In one of our recent blogs, we coined a phrase that we were pretty chuffed with: ‘The New Normal 2.0’. To catch you up on the lingo, this refers to the next step in post-lockdown life. If it were a Friends episode, it’d be called “The One Where Everyone Tried to Figure Out What to Do Next.” It’s a time for re-evaluation.
Key to navigating these tricky next steps will be understanding where cost efficiencies can be made, where manpower is being unnecessarily eaten up and which existing assets will play a role in your future set-up. As we now move into the not-quite-post-pandemic lifestyle, the same evaluations should be made of the SaaS solutions you’re using, and the ones you don’t know you’re using.
Visibility is an ongoing issue for Software Asset Management (SAM) professionals. Even before the pandemic-induced surge in SaaS onboarding, the average number of SaaS solutions per 1000 user business was a mammoth 600. That number is 50% higher than businesses expected it to be. With a SaaS app out there for almost everything, it’s too easy to accumulate solutions, particularly when your IT team aren’t the ones purchasing them.
Out of sight, but on your mind
If you only have a clouded, partial view of what solutions are in use, your users will likely claim they don’t know what’s available to them. Without full visibility into the application stack on offer, or full knowledge of why they’d use them, employees have a tendency to find, download and expense ad-hoc tools to do their job. Often these purchases will break from corporate standards regarding security and privacy and will be provided by lesser known vendors. Unfamiliarity means from a reporting perspective they’re commonly incorrectly tagged when expensed, effectively burying them from view.
With SaaS purchases often being browser-based, it’s entirely possible that they can leave zero network-footprint, making them completely invisible to IT teams unless they undertake inordinate amounts of manual investigation. Interactions with off-network solutions are a challenge to manage from security, financial and operational perspectives.
The SaaS management jigsaw
Traditional SAM tools operate a very singular discovery method which struggles to cope with the explosion of cloud services, leading to a patchy, narrow view of software usage just as organisations are onboarding more cloud-based software. Newer discovery methods attack from all angles to help shine a light on visibility blackspots and build the complete picture.
Zylo’s SaaS management tool fills in the gaps between results from existing SAM solutions and your true SaaS landscape. It delves deep into your financial records to trace hidden subscriptions, and examines utilisation statistics to find out which solutions truly earn their keep. It pieces together its findings on your SaaS set-up into a single pane of glass view that shows the whole picture at once. There are no hidden depths where results can lurk unobserved; the easy-to-digest view just presents back to you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
That’s pretty handy when the truth consists of:
1. Complete visibility of entire SaaS landscape
2. Utilisation insight for every tool
3. Revealed app rationalisation opportunities for consolidating SaaS expenditure
4. Reduced ongoing manual SaaS management with integrated, automated processes
A joined up experience for you and your users
Once you’ve got on top of what’s in your lock-up, Zylo acts as a SAM right-hand man by staying on top of your SaaS solutions on an ongoing basis. By eliminating manual processes and getting to the complete picture quicker, IT teams can overcome resource shortages and dramatically reduce time spent on tasks such as onboarding new employees, rolling-out new applications and keeping up with licence renewals.
Improved clarity for your IT team doesn’t just help your IT team, it also enhances the experience at user level. With live insight into how tools are serving your workforce, and which ones they are sourcing of their own accord, you can help drive the business forward by making sure your SaaS selection is set-up to help your employees produce their best work every day.
As businesses grow and change, Zylo’s always-on visibility allows a more flexible and responsive approach to SaaS provisioning, so you don’t lose sight of what you’ve got, whether it’s working and importantly what you’re spending on it.
Got a taste for more?
This was the final blog in our Zylo series, catch up with parts 1 and 2 for:
- Part 1: insight into exactly how Zylo works, and a breakdown of features such as the Licence Renewal calendar and Safe App Catalogue.
- Part 2: how Zylo goes all ‘undercover detective’ on SaaS spending to expose cost-consolidation opportunities from overinflated stacks. There are CSI references and everything, you’re gonna love it.
We are currently offering free Zylo demos to anyone looking to improve their SaaS management processes, so why not have a try and see how much you could save.
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