How is Your Remote Team Using Your Tech Stack?

Less than half of company SaaS applications are regularly used by employees.

That’s a bold statement that came out of a recent report by SaaS management platform Productiv entitled, The State of SaaS Sprawl in 2021.

According to data in the report, only about 45% of company apps get used regularly, and 56% of all apps are actually owned and managed outside of IT.

“Every SaaS purchase outside of IT has the potential to expand your security risk surface and create fragmentation that prevents your employees from doing their best work", according to the report.

In other words, the members of your team are all working differently and no one has a clear view of what everyone else is doing. There’s a disconnect. And this SaaS sprawl creates a lack of visibility that becomes a barrier to efficiency.

“SaaS sprawl also drastically impacts your business spend, whether you see the bill or not. Having many team-owned tools can lead to unregulated SaaS budgets and an increased cost of ownership due to situations like missed renewals.”

So while you may think your business has its tech budget in check, there could be all kinds of apps in play you aren’t even aware of. Budget can also be a concern with the tools you do know about though.

Let’s dig into that.

The cost of an underused tech stack

End-user spending on public cloud services is forecasted to reach $482 billion in 2022—a nearly 22% jump from the previous year’s forecast, according to Gartner.

“This is especially true for use cases such as collaboration, remote work and new digital services to support a hybrid workforce.”

• SaaS management platform BetterCloud puts the number of apps used by small businesses between 16 and 62 , depending on the number of employees.
• Data from Okta—identity and access management platform—states its average small customer uses 73 apps.
• And the aforementioned Productiv report puts the number of apps used by small businesses at a whopping 242.

There are no doubt differences between how these data sources define a small business, but regardless, it's clear that number is high. SaaS is now the system of record for all a business’s critical data, from employees and customers to finance, internal communication, code and more.

And when you consider the opening statement again—that only 45% of a business’s apps get used regularly—the situation gets a little concerning for your budget and bottom line.

How much money is your business really wasting on underused (or unused) apps, and what can you do about it?

How businesses are managing their tech stack usage

We’ve already mentioned a few app management solutions in this article—tools like BetterCloud, Okta and Productiv, as well as OneLogin, Blissfully and many more. These tools can be a great way for your IT team to keep track of your software licences, oversee identity management, and manage policy and security around your business’s technology.

All of this is unquestionably important for controlling and securing a growing stack of applications across a digital workplace. These tools can also be a way to identify apps that don’t seem to be in use—an opportunity for budget management.

But the gap here is that this entire process is solely in the hands of IT administrators. As a result, your other teams miss out on weighing in. More importantly though, they miss out on valuable app usage metrics and opportunities to better understand their unique tech stacks and team workflows.

• What tools are being used within your team?
• How are they being used, and how often?
• And who’s using them?

Democratizing this kind of app usage data and giving every member of a team clear insight into the digital work patterns of their teammates creates endless opportunities for process optimization, enhanced collaboration and, of course, fine-tuning of the collective tech stack.

A quick note here on the value of tech tool-seekers

Every organization has ‘em—employees who continually seek out the best SaaS tools to do their jobs better, faster and in more automated ways.

While SaaS sprawl can have its downfalls, it's important not to squash these individual-led digital transformation initiatives. These are what help keep businesses nimble and competitive.

Being able to test out and bring new tools to the table also contributes to positive employee morale and retention. After all, no one wants to work for a dinosaur of a company that’s completely unwilling to change and evolve.

As with most everything, we need to strike a balance. Encourage new tools, but simultaneously, keep track of what’s being used and what can be done away with.

How we’re creating tech stack transparency for remote teams

Every day, the members of remote and digital-first teams log onto their computers and have hundreds of actions and interactions with their various work applications. The problem is, no one else on their team can see this, so their work habits and productivity remain a bit of a mystery.

Produce8 enables teams to subscribe to all the various apps their people use throughout the work day and use these apps as high-value data sources. After your team is set up, Produce8 shares all the actions and interactions each member of the team has—from the top down—to a common timeline.

Each member of the team can:

• review which apps their team uses collectively
• examine their individual work patterns as well as those of their team members
• dig into metrics, such as how often apps are getting used and how frequently certain actions and interactions take place, and
• see exactly how the team operates as a whole throughout the day and over time for better collaboration and enhanced remote teamwork.

You can also evolve your tech stack—bringing on new solutions and discarding old—in ways that make sense based on collective usage data.

The future of remote and digital-first work is transparent

When you’re on a team of digital workers, the work being accomplished by each individual can feel pretty siloed.

We believe creating a clear view of individual and interdependent work productivity creates operational awareness that ultimately leads to collective team excellence.

It’s time to tear down the barriers because the future of work is transparent.