Get Visibility & Insights into Your SaaS Inventory to Realize Business Outcomes

Before starting your SaaS Management program, you must identify the business outcomes you hope to achieve—and how they roll into your company-wide objectives. These outcomes should be time-bound, quantifiable, specific, achievable, and relevant. By establishing clear, measurable goals, you can confidently build and scale a data-driven SaaS Management strategy.

The first outcome our customers often focus on is gaining visibility and insights into their entire SaaS inventory. It’s also the first step outlined in the Enterprise SaaS Management Framework, as it sets the foundation for your entire program. In this blog, we’ll explore the definition of this outcome, why it’s important, and the tactics used to achieve it.

Gaining Clarity into Your SaaS Portfolio

As author Jeff Olson said, “Sometimes you need to slow down to go fast.” There’s never been a more perfect quote to describe starting your SaaS Management program. It’s natural to want to jump in and see quick results. But if you slow down just enough and get the right foundation in place first, those results will come quickly. Obtaining visibility and insights into all of your software portfolio is that foundation.

Defining SaaS Inventory Visibility and Insights as a Business Outcome

What does it really mean to get visibility and insights into your SaaS inventory?

Achieving full visibility into your SaaS portfolio means understanding exactly what applications are in use and by whom, how much is being spent, and how effectively those tools are utilized. A comprehensive inventory provides the data you need to optimize software investments, improve operations, and reduce risks across the organization.

It’s also not a one-time event. Because SaaS is constantly entering the business (7 new apps per month on average), ongoing discovery is essential so that the data you have isn’t a static point in time.

Driving visibility and insights is also critical cross-functionally, as SaaS Management typically involves stakeholders from IT, Software Asset Management, and Procurement. Without centralized visibility, collaboration and buy-in can suffer.

Why Visibility and Insights Are Important

Without a complete view of SaaS usage, financial, operational, and security risks go unaddressed. Gartner emphasizes this in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SaaS Management Platforms:

• Organizations that fail to centrally manage SaaS life cycles remain five times more susceptible to cyber incidents or data loss due to incomplete visibility into SaaS usage and configuration. 
• Companies that lack centralized oversight overspend on SaaS by at least 25% due to unused entitlements and redundant tools.

Understand SaaS Spending

Financial inefficiencies quickly compound when organizations lack visibility into their SaaS investments. Unchecked expense spend from shadow IT, duplicate contracts for the same tool, and unnecessary license purchases all contribute to wasted budget. The average company spends $49M annually on SaaS, making cost optimization a key driver for achieving full inventory visibility.

Identify Operational Inefficiencies

Visibility also highlights gaps in your processes, such as purchasing, license reclamation, or renewal management. Here are a few examples:

• Purchasing: High expense spend can indicate a lack of centralized purchasing controls or enforcement of governance.
• License reclamation: Low utilization and adoption can indicate opportunities to use automation for license reclamations.
• Renewal management: Scattered contract and renewal dates make it easy for subscriptions to be missed. 

Address Security & Compliance Risks

Incomplete SaaS visibility can leave your organization exposed to unknown security and compliance risks. A lack of oversight can result in unauthorized user access, risky apps sitting in your stack, and unknown compliance violations. 

Visibility has never been more important to proactively monitoring your environment and enforcing governance policies. For instance, our data shows that, for the average SaaS portfolio, 51% of applications have a “Poor” or “Low” risk score. This is based on our partner Netskope’s Cloud Confidence Index (CCI), a database of cloud apps that measures an app’s enterprise readiness, considering its security, auditability, and business continuity.

3 Tactics to Drive SaaS Inventory Visibility and Insights

Achieving complete SaaS visibility requires a strategic approach with the right tactics. At Zylo, we help organizations implement proven strategies that enhance inventory visibility and insights. Let’s examine the three tactics you can use to achieve this outcome and scale your program.

Tactic #1: Establish a SaaS System of Record

Companies today have hundreds—and even thousands—of applications in their portfolios. The average portfolio contains 265 applications, while that number jumps to 660 for large enterprise organizations. Tracking them in a spreadsheet is not only time consuming and tedious, it’s often incomplete and inaccurate. That’s why step one to getting visibility and insights into your portfolio is to establish a SaaS system of record.

Step One: Discover All Apps

Establishing a SaaS system of record is essential for centralizing all of the applications, spending, and usage data across an organization. It begins with comprehensive, always-on discovery, ensuring that all apps, not just IT-owned, are accounted for. If discovery is a moment in time, your system of record will quickly become out of date.

Step Two: Onboard Your Apps

Once you have a list of all your apps, you need to onboard all the data critical to managing them. This is called application onboarding. It includes: 

• Ingesting contracts
• Setting up usage integrations
• Adding any business-critical information

Without an up-to-date record, it’s impossible to holistically address risks such as unchecked spending, security vulnerabilities, and operational inefficiencies. 

Tactic #2: Select Top-Priority Applications

The saying “You can’t boil the ocean” is an appropriate mantra to bring to your SaaS Management program. Achieving full SaaS visibility is ideal. But managing every application at once is unrealistic. When everything is a priority, nothing is. 

To obtain quick wins and create a foundation for scaling your program, focus on the most impactful applications first. Prioritizing applications will allow your team to take meaningful action, solve business problems, and demonstrate measurable value to executives.

How to Select Top-Priority Apps

Top-priority apps are whatever you deem the most important to manage. Often, companies will use the following criteria to determine those priority apps—or Tier One apps.

• Centrally managed by IT
• Core, strategic solutions used widely by all employees
• Apps with the highest spend
• Apps with upcoming renewals

By concentrating on these high-impact tools, your team can proactively manage renewals, optimize usage, and align spend forecasts with SaaS renewal cycles, ultimately driving long-term savings and predictability.

