SaaS Portfolio Management: A Secret Strategy to Increase ROI

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SaaS adoption has tripled in recent times as organizations like yours are leveraging them to streamline business operations. Amidst this adoption, people overlooked the importance of managing SaaS.

This lack of awareness has led to a cluttered SaaS stack, increased spending, security hassles, etc. Fortunately, there is an effective solution: SaaS portfolio management.

SaaS portfolio management has extensively evolved in the last few years to help businesses identify and manage their SaaS stack. Application portfolio management software can provide a bird's eye view of your SaaS portfolio.

But how can it help you optimize your SaaS portfolio? Let's find out.

What is SaaS Portfolio Management?

SaaS Portfolio Management refers to overseeing and optimizing a company's SaaS tools. It aligns with the business goals, streamlines operations, and maximizes value while managing costs and usage effectively.

It is like taking a proactive approach to managing your IT wardrobe. Businesses, whether small or large, should consider the importance of SaaS portfolio management.

Usual cases: Suppose you have impulsively purchased software, only to realize it doesn’t bring much value to your company. You’ll probably still pay for the software despite not using it effectively.

Alternative suggestion: You could reconsider the existing applications of your business before buying a new one. While identifying the gaps, you could also look for alternatives to fill them.

The same story goes with enterprise applications. When a business expands, individual employees and IT departments purchase applications to solve urgent problems without considering the implications.

The process to avoid the chaos of uncontrolled SaaS looks like this:

• Centralize all your applications and relevant data
• Determine the value of each application
• Choose the most relevant ones
• Update the apps that are useful but don’t quite fit in your business
• Remove the apps that are no longer needed
• Use a strategy to decide your needs before purchasing more apps

While these steps may seem easy, imagine the hurdle of repeating them individually for hundreds of apps, especially when your SaaS portfolio is growing.

Failing to update the SaaS portfolio results in piling up your SaaS spend wastage without streamlined workflows. These apps don’t add value and drain your company's resources. It also makes them vulnerable to potential security breaches.

This is where SaaS portfolio management solutions come into the picture.

Do you want to increase your business's ROI?

Read this SaaS portfolio management guide to the end.

Why Is It Important to Manage Your SaaS Portfolio?

Efficient SaaS application management directly correlates with cost optimization and operational efficiency. By meticulously monitoring and rationalizing the suite of your applications, you can uncover redundancies, eliminate underutilized tools, and negotiate more favorable terms with vendors.

This reduces your unnecessary wastage and ensures that your resources are strategically allocated, contributing to operational excellence.

Beyond cost considerations, managing a SaaS portfolio is pivotal for risk mitigation and compliance adherence. In an era of escalating data privacy regulations, keeping track of various tools and ensuring compliance with industry standards is crucial.

Proactive management helps mitigate non-compliance risk, avoid legal issues, and safeguard your organization's reputation.

Furthermore, a well-managed SaaS portfolio facilitates scalability and adaptability. As your business grows, so do your software requirements. Effectively managing the portfolio ensures your organization can seamlessly scale your revenue.

Managing a SaaS portfolio transcends routine administrative tasks; it becomes a strategic imperative that influences cost, risk, scalability, productivity, and decision-making, ultimately unlocking enhanced return on investment (ROI) and ensuring sustained success in the digital landscape.

SaaS Portfolio Management - How it works?

Understanding how SaaS portfolio management works is important to implement it correctly. Numerous processes are involved, from entering the SaaS application inventory to highlighting redundant apps. Let’s discuss them in detail.

Get Complete Visibility of Your SaaS Portfolio

To implement successful SaaS portfolio management, you must have complete visibility. This involves conducting a thorough examination of all applications within your organizational ecosystem. This way, you can ensure no software tool is overlooked or unaccounted for.

A thorough understanding of your portfolio will enable you to make well-informed decisions regarding resource allocation, cybersecurity considerations, and optimizing costs and operational efficiency.

