Every team seems to be signing up for new apps every day. Licenses are everywhere; some are just collecting digital dust.

If that chaos sounds familiar, you’re not alone. If you’ve thought about any of the three things below, it might be time to consider a SaaS management platform to manage SaaS sprawl effectively.

SaaS has democratized access to technology. Users can sign up and start using enterprise-grade apps without formal IT or procurement approval. Most SaaS vendors encourage this behavior.  

When teams adopt SaaS apps outside of IT oversight, they create major visibility gaps, especially for tools that aren’t connected to SSO, so provisioning and deprovisioning becomes inconsistent and access ownership gets murky. That leads to access sprawl, unmanaged credentials, and higher security and compliance risk as sensitive data ends up in tools without governance. Operationally and financially, procurement lacks reliable usage data to optimize renewals, licenses pile up unused, and admins get trapped in a reactive cycle of spreadsheets, manual work, and duplicated apps across teams.

1. SaaS inventory: I don’t have an accurate list of apps in use

Users can now pick their own SaaS tools, but the IT team is still responsible for ensuring each application is needed, secure, and supported. IT needs a simple inventory: what apps are in use, why are we using them, who is using them, and who is responsible for them? 

A spreadsheet’s not a bad starting point, but it won’t address the fundamental issue, i.e., how do you know what to put in the spreadsheet?

SaaS Management Platforms like 1Password SaaS Manager automates SaaS discovery, providing a complete and continuously updated inventory of SaaS apps being used across the organization that SaaS teams can rely on.

Leon Weavers, Head of IT at Flipdish had this exact concern. Once he deployed 1Password SaaS Manager, within a matter of minutes, he got a complete view of over 1,000 apps in use. This was an important first step in learning how to overcome the SaaS sprawl problem at scale. Leon Weavers shared: “We were a bit shocked to see how many apps people were using, but achieving this comprehensive view of the environment was a critical first step in our quest to manage our software better.”

2. SOC 2 audits: I don’t have a repeatable process for access reviews

Compliance tools like Vanta and Drata help orchestrate the audit process. Still, the operational details around tracking your SaaS inventory, managing user on/offboarding, and completing quarterly access reviews belong elsewhere. That “elsewhere” is often in  spreadsheets and your email inbox, or for some companies, that could be in a SaaS Management Platform. Trust us - we know how painful this process can be, we’re SOC 2 compliant and use Vanta (which is great, by the way!) in combination with 1Password SaaS Manager.

A SaaS Management Platform is your operational tool for SaaS discovery, creating an app inventory, and managing provisioning/deprovisioning, strengthening compliance and SaaS governance efforts. Auditors can access your 1Password SaaS Manager account (with a dedicated read-only profile) to view your app inventory and access clear audit logs of employee onboarding/offboarding workflows and access requests - reinforcing SaaS management best practices without having to rely on spreadsheets. Check out our playbook for Google Workspace offboarding for a classic example of transforming a messy manual process into something automated and auditable.

Oleg Lekuchev, Vice President of IT at ElectroNeek deployed 1Password SaaS Manager to ease his SOC2 auditing pains. Oleg Lukuchev shared: “Instead of presenting auditors lots of confusing, interrelated spreadsheets, we now use 1Password SaaS Manager to quickly show exactly which people and roles have access to which systems and applications.”

3. SaaS spend: we’re wasting money because of SaaS sprawl

Unchecked SaaS adoption is guaranteed to result in redundancy. That could be overlapping app usage (think multiple project management tools, you definitely have them!) or simply licenses assigned to users who aren’t using them. Intuitively, you may know this is happening, but without a true inventory and reliable usage data, you have no way to identify and address waste or perform effective software license optimization.

1Password SaaS Manager enriches your app inventory with activity data on user license assignments, including the date of last login. This enables IT teams to continuously optimize software licenses based on real usage data. SaaS Manager has 350+ integrations with the most commonly used business applications and finance tools for usage data and entitlements so you can instantly see, for example, which Zoom users aren’t hosting any meetings over 40 minutes, so why are they assigned a billable license?

A good SaaS management platform will do more than just identify waste. 1Password SaaS Manager’s workflows will automate the process of identifying underutilized licenses, engaging directly with the users to get consent, then deprovisioning or removing the licenses to reduce spend.

Zuora achieved a 10x return on investment with 1Password SaaS Manager by automating their SaaS license optimization, proving the value of disciplined software license optimization.

In summary

While most modern businesses use numerous SaaS tools designed to streamline operations and drive productivity, navigating this ecosystem requires clarity, control, and assurance. If any of the signs above resonate with you, consider the strategic investment in a SaaS Management Platform to regain control, improve SaaS governance, and finally solve the challenge of how to overcome SaaS sprawl. 

And if you're keen to experience the benefits firsthand, schedule a demo to see how 1Password SaaS Manager can help you gain visibility and control of your SaaS ecosystem.