The Most Prevalent 10 SaaS Management Misconceptions That Every IT Team Must be Aware Of

SaaS Management is a business practice of proactively monitoring and measuring SaaS apps. As SaaS adoption is increasing, so do the myths about SaaS management.

SaaS was not a new catchphrase in 2022. In the past few years, the SaaS market has increased and has shown no signs of slowing down. As a result, managing SaaS apps has become challenging with time. It requires an overview of your organization's SaaS purchases and their usage. The more apps your organization procures, the more difficult it becomes to manage the SaaS landscape.

Consider how many SaaS apps your organization uses. You will need more than two hands to count on. In such cases, SaaS management plays a vital role in the organization. The primary goal is to discover and reduce risks from unmanaged apps, increase the efficiency of employees, and optimize the business.

But a surprising percentage of IT decision-makers and business executives need clarification about the management of SaaS apps. This makes the organizations hesitant to take full advantage of the SaaS features.

This post will break down the most prevalent ten SaaS management myths.

10 SaaS Management Myths that Every IT Team Needs to be Aware of

1. Know all apps used in the organizations

Most of the IT teams assume that they are entirely aware of all the apps in the organization. But it is a misconception, which is a significant reason why shadow IT exists. In addition, the increase in SaaS adoption has led employees to use applications not approved by IT teams. This also gives rise to shadow IT in the IT environment.

According to recent statistics, 80% of employees use applications that are not approved by IT teams. In addition, as more SaaS apps become available, the rise in the number of shadow IT apps is noticeable.

Sometimes, the IT-approved tools need to be aligned with the business needs, which leads to an increase in the time approved by the IT teams. Thus, employees search for efficient software to meet their needs and enhance productivity.

For example, Asana is an IT-approved tool for the marketing department in your organization. But the employees find Trello a more efficient project management tool for their work, and they need it urgently. In this case, they might not wait for the IT approvals and start using Trello as they are required to deliver a project urgently.

Unless a system like a SaaS management platform is in place to discover all the apps in the organization, you can't know all the apps. This adds security and compliance risks to your organization's data, as you are unaware of the exposure of sensitive data.

2. Must deploy agents to discover all the apps

Deploying agents is a headache for organizations to discover SaaS apps. Desktop agents or browser plugins can be deployed to monitor or track new SaaS applications. This gives data and insights which can be further analyzed to identify the SaaS apps and their usage.

On the contrary, the data gathered from these agents can give a higher number of false positives. The deploying agent approach works only for managed devices. The employees using their personal devices will fail to discover the new SaaS apps.

Using only agent or browser plugins to discover software is insufficient. Mostly, it accurately finds on-premise software and SaaS apps used only through managed devices in the organization.

The software discovery with agent approach is a challenge in bringing your own device (BYOD). It may be a mobile device or personal laptop that is used to access SaaS apps. This can bypass the agent approach and will continue using undiscovered SaaS apps.

There needs to be more than deploying agents to discover the software in the organization. To work efficiently, there should be no loophole to bypass the agent. A SaaS management platform that uses various discovery methods will be capable of identifying 100% SaaS apps in the organization.

For example, it should capture SaaS traffic from Single Sign-On (SSO) and not just desktop applications communicating via HTTP.

3. All employees use 100% of the apps

Some organizations keep renewing licenses thinking that 100% of their employees use 100% of apps. This myth wastes money as they might be paying for abandoned and redundant apps. Paying for redundant apps means they pay for more than one tool that does the same work or solves the same problem.

Similarly, when companies forget to cancel SaaS subscriptions for former employees, they pay for licenses that aren't being used. Again, this leads to both SaaS and money wastage.

The 2020 SaaS trends report shows that duplicate app subscriptions increased by 80%. This not only increases your expenses but also poses security risks.

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Unexpected SaaS spending can reduce your company's IT budget and eventually increase costs. Therefore, IT leaders should balance providing workers with the tools they need and keeping the costs in check.

Different organizations will have other ideas of what this balance looks like. But companies often need help keeping costs down because their SaaS spending doesn't sound right.

IT teams need to grasp the whole vision of their applications, what value their employees are getting out of those applications, and how those applications affect their security and compliance standards.

Keep an eye on the costs of apps and analyze how you use tools.

When you have a clear image of all the SaaS applications that are being utilized across your organization, the next step is to examine the usage patterns. This will allow you to identify areas where usage is higher or lower than expected and compare that information to how employees utilize the SaaS apps.

When IT is juggling many SaaS programs, it can be quite time-consuming to keep track of SaaS licenses and their usage. Too often, teams rely on more than one spreadsheet to track this data.

If you want to streamline your license administration and optimize SaaS usage, consider implementing a SaaS Management Platform (SMP). This will result in IT teams efficiently monitoring SaaS usage and taking initiatives that promote the company's growth.

4. External groups don't use the software in the organization

It is a myth that external groups or employees outside the organization do not use the software in your organization. External groups (consultants, partners, vendors, customers, etc.) use your organization's apps for various purposes, like collaborating with your internal employees, customer support, etc.