This comprehensive view of the entire SaaS portfolio sets the stage for proactive management, enabling organizations to address challenges with foresight. It allows businesses to align their digital resources with overarching business objectives strategically.

Ensuring that the software stack is not just a collection of tools but a coherent asset driving the organization forward.

This strategic alignment goes beyond cost considerations; it's about leveraging technology to achieve business goals. It positions the SaaS portfolio as a dynamic tool that evolves with organizational strategies, enabling seamless adaptation to market, industry, or internal operational requirements changes.

Identify Each App Spend for Better Optimization

Optimal financial oversight is fundamental in SaaS portfolio management. It begins with the meticulous identification and categorization of each application's spending. This approach enables organizations to allocate resources judiciously and strategically.

By understanding the financial implications of each application, businesses can prioritize investments based on strategic importance. This method of financial scrutiny goes beyond simple budgeting; it cultivates a culture of financial responsibility and accountability within the organization.

It ensures that every dollar spent on software aligns with the organization's goals, fostering efficiency and value-driven decision-making across departments.

Moreover, this meticulous financial oversight provides the foundation for effective vendor negotiation. This strategic approach to vendor management contributes to overall cost optimization and enhances your organization's purchasing power in the dynamic landscape of SaaS subscriptions.

Identify Unused, Underutilized Apps, and Licenses

When you proactively uncover and address unused or underutilized applications and licenses, you can determine a strategy to achieve robust cost optimization. This strategic approach involves saving costs and redefining the digital landscape for enhanced efficiency and adaptability.

When pinpointing tools that contribute minimally to operations, organizations can eliminate unnecessary expenses and streamline your digital toolkit. This step is not just a cost-cutting measure; it's a strategic initiative to align the digital portfolio with your organizational objectives.

This meticulous process is especially crucial for achieving positive cash flow. You can redirect financial resources toward initiatives directly impacting the bottom line by identifying and rectifying underutilized assets.

Beyond the financial aspect, addressing underutilized assets promotes a leaner and more efficient software ecosystem. It creates an environment where every tool serves a purpose, aligning with the ever-evolving business needs.

Analyze Usage and Right-Size Licenses According to Usage

A thorough analysis of usage patterns is integral to optimizing SaaS licenses. Right-sizing licenses based on actual usage is a proactive strategy that prevents over-licensing and reduces unnecessary expenditures. Organizations optimize costs by aligning SaaS license levels with user requirements and allocating resources appropriately.

This optimization process transcends mere budgetary considerations. It is a fundamental step toward creating an agile and adaptable software ecosystem.

It's not just about cost reduction. It's about maximizing the value of each software license. Contributing to an efficient software environment.

This strategic shift transforms license management from a routine administrative task to a dynamic process.

Rationalize Redundant Applications

Identifying and rationalizing redundant applications is a strategic move in SaaS portfolio management. Redundancies incur unnecessary costs and introduce complexity into the software ecosystem.

Unchecked redundancy can lead to a convoluted digital landscape. This will affect productivity and your team’s ability to respond promptly to emerging challenges and opportunities.

Streamlining the portfolio by eliminating duplicate functionalities enhances clarity, reduces potential points of failure, and contributes to a more agile and manageable digital infrastructure.

This streamlined approach optimizes costs and improves the overall user experience. With a more focused and purposeful suite of applications, users can navigate their digital workspace seamlessly, boosting efficiency and productivity across the organization.

This intentional simplification process goes beyond mere efficiency gains. It fosters a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within the organization.

By minimizing complexity, organizations position themselves to adapt swiftly to changes in technology and business requirements.

Simplifying the digital landscape is not just a cost-containment strategy; it's an investment in future-proofing the organization.

Track Usage to Keep Your Stack Optimized

Don’t forget to track the usage patterns, as it’s a dynamic and ongoing aspect of SaaS portfolio management. Regular monitoring ensures the software stack remains optimized, adapting to the organization's evolving needs.

