What Is SaaS Management: An Essential Guide

The usage of SaaS has accelerated at a rapid pace in the last decade. You will be surprised to know that an average company today pays for 20X more SaaS subscriptions today than what they paid half a decade ago. As of 2021, SaaS is being explored by businesses of all sizes and types. That is when the concept of SaaS management comes into the picture. 

What Is SaaS Management?

SaaS management is the business practice of proactively managing and monitoring the procedural steps of all the software as a service (SaaS) applications within a company’s portfolio. These steps refer to the purchase, onboarding the customer, distributing license, renewals, and ultimately the offboarding too. The pivotal objective of SaaS management is to lessen the risks from unmanaged and untamed technologies or tools. With the right SaaS management techniques, a company can augment the value of purchased software and enhance the efficacy of the users who install these SaaS applications.

In short, it gives a broader and deeper understanding of a business’s software stack, spending, compliance, tracking usage, and limits. Not just that, it simplifies vendor and employee management, compliance audits, and aids in maximizing your return on investments (ROI) as well. 

1. Because they are Cost-Effective in nature: SaaS tools garner a ton of attention mainly due to their convenience and relatively low cost. Since most of them are charged per subscription on a month-on-month basis, it makes the scheme pretty attractive and easy to acquire by the customers.
2. Because they scale up effectively: The best part about SaaS tools is that they can be instantly deployed throughout an organization without any stringent costs. Further, it comes with a package of needing minimal physical storage requirements, relatively low cost, and steers away from complicated deployment planning. As and when more customers need the software, you can simply buy more licenses and scale-up effectively.
3. Because they don’t require training or special knowledge: While some of the SaaS tools might call for proper training, most of them don’t require physical storage on the premises where they are deployed. These tools have been designed to be thoroughly user-friendly and eliminate the need for any specific software training.
4. Because they can be seamlessly distributed online: Another great thing about SaaS tools is that they can be distributed online. This makes it seamless to acquire, access, and distribute it as and when required. Not just the installation part but also the upgrades, newer software patches can be distributed ad deployed online itself.

Best Benefits Of SaaS Management

• Simplifies the First phase of Onboarding: It is a given that an efficient onboarding setup is crucial for any company. With SaaS management tools, the onboarding process becomes quite automated and does not need any human intervention. With this, you can be rest assured that each of the action items is completed in a timely fashion and faces no lags.
• Facilitates the best of Security and Compliance: Everything in the online market today simmers down to security. It is no point operating online if you are not secured in the first place. SaaS tools help in introducing securing and enforcing it in the right steps. A verified SaaS management approach includes taking a systematized approach to security.
• Manages Vendors Efficiently: Sometimes having comprehensive SaaS visibility is not the same as managing your vendors efficiently. Only when you deploy the right SaaS managing tool for your system do these differences tend to blur. Now, you can use the apps, and manage the vendors that sell them all at one given dashboard.
• Streamlines the final phase of Offboarding: As much as effective onboarding is critical to a business, so is offboarding as well. It helps build a culture of security and compliance, and it protects you from liability. SaaS management tools ensure developing a tightly controlled offboarding process that sees no data leaks or security breaches. As per a recent report, almost one-third of all companies have already experienced an insider threat incident. That is when a proper offboarding process is in place, dramatically decreasing the odds that your company will be vulnerable to this type of attack.

Parting Thoughts

The first and foremost step towards managing SaaS is to receive an understanding and depth of the current state of SaaS tools and applications. One of the most critical outcomes of SaaS management is developing a system of record to track and maintain all SaaS applications. Further, this makes sure that this enhances collaboration, visibility across teams, and information about the SaaS applications to reach out to the end-users as conveniently as possible. 

If you have additional questions in regards to SaaS Management, give Epic IT Consulting a call at 608-496-8660 or fill out the online form.

source: SmartKarrot