Dive Brief:
- When analyzing the most challenging aspects of managing SaaS applications, IT leaders are most concerned about shadow IT, security, configuration issues and duplicate applications, according to Snow Software data.
- More than 2 in 5 IT leaders took issue with employees adding new SaaS applications without notifying IT and struggle to manage the security of SaaS applications. Limiting the amount of duplicate SaaS applications and identifying configuration issues were other top challenges for 2 in 5 IT leaders, according to the report.
- More than half of IT leaders said if budget, resources and time were not a factor, they would implement SaaS application buying training for all employees responsible for purchasing, according to the report which surveyed 1,000 IT leaders from large organizations of 500 or more employees in the U.S. and U.K.
Dive Insight:
As the impacts of record-setting inflation cause businesses to have lower spending power, CIOs have to do more with less. On top of that, many companies struggle to control app redundancy, unnecessary spending and complexity from the expansion of enterprise SaaS apps.
While companies grapple with the best way to address these challenges, the growing number of enterprise SaaS applications causes increased security concerns.
One way that many CIOs are optimizing software spend is by reworking vendor contracts. More than half of IT executives said their organization does not track SaaS usage to align contracts with software needs, according to a Flexera report, which surveyed 500 IT leaders.
By coming to the table with data from economic indexes, earnings call statements and other documentation, CIOs have the foundation to fight back if IT vendors opportunistically raise prices.
Some companies have implemented software asset management teams to avoid purchasing new software licenses through the reuse of existing ones. The adoption of such teams could produce more visibility and awareness of SaaS applications for IT teams and their leaders if used correctly.
