Is it time to Marie Kondo our software as a service portfolio?

Apr 3

At home, we all have digital subscriptions. In 2020, the average consumer had 12. I have more than 12. And that is probably too many, including HBO, Hulu, AcornTV, then the digital print accounts, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, etc... Even if we don't use them, these subscriptions renew...

Companies have the same challenge. But they have it with software as a service application or SaaS. The average company has 250 SaaS applications*. And on average, teams use between 40 and 60 SaaS applications. It is crazy to think they're using that many tools, with different user interfaces and workflows, to do their job. We know context switching causes productivity loss. The consequences of this many tools on productivity are huge. It has a consequence on dollars and budgets. In general, companies pay monthly or annually, and these subscriptions auto-renew. You pay regardless of use, so many licenses sit unused. The result of managing 250 SaaS applications also takes time away from your IT team, which usually has to manage everything from the single sign-on to the security, the onboarding, all the way through to off-boarding; it all adds up to the baseline "keeping the lights on" or KTLO cost.

I want to give you a real-world example. Imagine a company with 350 employees that wants to keep bureaucracy low and access to tools needed very high. 70% of these 350 employees use project management tools, including Jira, Asana, Trello, Smart Sheets, Microsoft Project, Quip, and sometimes in a pinch, Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. And while all these tools are being paid for, there is even an incoming request to add Monday.com to the SaaS portfolio. It's not that any of these tools are bad, none of them are - it is that the minor differences in features had caused this SaaS subscription sprawl. The results ended up being:

Siloing; If everybody works in different systems, it's very difficult not to be in a silo. There was a massive lack of visibility; how do you see all the projects that are going on in your organization when they're across all these different tools, and how much extra or busy work is there and tying it all back together?
Increased KTLO: There's the keeping the lights on the cost that is growing while more value and business impact are not being delivered
Opportunity Cost: There are less dollars and time for revenue generation and innovation projects.

I don't think we can or should eliminate all software as a service tool. As a matter of fact, they're really good in general. We do have to watch the sprawl.

And it's on ALL of us, regardless of role, to look at the upstream impact of adding another SaaS.

My biggest recommendation is always to see if there's a feature you can add to a tool you already have as an add-on instead of just getting a new one.

So next time you're thinking of adding a new SaaS:

Does our current SaaS portfolio spark joy?
Do I need this particular SaaS/tool, or do I need a feature?

I'd love to continue the conversation in the comments or contact me directly. In the meantime, I will watch The Orville on Hulu and Brokenwood Mysteries on AcornTV because that sparks joy.

*Stats Source: https://productiv.com/blog/saas-statistics-that-every-it-manager-should-see/
Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FazPyMRqpPw