Who Should Own the Enterprise SaaS Management Strategy?

SaaS is Easy to Purchase but Hard to Manage

The “Internet Trends” report from Mary Meeker is full of data points that can be applied in a number of different ways. At Zylo, we were most intrigued with “The Cloud” section of the report. Evidence of the continued importance placed on the Cloud and future growth is exactly why we built Zylo and we believe that the Cloud is the future for enterprise software.

SaaS Applications Aren’t Just Purchased by IT

According to the report, employees are using hundreds, and in some verticals, more than 1,000 cloud-based applications in enterprise companies. The report includes data that shows that Marketing, HR, and Collaboration services are the largest categories of cloud services in use.

Now that SaaS purchase decisions are decentralized across the enterprise, it’s harder than ever to track every application. In our conversations with enterprise companies, we find that IT always has a pulse on the largest, most strategic applications and while they care about the entire landscape, it is often not possible for them to manage.

RELATED: Enterprise SaaS Management Benchmarks: State of Enterprise SaaS Management 2019

We also find that Procurement does prioritize visibility of all applications, but sometimes finds out about new applications after they are purchased or when an auto-renewal surprises the team.

Beyond Just Tracking Spend, What’s the Value of Each SaaS Application?

The majority of enterprises don’t have a single department that has visibility into all of the SaaS and cloud applications in use. Lack of awareness not only poses a risk on the security side but a huge opportunity to put a strategy in place to manage one of the fastest-growing spend categories. IT and Procurement working together to solve the SaaS management challenge is the most successful partnership that we see across our customers.

Once the system of record is in place to discover and manage all SaaS applications, the enterprise can determine active utilization of each application and collect employee feedback to ensure each application delivers the intended value. That’s when strategic SaaS optimization planning has a meaningful impact across the enterprise.

So, Who Should Own the SaaS Management Strategy?

Knowing that there are hundreds of SaaS and Cloud applications in use across enterprise companies, it is a category of software that can’t be ignored. Both IT and Finance have a role in managing the software from a security and financial perspective. SaaS applications have changed the way software is purchased, and Zylo is changing the way SaaS applications are managed.