Software is no longer just a part of the workplace: it is the workplace. Learn the solution to shadow IT and application expansion now.
In 2022, there is one concern that keeps CIOs up at night more than any other: security. According to Foundry’s 2022 State of the CIO questionnaireupgrading IT and data security to mitigate business risk is the top priority for CIOs, and security enhancements are the top factor increasing the technical budget.
It’s not hard to understand why. Since March 2020, IT departments have made efforts to accommodate the accelerated shift of businesses to hybrid and remote work models in response to the pandemic. With that shift to remote, software became from just one element – albeit an extremely important element – from the workplace to the workplace itself. That transition brought with it an overwhelming amount of requests from both departments and individual employees to use new digital tools. It also led to the growth of “shadow IT” – when different departments or teams buy and use apps without IT approval or knowledge.
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This problem of “SaaS sprawl” – an uncontrolled proliferation of both authorized and unauthorized apps – has clear and significant implications for a company’s security. But the consequences of a company overloaded with software don’t stop there. On multiple levels, from hindering productivity and collaboration to stunting growth and deteriorating employee turnover, SaaS expansion poses a clear and distinct threat to businesses and their operations.
More software, more problems
When a company’s internal app suite becomes bloated, it puts an unnecessary financial burden on the organization. Today, the average enterprise company has more than 270 apps in its portfolio and spends more than $4 million annually on SaaS products. Too many apps means too few employees are using them in the intended way, which in turn means a company is nowhere near realizing the ROI from its software suite.
First, there’s the problem of duplicate apps – apps that serve the same purpose or perform the same function. Companies now have an average of 3.6 such apps that they pay for. In addition to the obvious wasteful spending that the presence of duplicate apps indicates, it also hurts a business’s performance in less immediate but still significant ways.
Think about employee productivity. If a company has two or more apps in its suite that serve the same purpose, individuals and teams are likely using different apps to perform the same tasks, or tasks that are part of the same workflow. This inherently hinders collaboration, because it means that employees have less visibility and understanding of what their colleagues are doing and how.
It also leaves employees vulnerable to confusion and frustration about what is, in fact, the right app to use in a given situation. Companies need to be extra careful here. As the workplace has shifted to digital spaces, software now plays a vital role in shaping the employee experience. And employees who feel confused and overwhelmed by a sprawling app portfolio are at greater risk of churning. If the so-called Great layoff As the business world continues to rage, companies must take every possible step to cultivate a positive employee experience and keep their teams happy. That means keeping a portfolio that’s out of control and putting employees at the center of business technical decisions.
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How to stop the sprawl of SaaS?
As we have seen, business leaders are under a lot of pressure to minimize employee turnover. They are also more under scrutiny from investors and other stakeholders for delivering ROI on the software they have spent so much on. And yet too many companies don’t have a sophisticated way of understanding what software helps employees or what applications employees even use.
Fortunately for them, there is a way forward, and it starts with a digital adoption platform. These are platforms layered on top of other software products that provide context, guidance, and support to users in navigating the front-end product. At the same time, they provide IT and business technology teams with robust back-end analytics to understand workflow across apps and over time.
Once IT understands how work is done today, it can plan for future goals, such as eliminating underused and/or redundant apps, streamlining workflows or driving governance, and support employees as they work toward those goals with custom capabilities. -app guidance and support. In short, digital adoption platforms show business tech teams which software investments drive success and how to use that knowledge to create the most optimal software plan. They will then be able to overcome the sprawl of SaaS once and for all.
Tatyana Mamut, SVP of New Products at pendo, is a transformative Silicon Valley leader driving innovation by deeply understanding customers and leading through empathy. She is a serial entre/intrapreneur and builds successful products at Amazon, Salesforce, Nextdoor and IDEO. She has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from UC Berkeley and a BA in Economics from Amherst College and lives in San Francisco with her husband and two daughters.
