What is a SaaS Operational Strategy?

A SaaS operational strategy is every guiding principle, goal, and metric an organization uses for its SaaS management. An operations strategy should aim to maximize cybersecurity, keep costs low, and simplify the onboarding/offboarding process for staff. From the beginning stages of finding new softwares, to the ending stages of use, the entire lifecycle of each application must be considered and accounted for.

Software strategy was much simpler thirty years ago, when there were only a handful of applications to consider… but, as any IT professional will tell you, SaaS operations management is not so simple today!

Managing software for a single organization often means dealing with dozens of different software applications—and that number is on the low end. And each time a company adds a new employee, loses an employee, or even promotes someone, there are likely several to-do tasks on the software side. As our use of technology grows in the workplace, so does our need for proper software management. Having a solid strategy is key—and tools like Lumos support such strategies. Read on for some tips in SaaS operations and how Lumos makes management “all too easy” for companies—and their IT staff. To start, let’s go over what a SaaS operations management strategy might look like and what a SaaS operations manager will do in their day-to-day work.

What Does SaaS Management Mean, Exactly?

“SaaS management” is simple in theory—the management of SaaS applications—but for SaaS operations, the meaning of “management” is far deeper than it might suggest. It includes things like:

• Monitoring access and permissions for every software.
• Regular auditing of active users and licenses. 
• Minimizing unnecessary spending on software.
• Developing policies and procedures for onboarding and offboarding.
• Ensuring everyone who needs access has it—and everyone who doesn’t need it doesn’t have it.

As you can imagine, this gets hard to do when organizations are using 100+ software solutions on average. This is where SaaS management platforms step in to help offload some of the work.

How Do I Choose a SaaS Management Platform?

A good SaaS management platform should help you…

• Protect your organization from breaches. A management platform should provide a single source of truth for all software permissions, licenses, and seats in the organization. This is critical for knowing who has access to what softwares. Every time an employee onboarding or offboarding happens, another potential gap forms in the security. While nobody wants holes in their security, it’s not easy to keep up with if it’s always happening and there’s no system to track it—and management platforms make that much easier.

• Identify (and cut down on) unnecessary spending. The best SaaS management platforms keep organized records of spending and help you find opportunities to save money. Many companies spend way more on software than they need to—but not for the reasons they might think. While software does indeed help in the workplace, not everyone realizes when they have redundant software, or are paying for more licenses than they actually use. With the help of a management platform, you never have to wonder whether your software budget is money well spent.

• Automate the mundane, time-consuming administrative tasks. Making “complex” into “simple” is a crucial part of what a SaaS strategy does. For example, employee onboarding is a very complex process—one that is only getting more complex as we add software to the workplace—but nonetheless, SaaS strategies are tasked with streamlining this process. Management platforms like Lumos make access requests, troubleshooting, and even permissions editing an easier process for both the employee and the IT team.

The three things above are just a few key traits to look out for. But ultimately, a SaaS management platform really only needs to do one thing: make work easier for everyone. And the best platforms out there—like Lumos—can do just that.

Wait, did somebody say “Lumos”? Well, since we’re on the topic, let’s talk about why Lumos is the right choice for your software stack…

Lumos: All-Too-Easy SaaS Operations Management

What does “SaaS management” mean for your organization? If it sounds like a big headache, we at Lumos are here to show you there’s another way—a much easier, far less headache-y way. We specialize in SaaS management, identity governance, helpdesk automation, and many other ways to make your workflow a lot better. We’ve already helped a lot of organizations gain control over their software stack, and they’re all the happier for it. If that’s what you’re looking for, then look no further than Lumos.

‍Schedule a demo today, and let us show you what a SaaS operations strategy could look like.