS applications. It is not surprising, that SaaS companies, with healthy balance of growth and profits, are currently considered as one of the hottest areas to invest for many years from now.

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Re-thinking the way of your digital operations management

SaaS tools and utilities are truly boosting all your company’s departments. On the other hand, or just because, you will find out soon the importance of re-thinking the way of your company’s digital operations management. What does it mean? Simply adjust the old system or build up a new one, SaaS-friendly management. This can help you to better understand “who is using what and why”, and thus achieve from your new digital ecosystem the most valuable information.

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Six key essentials for your successful SaaS management

If you want to have a well balanced and efficient SaaS digital operations management setup, you should face and follow at least six key essentials first, no matter you are an enterprise company with about 1 000 of employees or brand new start-up consisting of three people:

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1. Identify key persons for IT functions

You need to know who is responsible for all renewals, licences or budgets. If you identify SaaS usage across your company’s departments, you will get powerful data on your side, what confirms the well known truth: “you cannot manage, what you cannot measure”.

2. Gain individual users portfolios

Capture all information on who is using what and why, only then you will be able to make your SaaS management truly effectively work. You can also encourage your employees to provide feedback on the apps usage. Meeting specific use cases may help your organization to track and drive adoption of SaaS tools.

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3. Get the right feedback on spend

This part is essential, because if you want to really understand your business and financial flows, you have to know, how much money you spend on SaaS tools – either in total, or separately. You should keep track of vendors too, when adding more users, upgrading features or due vendor’s consolidation, which can also bend your expenses.

4. Indicate wastage, overlaps or under-utilized capabilities

Answer yourself, if your organization really needs to use all of the tools and apps, or if there is any possibility to remove duplication, cut subscriptions or vise versa rethink under-utilized capabilities. You always need to have a strategic plan for governing SaaS apps, what helps you to manage costs too.

5. Remember security threats

Think about security issues as well, because every time you let vendors/or third party servers sneak into your digital house, no matter paid or for free, you have to know how is your data stored, handled and how does the security system across the entire app looks like. It is also good to watch, how your employees set their passwords or share accounts, not only during day-to-day communication, but also when off-boarding.

6. Highlight compatibility with new digital landscape

Companies operate more and more often not only regionally, but also nationally and globally, which entails adapting to concrete landscape requirements and regulations too (e. g. GDPR). You should also be aware of the origin of apps owners, what are new apps admission processes or be able to track managed versus unmanaged application usage.

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Read more on Viio SaaS Management features.