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Checklist: Provisioning SaaS Apps for New Hires

August 2, 2019 in Employee Lifecycle, SaaS Management

An effective software provisioning process is key to success for your organization’s new hires. But it’s often a messy process for those involved. Having a system in place ensures that you won’t have employees locked out of key tools, and that your new hires will be contributing to your teams as quickly as possible.

Today, even small businesses use dozens of software tools and each one is used by various different employees with different access levels. Provisioning that access is its own process. We’ll walk through effective provisioning in this article.

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SaaS Vendor Renewal Process: A Checklist for IT

July 31, 2019 in SaaS Management

The number of SaaS apps within organizations has been growing for years, rising from just a handful at the start of the decade to today, when the average 250+ employee organization uses over 120 apps. Tracking when subscriptions renew is difficult and dispersed. Some companies are great at notifying you, some aren’t, and you may not hear about a renewal until just a few days before the deadline. That’s why you need a simple, repeatable renewal process that you can maintain on your own.

This checklist covers all the necessary steps in your vendor renewal process to ensure you have the right tools, are not wasting budget, and maintain your data security.

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How Cloud-Native Companies Manage Their SaaS Apps

July 26, 2019 in SaaS Management

Almost 10 years ago, Marc Andreesen wrote that “software is eating the world.” Today it’s as true as ever. And, with the rise of SaaS (software as a service) it’s become even easier to access the software your business needs. Today, SaaS plays an indispensable role for startups and multi-billion dollar businesses alike. We live in an age of the Cloud-Native company and the SaaS-first business, and that isn’t changing.

Read on to learn how the most tech-forward companies are handling SaaS.

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The SaaS Vendor Approval Process Made Easy: A Checklist

July 24, 2019 in SaaS Management

Vendor approvals can be time-and-energy consuming if you don’t have a well defined process from the very start. Here’s a brief SaaS vendor approval checklist that will help guide your process and make sure you’re getting the best price, maintaining data security, and keeping necessary records as you bring a new vendor and product on board.

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Orphaned Subscriptions: The SaaS Problem You’re Unaware Of

July 19, 2019 in SaaS Management

Over the last decade, business IT has changed significantly. Computing has become more distributed, portable, and personal due to the popularity of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model of distribution. Previously, IT would purchase a software product and own the installation process across company infrastructure. Now, team leaders (or even individual team members) often select, purchase, and install the software tools they need on their own.

Chart of SaaS Spend by Department

While this flexibility is healthy for productivity and keeping a business moving, the chaos of dozens or hundreds of individual SaaS apps with separate billing owners can be costly or even dangerous for businesses.

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Five Important Questions To Ask About Your Business’s SaaS Tools

July 9, 2019 in SaaS Management, SaaS Spend, SaaS Trends, Security

SaaS Today: More Popular Than Ever.

SaaS usage is accelerating at a rapid pace across businesses of all sizes and types. In fact, the average company pays for 20 times more SaaS subscriptions today than they did five years ago, and uses three times more free SaaS products than paid apps. SaaS has taken root across all functions and departments.

Impressively, non-engineering SaaS spend rose from about 10% in 2010 to over 80% today. Currently, 38% of companies work almost entirely on SaaS. Experts predict that in the next two years that number will go up to 73%, and the SaaS market will reach $76 billion.
Chart of SaaS Spend by Department

More Software = More Chaos.

There is a downside, however: Often, as SaaS tools begin to take hold within an organization, added complexity, lack of visibility across apps and teams, redundant tools and subscriptions, and concerns about data security become more common.

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What is Shadow IT? Answers to Common Questions.

July 2, 2019 in SaaS Management, Security, Shadow IT

A visualization of shadow IT

Shadow IT Explained

Shadow IT is the use of IT hardware or software by an individual without the knowledge of IT within the organization.

With the rapid proliferation of mobile devices and cloud-based services, IT has moved from being a tightly controlled environment to being an open environment with a great deal of stakeholders and movement. Users have become comfortable downloading and using apps and services from the cloud to assist them in their work, and will do so with or without company approval.

According to Cisco in 2016, 80% of end users use software not cleared by IT, 83% of IT staff admit to using unsanctioned software or services, and only 8% of all enterprises actually know the scope of shadow IT within their organization. And shadow IT has only grown since then.
SaaS management software can help by providing both visibility and control of apps throughout the organization.

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