What Is SaaS Operations Management?

SaaS management is all about simplifying, streamlining, and smoothing out your software stack—all while saving on spending. (Wow, that’s a lot of S’s). SaaS operations management is a growing challenge for all organizations, no matter what industry they’re in; even companies outside of the software industry are seeing a rise in how much software they use. And while technology is certainly a good thing for the workplace, it’s true that too much of a good thing can quickly become bad. As companies add software, they also add cost, security risks, and workload for the IT team.

But don’t worry—this certainly doesn’t have to spell doom and gloom. Technology is still a great asset to the workplace, and with the right plan in place, your IT team doesn’t have to spend their days overwhelmed by ticket requests. Read on to learn more about SaaS operations management, what a SaaS operations strategy entails, and how SaaS management software like Lumos can help make things easier.

What Is the Meaning of SaaS Management?

SaaS management is about keeping track of four things: data, users, security, and spending. Let’s look at each of these individually.

What Is SaaS Data Management?

Managing SaaS data for an organization involves tracking what softwares you have, who has access to that software, and what level of access each person has to each software. The key word here is “access:” a concept that quickly becomes complicated when you’re talking about software. While access to some applications can be thought of as an on/off switch, some are more like turning a dial…and some softwares even have several “dials” to turn for access. This leads us right into SaaS user management.

What Is SaaS User Management?

User management is about keeping track of all access points to a software and making sure everyone who has access needs it, and everyone who doesn’t need it doesn’t have it. This is simple in theory, but is hard to track for multiple employees—especially when companies are using 130+ software applications on average. But even if it’s just one software, many applications have multiple functions specialized for different roles, all of which have their own levers for maintaining access.

Take a CRM platform, for example; only certain parts of an organization need access to this software, but even within that software are various “seats” a user can hold. A salesperson, for instance, will want to use the prospecting tools a CRM platform offers, whereas a marketing manager will use tools related to lead generation. And while it may be “simpler” for SaaS license management to give everyone access to the whole application, doing so creates more potential security risks. And speaking of security…

What Is SaaS Security Management?

For an organization, SaaS security is about protecting sensitive information—for both the organization and its employees. Both user privacy and organizational compliance are front and center when it comes to SaaS security management. To maintain these, SaaS operations need clear protocols for who should have access, how often access gets audited, and onboarding/offboarding users.

What Is SaaS Spend Management?

Like any other part of a company, it always comes back to money—that is, spending as little as possible. A good SaaS operations strategy does this by monitoring all softwares in the stack, looking for redundant tools, unused licenses, and other ways the company could be saving money without losing on functionality. Again, though, it becomes difficult to track things like this without the right tools; with 130+ softwares at the average company, we’re talking about literally thousands of user licenses.

By now, you’ve probably noticed a theme in SaaS management: it’s a lot of tasks that are simple in isolation, but challenging to maintain all at once—especially when their numbers are in the tens of thousands. To quote Poe Dameron, “there’s just too many of them.” So, what are IT teams to do in the face of an ever-growing tech stack? Let’s take a look at how you can develop a strategy using a SaaS management platform (SMP) like Lumos.

What Is a SaaS Operations Strategy Example?

Creating a SaaS ops strategy is a lot easier with the right tools. If we use the four key categories of SaaS management above (data, users, security, and spending), solutions like Lumos help with each of these. 

Through Lumos, you can monitor…

• …data through a single source of truth that combines all your vendors and applications.
• …users with scheduled audits, helpdesk automation, and simpler onboarding/offboarding.
• …security by maintaining license and access management through one unified platform.
• …spending via alerts for redundant software, unused licenses, and ways to save money.

In reality, maintaining SaaS operations is simple; what makes it challenging is the sheer volume of things there are to do, all of which bog down IT teams. But a tool like Lumos makes it much easier to handle software access, keep things safe, and monitor all the details of SaaS operations.

Lumos: The Best SaaS Management Platform

What is the role of SaaS ops in your organization? If your answers sound anything like “headache,” “time suck,” or “security risk,” then chances are you could benefit greatly from a SaaS management platform (SMP). No matter what industry you’re in, tech stacks are growing, and maintaining that can be challenging—but it doesn’t have to be, if you have the right tools. Lumos is a tool designed for IT professionals, by IT professionals, to make their lives easier and empower them to do their best work.

‍Schedule a demo today and see why Lumos is the top choice for our growing list of happy customers!