Everything You Need to Know About SaaS Operations Management

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As of 2023, the SaaS space is worth over $195 billion, and the SaaS industry has increased in size by around 500% over the past seven years.

With the emergence of SaaS sprawl, have you ever felt like you were juggling too many balls at once? Especially when it comes to managing the SaaS applications your employees sign up for.

It's not surprising if you answered yes.

It is indeed difficult to keep track of all the apps at work, especially with countless apps being utilized on a regular basis.

And trying to manage it all with a spreadsheet is not a recommended or feasible practice in the long run. This is where SaaS operations management can be beneficial. It's a method to keep track of your entire SaaS stack and ensure that everyone uses them properly and securely.

SaaS Operations: What Does It Mean?

It is the operational procedure associated with discovering, purchasing, managing, and removing SaaS applications in an organization. Essentially, it is a set of techniques that allow IT leaders to manage the business's SaaS apps effectively.

This includes choosing the best SaaS apps for each department, sticking to an IT budget, controlling team and employee access to SaaS apps, automating time-consuming SaaS administration chores, securing sensitive information, and training staff on SaaS.

As businesses adopt more software tools, the management of SaaS stacks (i.e., SaaS operations) becomes increasingly critical.

What is SaaS operations management?

SaaS operations management is an IT practice focused on effectively managing, securing, and streamlining an organization's SaaS applications.

Its primary objective is to minimize inefficiencies within an organization’s SaaS portfolio and optimize the utilization of SaaS solutions. It entails a centralized system, SOM software, that tracks SaaS usage, spending, and other critical data while optimizing related operations.

Why do businesses need to optimize SaaS operations?

SaaS operations management is crucial since dealing with an increasing workload may lead IT managers to neglect details, resulting in the deployment of rogue SaaS applications without business approval and thereby leading to increased expenses and security issues.

Optimizing SaaS ops help businesses in:

• Getting maximum ROI and value of the application
• Increases productivity through automation workflows and collaboration
• Enhance user experience for employees
• Seamless integrations for easy adoption and scalability
• Improving data security and compliance.

Key components of SaaS operations management

SaaS Operations Management is vital for companies that rely on various SaaS applications. It enables them to optimize their software consumption and save money on unwanted apps. Here are some of the most important aspects of SaaS operations management:

Application visibility

SaaS operation management software can integrate with your internal systems and applications through APIs. These integrations enable SOM software to provide a comprehensive look at apps, their usage, spend data, contracts, renewals, and ROI.

100% visibility enables the IT and finance teams to see sanctioned and unsanctioned applications and how much departments have spent on each application.

SaaS usage

Organizations can maximize software consumption and save spend on idle apps with SaaS operations management. SaaSOps can aid in determining what apps are necessary for business operations and which ones can be removed by looking at usage trends and user behavior.

Automation

SaaS operations management software automates various procedures, like SaaS app procurement, provisioning, and de-provisioning. This automation saves time for the teams, allows for quicker app deployment, and enhances the overall efficiency of IT operations.

Next time, you don’t have to visit each application to provision users. You can use the workflows to provision automatically and deprovision apps whenever an employee joins or quits.

Security and Compliance

By monitoring and managing access to SaaS applications, SaaS operations management software guarantees that businesses comply with data security and privacy standards. It contains features like single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and role-based access control to reduce the risk of data breaches and maintain compliance.

Spend optimization

By offering real-time visibility into usage and spending, SaaS operations management software assists enterprises in optimizing their SaaS spending. Organizations can lower their overall expenditure on SaaS applications by identifying duplicate, redundant, and unused applications and consolidating the licenses.

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Benefits of SaaS ops management

1. SaaS spend management: By centralizing spending, businesses can eliminate unneeded applications and decrease excess costs, increasing their return on the SaaS stack.
2. Increase transparency: Knowing exactly what is going on with all of the SaaS products in a stack can be a tedious task. SaaS operations management software centralizes all of that information, allowing for significantly greater transparency into all of the tools and technology that power your organization.
3. Fast and secure onboarding and offboarding: SaaS operations management software can streamline the process, making it simple to grant access to new employees and remove access to ex-employees, which is critical for security.
4. Ensure security and compliance: SaaS operations management software makes it simple to comply with legislation like GDPR, eliminating potential fines or lawsuits.
5. Build more efficient workflows: Many SaaS products imply numerous workflows and a slew of accessibility difficulties that must be addressed. You'll be able to streamline those workflows and improve access to the tools across the organization with SaaS operations management software. As a result, you'll spend more time working and less time arguing with your tools.