This iterative optimization process isn't just about reacting to challenges; it's about anticipating and staying ahead of them. It maintains a lean and effective digital toolkit that aligns with the organization's strategic goals.

Organizations prioritizing continuous usage tracking position themselves as agile and responsive, ensuring operational excellence.

Benefits of SaaS Portfolio Management?

You Can Eliminate Risks

Perhaps the most notable benefit of SaaS portfolio management is the ability to mitigate risks posed by non-functional apps. SaaS applications can represent unprecedented vulnerabilities and risks when they end their lifespan.

With application portfolio management, enterprises can develop effective end-of-life plans for these SaaS applications. This way, the security concerns won’t become liable in the future.

Simplify IT Infrastructure

Medium and large businesses may find that they have 1000+ different applications throughout their entire infrastructure. SaaS portfolio management will centralize these apps and enable you to manage them without hassles.

Additionally, SaaS application indicators can measure all-around performance. With these indicators, SaaS portfolio management can categorize every app, helping the business remove the redundant ones.

Determine Costs

As a business, you need to reduce SaaS costs. APM evaluates and categorizes apps as per the total cost, along with the other important metrics. This gives business owners a clear view of each software's value and benefits. This way, they can make data-driven decisions and generate maximum ROI on every IT investment within the budget.

Determine Strategy from Actionable Data

The primary objective of a business application is to support the company. While Application portfolio management can provide businesses with a ground-level view, it also collects essential data items for large IT enterprises.

As the application landscape evolves to support the new strategies, APM gives real-time and reliable reporting to help business owners understand the impact of IT investments. APM will also give decision-makers crucial insights to align every piece of software as per the needs of the business.

Improve Overall Business Processes

Redundancies, gaps, and obsolete technologies can slow down essential business processes. Thanks to SaaS portfolio management, you can uncover these hidden issues.

This will help you take a step further by implementing proper improvements designed to make the processes more efficient.

Optimize Your SaaS Portfolio with CloudEagle

While SaaS offers undeniable benefits in agility and scalability, it can lead to subscription sprawl, shadow IT, and uncontrolled costs. This is where CloudEagle’s SaaS portfolio management comes in as a game-changer.

CloudEagle is a leading SaaS management platform that empowers businesses to take control of their software ecosystem and unlock the true potential of SaaS. Here's how CloudEagle can help you optimize your SaaS portfolio and drive significant ROI:

• Gain visibility and control: CloudEagle provides a comprehensive overview of all your SaaS subscriptions, including usage data, costs, and renewal dates. This centralized view sheds light on hidden subscriptions, underutilized tools, and duplicate functionalities, enabling you to make informed decisions about your SaaS investments.
• Reduce costs: CloudEagle identifies unused or underused SaaS applications, allowing you to cancel unnecessary subscriptions and reclaim valuable budgets. Additionally, CloudEagle helps you negotiate better deals with vendors and automate procurement tasks, further streamlining your SaaS spending.
• Boost productivity and improve user experience: CloudEagle simplifies software procurement and management, eliminating manual processes using automated workflows. Workflows are available for procurement, onboarding and onboarding employees, license management, and renewals.

If you’re looking for comprehensive SaaS portfolio management software to manage your entire SaaS portfolio, look no further than CloudEagle.
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Conclusion

SaaS portfolio management has become an integral practice for businesses of all sizes. Even if you own a startup with fewer SaaS apps, you should always consider the importance of a proper APM strategy.

With SaaS portfolio management, businesses can optimize costs, gain control, and streamline business operations. In addition, it can also maximize the overall value of their SaaS investments.

The number of SaaS subscriptions will grow continuously as your business expands. Hence, the need for effective management will also increase. Streamlining IT needs will become hard unless you find suitable tools for your business.

Book a demo with CloudEagle’s experts today and offload the burden of SaaS portfolio management.

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