SaaS management platform benefits and selection criteria

Well-established businesses are increasingly using SaaS!

Through the use of SaaS, companies are simplifying internal operations and improving the work efficiency of employees. Let's take a look at some examples.

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In the case of HR, SaaS such as Workday and BambooHR are used to automate and centralize tasks such as employee data management, payroll, benefits, and performance evaluation.

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What about the marketing department? Marketing automation SaaS such as HubSpot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud automatically runs customized campaigns based on customer data to streamline marketing processes needed to attract and retain customers. According to HubSpot For Sandler, a global sales and leadership training company, HubSpot led 25% more engagements and 4x more sales leads.

Since the use of SaaS accelerates the pace of business growth along with real technological innovation within the enterprise, successful companies are forced to use SaaS more and more. However, due to the increase in SaaS usage within enterprises, sophisticated management such as SaaS account management and cost optimization is difficult, and the SMP (SaaS Management Platform) market for integrated management and analysis of SaaS is growing rapidly overseas.

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In today's post, we'll take a closer look at what a SaaS management platform (SMP) is, its advantages, and selection criteria.

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What is SMP (SaaS Management Platform)?

A SaaS management platform (SMP) is a solution that helps organizations manage, control, and optimize the use of SaaS applications. As enterprises increasingly adopt SaaS for various functions such as collaboration, CRM, HR, and productivity, managing application subscriptions and users becomes increasingly complex. SMP provides central control for these SaaS applications.

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Let's take a look at the key features of SMP.

1. Discovery (Discovery): Prevent shadow IT by identifying all SaaS applications in use within the organization and identifying even apps that aren't officially approved.

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2. License Management (license management): Track SaaS license usage to help businesses avoid spending unnecessary money on unused or underused subscriptions.

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3. Spend Optimization (Cost Optimization): Provides insight into SaaS costs, optimizes costs, and presents opportunities for cost savings by eliminating redundant or underused applications.

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4. Compliance and Security (Compliance and Security): Comply with corporate policies and regulatory requirements, manage security risks associated with SaaS applications, and control user access and data governance.

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5. Automated Workflows (automated workflows): Automates tasks such as employee onboarding and offboarding, and streamlines IT management tasks through integration of SaaS applications.

6. User Management (user management): Manages user permissions, access levels, and roles across various SaaS applications.

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The use of SaaS within enterprises has increased, and the need for SMP has grown. SMP helps optimize costs and ensure safe usage by increasing visibility into SaaS usage.

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SaaS management platform benefits

The benefits of a SaaS management platform (SMP) are to help manage SaaS usage more effectively, realize cost savings, and comply with security and regulations. The main advantages include:

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1. Cost savings

SMP helps reduce unnecessary subscription costs by identifying unused or redundant SaaS applications within an organization. Also, since it suggests an optimal license plan based on usage, it is possible to manage SaaS costs more efficiently.

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2. Centralized management

Multiple SaaS applications can be managed in one place. This allows IT departments to grasp the status, usage status, and security level of all applications at a glance, and efficiently manage users and licenses.

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3. Optimizing usage

SMP analyzes the usage data of each SaaS application to detect inefficient usage and suggest ways to optimize it. This allows you to keep only the applications you actually need and maintain the right number of users and licenses.

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4. Strengthen security and compliance

By centrally managing control over SaaS applications, you can comply with security policies and data protection regulations. You can reduce organizational security risks through user rights management, data access control, and more.

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5. Automated processes

You can save time and reduce errors by automating repetitive IT tasks, such as automatically granting or removing access to SaaS applications when employees join or leave the company.

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6. Shadow IT detection

Companies can detect unauthorized applications (shadow IT) and prevent security risks caused by them. This allows organizations to put all SaaS applications under formal control and reduce potential risks.

7. Providing data insights

It helps you make better decisions by providing data on usage patterns, costs, and performance of SaaS applications. This allows organizations to refine their strategies for future SaaS adoption and management.

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SaaS management platform selection criteria

I understand the need for a SaaS management platform, but I'm just wondering which platform to choose. In 2021, Gartner published a market guide on SaaS management platforms (SMP), and in this report, SMP was defined as “a tool that can check multiple SaaS applications on a central management dashboard and help maintain management and security.” The criteria for selecting an appropriate SaaS management platform based on SMP core features selected by Gartner are as follows:

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manage

• Is there a central console where I can view and manage the SaaS I'm using in one place?
• Can I manage multiple SaaS in one place with directory sync and user provisioning capabilities?
• Is an intuitive no-code workflow builder easy for IT teams to use?
• Can a workflow be triggered with a webhook or API request to minimize manual work?

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Secure

• Can permissions be monitored and configured across SaaS apps so that delegated administrators only have access to the resources they need, and only allow access for as long as needed to perform those functions?
• Can you easily find and remove unnecessary super admins, and fine-tune individual account permissions to meet user needs?
• Do you keep connection logs within SMP indefinitely?
• Can you maintain consistent security policies across SaaS environments and prevent an organization's data from being shared internally or externally?

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Discover

• Does it provide a way to discover shadow IT?
• Can SaaS usage be tracked to identify underutilized SaaS?
• Can I discover which SaaS has been granted OAuth access and which users have granted that permission?

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Integrations

• Does it provide an API that can extend beyond the basic functionality of the platform?
• Can the platform make customized API calls to external endpoints?

As above, we looked at the criteria for choosing a good SaaS management platform. We hope that it will be of great help in choosing a SaaS management platform that suits your organization by carefully checking before introducing SMP.

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If the above selection criteria seem difficult, and you're worried about whether you can make good use of SMP, check out whether it's a company that provides SaaOps consulting!

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Megazone Pops (Megazone Pops) with SaaOps experts

Megazone POPs (Megazone POPs) is a SaaS management platform that helps companies manage various SaaS in the form of subscriptions in an integrated manner. The POPs team is currently actually providing SaaOps consulting to customers, and in the case of a recent customer, POPs created an environment where SaaS administrators can monitor SaaS-specific users (internal/external) and licenses subscribed/managed in an SMP environment through POPs and operate and manage usage status in an integrated manner.

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Megazone Cloud also conducted SaaOps consulting on its own, and discovered that the cost of using SaaS through POPs was 40% higher than previously identified.

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The POPs team believes that SaaOps, which consists of a combination of regulations, processes, technology, and personnel, such as understanding the status of SaaS usage, understanding the organizational system and assigning appropriate managers, will become the next generation of SaaS management measures. As a result, we created a SaaOps team within Megazone Cloud and built an in-house SaaS management environment, and we are delivering know-how to customers based on this.

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If you are interested in adopting SMP or have any concerns about actual use after implementation, please feel free to contact the POPs team! 👉Request a POPs demo