End-users probably adopt most of the apps in your company. Sure, those business-critical apps still run through a conventional procurement process, but smaller apps, browser-based apps, plugins, extensions, and more—those plant the seeds of shadow IT with their freemium pricing and low-friction onboarding. Those tools then integrate with other apps, creating a secret network of shadow apps transferring data—often without IT’s knowledge.
How should an IT manager react?
Fear? Worry? Apathy?
More and more teams are turning toward the operationalization of their SaaS stack. In this article, we’ll cover what that means, the SaaS Ops goals, and how Torii’s automated workflows can help you in that process.
What is SaaS Operations?
SaaS operations is the practice of managing, securing, and optimizing an organization’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) application ecosystem. It aims to streamline operations and ensure efficient use of resources through powerful automation.
You can think of your SaaS ecosystem as a garden and each app as a plant within that garden. Cultivating a thriving app environment takes hard work, visibility, thoughtful planning, and continuous monitoring. Fortunately, unlike your garden, much of this work can be augmented or automated through a SaaS Operations Platform, commonly known as a SaaS Management Platform.
Top Resources for You:
- What is SaaS Operations? Boost Productivity in Your Digital Garden
- The Gartner Market Guide for SaaS Management Platforms
- Torii Leads in the G2 Report for SaaS Operations Management
These unique tools can discover, monitor, and act on your cloud applications—even the shadow IT apps.
Why SaaS Operations Matters
As workloads continue to grow, so do risks and costs. Without SaaS Operations, those ever-increasing risks and costs go unnoticed or unaddressed because you simply don’t have the time. SaaS Operations increase the scale of your work through workflows that you design to meet your unique needs. Learn more about the nine kinds of workflow triggers in Torii.
In summary: SaaS Ops matters because it’s the only plausible way a small IT team can keep up with enormous demands. But enough about the high level—here are five tangible ways Torii can improve your SaaS Ops Management through automation.
4 Ways SaaS Operation Workflows in Torii Help
Operationalized Communication via Advanced Data Engine
Every application stores a wealth of data. The problem is that each app standardizes and organizes that data distinctly, limiting the data’s usefulness. Torii solves this with our advanced data engine.
Workflows for Employee Lifecycle
Ok—this is cheating. It isn’t one workflow; it’s a multitude of exciting workflows. New hire provisioning, former employee offboarding, maternity leave, promotions, etc. Whatever the change your employees experience, you can create custom workflows to get your task list done fast: often with zero-touch and zero headaches.
Workflows for Application Lifecycle:
Do you know your apps’ lifecycle? From discovery to evaluation to renewal to retirement, you can create a custom workflow to alert, remind, or take specified action on an app so nothing slips through the cracks. Pair this with Torii’s renewal calendar and a team of application owners—and you’ll never sweat a surprise contract renewal again.
Workflows for Cost Savings:
Once you have that full picture, Torii lets you identify cost-saving opportunities. Find out how many licenses are idle, unclaimed, or still assigned to former employees. Compare similar apps to find usage trends. Use Torii’s Recommendation Engine for quick license management, including downgrading expensive licenses that users aren’t taking advantage of.
The advanced data engine ingests that data from your apps and converts them into building blocks of modular information. It also connects related data points. Torii builds out profiles for all your users, including name, title, status, department, team, and all the apps they use. So you can design workflows with custom communication that is automatically tailed to those individuals simply by including personalization tokens. Those tokens will conditionally process based on whatever your use case.This way, you can automatically send personalized slacks, emails, and, yes, Jira tickets.
SaaS Operations for IT
You have limited time, limited focus, and limited resources. However, you have an endless to-do list. Invest in yourself and your organization by considering the value of SaaS Operations Management. If you’d like to learn more about how Torii can help you scale your work, request a demo and ask to see what Torii can automate for you.