For instance, if one has outsourced their IT tasks to Managed Service Providers (MSPs), it becomes necessary to get regular IT tasks updates.

This in turn, becomes tedious responding to emails when one has to make immediate decisions on some changes. The organizations should give access to their communication channels like Slack for MSPs to communicate with the associated department.

However, there are risks associated with such collaboration, which can be avoided by adopting a centralized solution that will help you manage external groups and access sensitive information in the organization.

5. If I am using a global SaaS app, I can sleep in peace

Are SaaS apps safe to use? This is the most frequently asked question. Organizations want their internal and external users to securely access data and SaaS apps. So the answer is, YES, SaaS is safe, but managing and tracking all the SaaS apps you use is necessary.

Nowadays, the most common misconception is that everything is stored on the cloud and it has its own security measures. This makes it safe to depend on the service and you won't have to put your own set of rules and protocols in place.

SaaS applications have become an appealing target for malicious attackers due to the sensitive data stored on these systems and the understanding that the security of SaaS apps is less rigid than that of other application types.

You have to be responsible for your own safety and cannot rely on someone else's security policy to cover you. Your team is in charge of your data, so you need to be in charge of your security policies.

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In the well-known shared responsibility model, the end-user organization is responsible for the data security that they position into the cloud as the end-user organization is a cloud customer. However, when it comes to the security of cloud-native infrastructure, it is essential to understand that as an end user, the organization is responsible for managing the SaaS security.

On the contrary, many alternative ways to protect your SaaS security exist, but most organizations fail to implement them.

Many SaaS programs should store private data as users typically have several options for sharing and modifying file permissions. Further, security issues also occur when IT offers access to employees and fails to revoke them when they depart from the firm.

Moreover, to secure your organization's SaaS apps, it is necessary to identify all the SaaS apps and have an accurate report about all the usages of SaaS. These insights and detection make it possible for security teams to recognize any data threat, such as malicious data access. Once identified, you can analyze it accurately and make changes accordingly.

In addition, a SaaS management solution in place will help you identify security risks and prevent data loss. Be proactive with security standards and follow data regulations before your organization faces any negative consequences.

6. Software cost optimization is one time

The primary goal of software cost optimization is cost-saving without compromising productivity. However, there is a common misunderstanding about the nature of IT cost optimization: it is a one-time deal. Still, IT cost requires regular optimization of the SaaS Cost stack.

The process needs proper planning of the transition's timing to avoid disruptions like partner talks and internal growth projects. These are all essential to the smooth running of an organization.

Optimizing costs is not a problem that can be fixed immediately. It is a time-consuming process to decide what to keep and what to discard. Therefore, reducing the price tag of your IT infrastructure should be an ongoing task. The suggested three-step approach is as follows:

• Measure
• : First, you should decide which products you want to optimize. Figure out which products you use often and which ones you don't.
• Analyzing
• : The decision-making process will be based on how the measuring reports are looked at. When making a choice, you should be realistic and creative. Know which products to keep and which ones to get rid of, to get the best results.
• Refine expenditures
• : Implementing the optimization comes as the final step. Implement all of the required information, solutions, plans, processes, and decisions to achieve the highest possible level of cost efficiency in IT.

​​The optimization of the IT budget does not end here. It goes in circles. It is recommended that the monitoring of IT assets be applied once more in order to determine which solutions were successful and which ones still require improvement.

When companies attempt to optimize their IT costs effectively, they typically arrive at a point where they can manage their IT assets efficiently.

7. Chargebacks are chaotic and manual

Chargebacks are tough for teams to manage since it is difficult for them to allocate costs to specific teams when several groups utilize the same software.

To ensure fairness in cost allocation, chargeback relies on several IT indicators. Therefore, there is a constant need to balance the system's accuracy and the effort required to collect the necessary data.

Expenditures on a single line item can add up quickly and affect numerous departments. Thus, accurate utilization statistics from the IT department is essential to allocate costs fairly.

On the contrary, when an organization starts using IT chargeback, it can expect to see significant changes in awareness, culture, and accountability, such as:

• There is more responsiveness as IT costs and usage are accounted for with better accuracy. Chargeback lets people see how much they are spending and how costs are regulated.
• Better financial management of IT, as groups become more clear about how much their IT usage and business decisions cost. With chargeback, customers are more interested in and invested in the costs of delivering IT as a service.
• A better understanding of how IT helps the organization's business. It is not just a cost but is seen as adding real value to a business.
• Controlling IT costs is now up to the business units, which are now responsible for how they use IT.
• Making sure that IT operations and spending are in line with business needs. It is no longer a separate cost that is kept different from the rest of the business. Instead, it is integrated into planning, strategy, and operations.

IT chargeback is a way to bill internal users (like departments or functional units) for their IT services. Instead of putting all IT costs under the IT department, a chargeback program gives the costs of services, hardware, software, and maintenance to the business units that use them.