How SaaS management platforms can streamline SaaS ops management

SaaS management platforms (SMPs) can assist in streamlining several SaaS apps and their operation and administration in a variety of ways, including:

SaaS visibility

SMPs provide complete insight into your SaaS ecosystem, including usage and expenses. As a result, allowing you to make educated decisions on procurement, renewal, and termination of subscriptions or licenses of apps for smooth SaaS product management. Also, this will help with efficient SaaS contract management.

Spend Optimization

SMPs aid in SaaS spend optimization by giving real-time spend data and allowing you to track and manage user/department-wise app spend in one location. This minimizes wasteful spending on unused or underutilized applications.

Procurement Workflows

SMPs streamline procurement workflows, allowing you to control the complete SaaS procurement process, from first requests to final approval.

Modern SaaS management platforms come with Slack integration, meaning you can raise purchase requests from Slack. It will trigger a complete procurement workflow on the platform and notify all the necessary stakeholders.

Employee onboarding and offboarding

Automated provisioning and deprovisioning workflows from SaaS management platforms make it easier to onboard and offboard employees. Grant employees access to the appropriate apps on their first day and remove access when they leave the firm automatically using the workflows.

Renewal Management

Renewal workflows from SMPs can make automating renewal operations easier for the team. You can use the workflows to send reminders 90 days before the renewal date; in the meantime, you can collect necessary usage data and prepare an effective renegotiation plan with the vendors.

Overcoming SaaS operation management challenges with CloudEagle

CloudEagle is a SaaS management platform that can assist enterprises in overcoming a variety of SaaS product management challenges.

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Here are the four most common SaaS app management issues and how CloudEagle may assist:

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Lack of visibility into SaaS usage and Costs‍

Keeping track of SaaS consumption and costs is one of the most challenging tasks for enterprises. Without sufficient visibility, businesses may end up overspending on underutilized applications.

CloudEagle provides enterprises with total visibility into their SaaS consumption and pricing in a single, unified dashboard. CloudEagle’s integrations will enable you to see your SaaS portfolio, how it's being used, and how much you’re spending on these applications.

Procurement

Delays in software procurement will push employees to purchase unsanctioned applications (shadow IT). Simplify your procurement process and prevent shadow IT by using the procurement workflows in CloudEagle.

Employee Onboarding and Offboarding

CloudEagle simplifies the provisioning and de-provisioning of user access to SaaS applications by automating the onboarding and offboarding processes. This guarantees that new employees have immediate access to the tools they require and that offboarded employees don't have access to sensitive data.

Missing out on renewals

One of the major reasons for increased SaaS spending is auto-renewals. CloudEagle automates the renewal process by sending timely reminders and providing real-time statistics to assist you in making informed renewal decisions.

Prevent auto-renewals in the renewal workflows of CloudEagle. Unlike other SaaS management platforms, CloudEagle doesn’t send basic renewal reminders. It’ll keep escalating the process for various stakeholders until one of them acts on it and renews the contracts.

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‍Conclusion

SaaS operations management is essential for firms that use a variety of SaaS apps. It improves total efficiency by providing complete visibility, usage and cost optimization insights, automation, and increased security and compliance. Using SaaS management software, businesses can further streamline their SaaS operations management.

In this article, you learned about the key components of SaaS ops management, its benefits, challenges, and how a SaaS management platform can help streamline SaaS operations.

CloudEagle is a comprehensive SaaS spend management platform with all the necessary features for effective SaaS ops management. So, get in touch with our experts and streamline your operations today.

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Frequently asked questions

1. What are some excellent practices for SaaS Operations Management?

Best practices for SaaS Operations Management include:

• Having a centralized inventory.
• Assessing usage and costs on a regular basis.
• Setting security and compliance regulations.

2. How do businesses get started with SaaS Operations Management?

Businesses can begin using SaaS Operations Management by completing a SaaS audit, building a centralized inventory, establishing security and compliance regulations, and getting a SaaS management software like CloudEagle.

3. How does SaaS Operations Management help businesses ensure their SaaS applications are aligned with their overall business goals and objectives?

SaaS Operations Management assists enterprises in ensuring that their SaaS applications are aligned with their overall company goals and objectives by giving visibility into application utilization, reducing costs, and identifying possibilities for process enhancement.

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