Tactic #3: Identify Application Redundancy

Application redundancy occurs when multiple tools serve the same function, leading to unnecessary costs and inefficiencies. In many organizations, redundancy is widespread. Our data shows that, on average, companies maintain 14.2 online training applications, 9.9 project management tools, and 9.5 team collaboration platforms. These overlapping applications alone account for potential cost savings ranging from $477,000 to $2.8M annually.

To understand the scale of redundancy within your portfolio, you need to understand what apps you have, their functionality, and how they’re categorized. Without this information, it’s difficult to identify duplicate and overlapping applications and eliminate unnecessary expenses. 

A SaaS Management Platform simplifies this process by categorizing applications based on functionality, providing clear visibility into where consolidation opportunities exist. Organizations can streamline their portfolio and reduce waste by applying strategies outlined in software redundancy management, implementing processes to reduce redundant SaaS applications, and ensuring a data-driven approach to eliminating unnecessary tools.

How Zylo Helps You Achieve SaaS Inventory Visibility and Insights

Maximizing SaaS visibility requires more than just identifying applications—it demands a structured approach, automated discovery, and expert guidance. Zylo empowers organizations with AI-powered insights, centralized data, and industry-leading expertise to ensure full control over their SaaS environment. By leveraging these capabilities, companies can reduce risk, optimize costs, and scale their SaaS Management program with confidence.

Continuous, Comprehensive AI-Powered Discovery

Zylo’s AI-powered discovery provides an automated, always-on approach to uncovering all SaaS applications across an organization. As a result, it: 

• Eliminates manual tracking
• Reduces reliance on incomplete expense reports
• Ensures teams have an up-to-date record of every application in use

One of the biggest challenges in SaaS Management is identifying shadow IT—the applications purchased outside of IT oversight. Without visibility into these applications, companies risk security vulnerabilities, compliance gaps, and uncontrolled spending. Zylo’s AI-driven discovery scans financial transactions, single sign-on (SSO) systems, and direct integrations to ensure that no application goes unnoticed.

Ongoing discovery is essential, as new applications frequently enter the environment without centralized approval. With the average SaaS portfolio growing by 33% annually, it’s not enough to take a one-time inventory. 

By leveraging AI-driven SaaS discovery, organizations can continuously track new software purchases, monitor usage, and take action before redundant or underutilized applications lead to unnecessary costs.

“Automation is necessary in that data collection step. Once you have the initial inventory, an ongoing inventory has to continue. At ModMed, we’ve leveraged the Zylo platform to automate a lot of the management and ongoing maintenance of our program to understand if we have enough licenses, get ready for that renewal, find redundancy, etc.”

— Trenton Cycholl, VP, Business at ModMed

Centralized Data in a System of Record

A fragmented SaaS environment leads to disconnected data, making it difficult to track spending, usage, and contracts. Zylo centralizes all application data in a single, reliable system of record, consolidating key insights to drive better decision-making. It aggregates data from expense management platforms, finance teams, and IT systems, creating a unified source of truth for the entire SaaS ecosystem.

Zylo’s system of record provides:

• A comprehensive inventory of all SaaS applications, including purchase history, ownership, and renewal dates
• Automated alerts to notify teams of upcoming renewals, inactive applications, and duplicate software purchases
• Real-time dashboards and reporting to track usage, spending, and compliance risks
• Seamless integrations with finance, IT, and security platforms to ensure continuous updates

By centralizing SaaS data, organizations can move beyond reactive management and proactively optimize their portfolio. A clear view of the SaaS stack allows teams to prioritize applications, identify redundant tools, and optimize costs through data centralization.

Industry-Leading Expertise

With nearly a decade of experience, Zylo has pioneered the SaaS Management industry, establishing a proven approach to managing SaaS effectively. The Enterprise SaaS Management Framework provides organizations with a structured methodology for improving visibility, governance, and cost optimization.

Zylo works alongside clients to execute strategies using an outcomes blueprint, leveraging playbooks tailored to each stage of SaaS optimization. These playbooks guide organizations through:

• Building a system of record to gain a complete view of the SaaS environment
• Implementing continuous discovery to track new applications and eliminate shadow IT
• Managing key applications and renewals to optimize spending and prevent unnecessary purchases
• Reducing redundancy to eliminate overlapping tools and consolidate contracts
• Enhancing security and compliance by monitoring application risk and enforcing governance

Zylo’s influence in the SaaS Management space has been recognized as a market leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SaaS Management Platforms. The company’s commitment to education and thought leadership ensures that organizations have access to the latest best practices, helping them stay ahead of the rapidly evolving SaaS landscape.

By combining AI-powered discovery, centralized data, and expert guidance, Zylo enables organizations to take control of their SaaS portfolio, reduce costs, and drive better business outcomes.

Achieve Complete SaaS Visibility with Zylo

Gaining full visibility and insights into your SaaS inventory goes beyond tracking applications. It’s about taking control of your entire SaaS strategy. Without a clear understanding of what software is in use, how much is being spent, and where security risks exist, organizations struggle to optimize costs, reduce redundancy, and make informed decisions.

Zylo’s AI-powered discovery, centralized system of record, and industry-leading expertise give businesses the insights they need to proactively manage their SaaS environment. With continuous monitoring, automated data aggregation, and strategic playbooks, Zylo helps organizations eliminate blind spots, cut unnecessary costs, and drive real business value from their SaaS investments.

Take the first step toward smarter SaaS Management. Explore Zylo’s Inventory Management solution today.