For instance, cloud computing has put businesses in place to explain how much it costs to run a firm. As a result, IT budgets can be cut by a significant amount with cloud options. This puts pressure on IT teams to improve their cost modeling to either stop a cloud transition or prove its worth. In these situations, improvements in accountability and efficiency can save money and make chargeback a better option.

Companies that take on the \"follow the money\" approach of chargeback and rely on open data are more likely to see extensive and efficient IT results. With IT chargeback, efficiency in the data center and other IT resources is maximized as standard practice.

The requirement for further automation and integrated monitoring is another way in which a chargeback model contributes to an organization's growth and development.

You no longer need to manage chargebacks manually, as, Instead, chargeback automation has made it possible for chargebacks to be answered automatically.. These tools are meant to help organizations handle a wide range of possible chargeback situations without examining each.

8. Renewals are always incremental

Renewals are only sometimes incremental. If the renewals are planned proactively and rightly prioritized, then they will allow you to optimize by allocating existing unused licenses or deprovision them. It is essential to know that not all SaaS apps are critical to the business. With numerous upcoming renewals, it is crucial to prioritize the ones that will maximize the investment.

You need to complete your renewal dates in organizations. But missing the dates means missing the opportunity to analyze and losing time for strategic negotiations. Being proactive with your renewals will allow you to evaluate and prepare while avoiding the costs associated with missed renewals.

Many SaaS tools are auto-renewed. Keeping a record of all the renewal information in an automated SaaS renewal solution will notify you or the respective SaaS owner in advance. This way, you will have sufficient time to prepare for negotiations with the SaaS vendors, and you can then decide if you want to continue using the app further.

Tracking your renewals will give you the best value for your investment. The data collected from automated renewal solutions will help you reduce your SaaS spending. In addition, you will be able to plan your renewals based on SaaS usage data and decide whether to cancel or downgrade your subscriptions.

Cancellation of a SaaS app subscription is easy if there is nothing to lose. On the other hand, downgrading to a suitable license tier requires an in-depth analysis of SaaS app renewals and usage data. The proper research and decision can save you a lot of money.

9. Only IT admin can provision and deprovision access

Every week, a growing company might hire 10, 20, or even 50 new employees, each of which will need different levels of access to various tools and systems. Gradually adding users to each system reduces productivity and takes time away from more important work.

It is a good practice for IT teams to withdraw an employee's access to all tools and systems as soon as they leave their position.

Many organizations assign the task of provisioning and deprovisioning access to IT admins. Whereas it is not true that only an IT admin can carry out access provision and deprovision. You can automate both processes using any automation tool available. This will ensure accuracy and reduce the effort taken to carry out the tasks. .

Moreover, the automated user provisioning and deprovisioning will take immediate action to create and manage accounts. As a result, it will reduce the delay and mitigate risks. When an employee leaves the organization, the automated deprovisioning will revoke access, prevent the data, and restore it. This further eliminates the risk of data breaches and data loss.

Managing user accounts and giving access to a new user can be tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming for an IT admin. A system like a SaaS management platform can automate manual tasks and increase accuracy. In addition, the system will reduce possible human errors like overprovisioning or underprovisioning.

With a SaaS management tool, you can easily connect to other tools like Okta or Active Directory and automate the process of creating user accounts that give users the right level of access.

The solution can make the onboarding and offboarding process effective. It reduces the holdback on new joiners and removes access from the offboarding employees with a single click. Furthermore, since the employees leaving the organization will lose access to the apps and data, the IT admin need not do it manually and focus on their work.

For example, when you are deprovisioning apps for an employee leaving the organization, the system can automatically revoke access with a single click. The IT admin need not check for each app used by the employee.

10. Employees can only raise tickets or send emails to request for an application

Often, the employees raise tickets or send emails requesting an application. On the contrary, this is not true in every case. In today's SaaS world, an employee can request access to a new SaaS app from a pre-configured list of apps.

The pre-configured list of apps is of those that are approved by IT admins. This list helps the employees easily access the apps without raising tickets or sending emails. Also, it eliminates the risk of shadow IT.

Additionally, the list of apps will show app ownership information. This information will make it easy for users to request directly from the application owner. Moreover, it will reduce the workload of IT support instances, cost, and time to resolution.

In the world of SaaS, new SaaS apps are being added to the IT environment every day. With a SaaS management system, the employees can access the apps of their choice which will meet their requirements. The system will do the job of requesting access quickly. Also, the apps listed in the system will reduce the delay time of the employees.

Use Zluri to Manage Your SaaS Stack

SaaS must be managed with an unlimited number of apps and data. A complete solution like a SaaS management platform closes down all the SaaS management misconceptions.

A SaaS management platform, like Zluri, can discover, track, and manage your organization's SaaS apps. It develops and operates a centralized hub for all the cloud-based applications, allowing you to maintain control over your purchase, renewal, and disposal of SaaS. Additionally, it increases your level of security and compliance.

With Zluri, employees can also request apps from the employee app store, as it reduces the waiting time for employees and streamlines the provisioning process.