For yet another year, IT says, “We’re too busy. Next year we’ll get that SaaS management platform.” However, you’re actually missing out on potentially thousands of hours of time saved by automating tedious manual tasks. Forward-thinking IT leaders are already taking steps to streamline operational effectiveness by adopting SaaS management tools that effectively automate time-consuming tasks around onboarding, offboarding, mid-life cycle changes, reducing risk, and more. 

Let’s delve into why your organization needs a SaaS management platform now, and how you can quickly start to boost IT productivity.

1. Automating user lifecycle management delivers significant IT productivity gains

The average organization has 130 SaaS apps, resulting in countless user lifecycle tasks needed for protecting the ever-growing expanse of sensitive data.

With proper user lifecycle management and security controls in place, organizations can then:

• Maximize operational efficiency by freeing up time to work on higher-priority initiatives
• Accelerate employee productivity by eliminating burnout of tedious, repetitive tasks
• Scale IT impact and move away from being seen as just a cost center

To achieve these benefits, organizations across all industries and sizes now rely on SaaS management platforms to automate routine tasks like user lifecycle management and day-to-day operational tasks like app access requests or password/MFA resets to essentially create self-service portals for end users.

In research conducted in 2023, SaaS management platform users with a few hundred employees save about 1,700 hours – about 82% of a full-time team member – by automating user lifecycle management alone. It’s evident that boosting productivity means saving time, which then translates to saving money.

2. Reduce security risk

The growing number of SaaS apps bring on additional third-party security risks for organizations and IT is one team responsible for taking steps to mitigate that risk. In order to ensure an organization’s security posture, IT must perfectly perform all manual steps in preventing any type of security vulnerability from a third party or even active or ex-employees. But despite the best intentions, manual offboarding is a haphazard process where mistakes can happen, opening the doors for former users to retain access to your company apps and data, introducing enormous risk until the mistake is uncovered and corrected. 

By automating user lifecycle management, it becomes easier to enforce consistent access controls and permissions, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and potential data breaches.

Data breaches don’t come without cost. Using the 2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report data, the average cost per breach per employee is $3,553. A single breach from erroneous manual offboarding will cost that company of 300 employees more than $100,000. 

Especially today, at a time when businesses are trying to cut costs, eliminating the substantial cost of security breaches alone justifies the cost of bringing a SaaS management platform into your organization. 

3. Make your IT a more strategic business partner

Your IT team is a valuable resource often faced with time constraints and little bandwidth. By automating manual, tedious IT tasks you’re giving your team time back to focus on strategic initiatives and proactive security measures. What’s more, your IT team will have greater job satisfaction which will reduce IT turnover and avoid the time-consuming and costly process of hiring and onboarding new IT talent.