How SAM Experts Can Justify the Need for a SaaS Management Platform

Businesses are rapidly adopting the cloud-first strategy and moving away from traditional, on-premise tools. By 2025, nearly 99% of companies are expected to use at least one SaaS solution¹. 

With this shift happening, software asset management (SAM) professionals like you are obliged to rethink the software asset management approach. In a Software as a Service (SaaS) environment, you deal with sprawling app stacks, decentralized purchases, and hidden usage. In such a scenario, the old SAM tools lag behind in managing the software stack.

SaaS Management Platform (SMP) can help you cut through the noise. Let’s explore how SMP can benefit your organization, while also helping you build a compelling business case to gain leadership buy-in for a SaaS management platform.

‍The Limitations of Traditional SAM in Managing SaaS Applications

Traditional SAM tools undoubtedly excel at managing and tracking perpetual licenses and on-premise software. However, they fall short when it comes to managing SaaS applications and creates the following challenges for SAM experts:

1. Decentralized purchasing: Employees can subscribe to SaaS apps even without IT approval, which leads to uncontrolled spending.
2. Shadow IT: Unauthorised SaaS usage often goes undetected, creating compliance and security vulnerabilities.
3. Lack of usage visibility: Traditional tools cannot accurately track who uses which SaaS apps and how often. That makes it difficult to optimize licenses.
4. Frequent updates and changes: SaaS apps get regular updates, thus tracking features and compliance requirements becomes difficult.
5. Complex licensing models: SaaS often uses subscription-based or user-based pricing, which will be hard for traditional software asset management tools to manage effectively.
6. Poor integration capabilities of traditional SAM tools prevent automated provisioning and deprovisioning of user accounts. This gap leads to inefficient license management and potential security risks when employees leave the company.

To address these limitations, you need a specialised SaaS management platform to provide a complete overview of your SaaS stack. 

How SAM Experts Can Justify SaaS Management Adoption: 6 Strategic Arguments

1: Build a Strong Business Case for a SaaS Management Platform

To get your leadership buy-in for a SaaS Management Platform (SMP), you must highlight its business impact and show how an SMP directly supports business priorities like cost control, operational efficiency, and risk management. Here are a few points to help you build your business case.

Cost Savings

SMPs help cut waste by:

• Spotting and removing unused or duplicate subscriptions
• Providing real usage data for smarter contract negotiations
• Automating license reclamation from inactive users
• Guiding license rightsizing based on actual needs

Example: Gartner (Software Asset Platform Magic Quadrant, March 2025) estimates that the average organisation spends over $1000 per employee for SaaS Applications, but that 25% of that is wasted. That’s $250 per employee per year. So, if you have 1000 employees, that’s $250,000 of waste. Run a similar analysis on YOUR organisation, and this will give you a starting point to see the immediate ROI that SaaS Management can provide.

Efficiency Gains

With an SMP, your team can:

• Centralise SaaS oversight in one place
• Automate user onboarding and offboarding
• Streamline new app requests with approval workflows
• Offer a self-service portal for quicker access to approved tools

Risk Reduction

SMPs help tighten security and compliance by:

• Managing shadow IT before it becomes a problem
• Ensuring apps meet data privacy standards (like GDPR, CCPA)
• Flagging unauthorised usage or risky vendors

Connect SMP benefits to your company’s bigger goals

For example, if digital transformation is a priority, explain how an SMP offers the visibility and control needed to scale SaaS safely. For cost containment, highlight the platform’s analytics that help forecast spend and find consolidation opportunities. For growth, show how an SMP keeps control over SaaS sprawl while supporting faster onboarding and tool adoption.

2: Prove Value Through Complete Visibility and Accurate Usage Data

With an SMP, your organisation gains:

• Real-time insights
  An SMP integrates directly with your SaaS apps, providing accurate, up-to-date data on how licenses are being used. For example, HCL BigFix SaaS Management offers 500+ integrations that allow you to track active licenses and their usage, giving you the insight you need to make better decisions.
• Centralised data for better decision-making
  By pulling information from various sources like SSO, HRIS, finance systems, and contracts, SMPs give you a consolidated view of your entire SaaS portfolio and eliminate data silos. As a result, you can make informed decisions about software usage and license management, leading to significant cost savings.
• Feature-level tracking
  Beyond basic license tracking, SMPs enable you to monitor specific usage, such as how many meetings are held in Zoom or how often DocuSign is used. This detailed data helps you spot underutilised features and adjust your subscriptions accordingly, optimising costs.

3: Showcase Financial ROI From Effective License Management

SMPs offer you practical tools to help cut costs and manage licenses more effectively, making a strong case for their adoption.

They automatically track usage and highlight unused or redundant licenses. For example, HCL BigFix SaaS management’s dashboard can show you what’s been bought, provisioned, and used, making it easy to spot and fix inefficiencies.

SMPs also help you stay on top of renewals and avoid surprise charges by creating automated calendars and sending reminders. After implementing HCL BigFix SaaS management, you can tap into 500+ connectors for real-time insights, cut SaaS spend by 20% through license optimization, and save over 3,000 hours annually across management and renewals.

HCL BigFix SaaS management’s license harvesting feature goes a step further by identifying underused licenses, reclaiming them, or adjusting subscription levels at renewal. This ensures you're only paying for what you truly use.

4: Highlight the Advantages of Security Risk Mitigation and Compliance

Unmanaged SaaS apps can seriously raise your organisation’s security risks. Employees might unknowingly share sensitive data or fall for phishing attempts. Plus, forgotten or unused accounts can leave doors open for cyberattacks.

SMPs like HCL BigFix SaaS management help tackle these issues by giving you full visibility into your software stack and offering key security features like:

• Self-service app catalog: Lets employees request access to approved apps directly via Slack or MS Teams, streamlining the process without losing control.
• App access reviews: Helps you regularly audit user permissions and prevent unauthorised access. You can even automate reviews for compliance standards like SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
• Privileged access management: Monitors and controls access to sensitive systems to prevent misuse.
• Time-based access: Allows temporary access for specific roles or projects, then automatically removes it.
• Provisioning & deprovisioning workflows: Automates onboarding by recommending tools for new hires and ensures all access is revoked when someone leaves.
• Deprovisioning for inactive users: Automatically revoke access for dormant accounts to eliminate hidden security gaps.

These tools help maintain compliance with regulations like GDPR² and HIPAA³ by tracking data movement, creating audit trails, and flagging any red flags early. 

5: Streamline Contract & Vendor Management and Enable Efficient Negotiations

With smart tools and clear insights, HCL BigFix SaaS Management helps you take a more strategic and efficient approach to SaaS procurement.

Contract Management

• HCL BigFix SaaS Management pulls all your vendor contracts into one secure dashboard—no more digging through spreadsheets or scattered folders.
• It uses AI-driven metadata extraction to automatically extract key contract info like payment terms and usage limits, so you always have the important stuff handy.
• The renewal calendar updates automatically using this contract data, and sends alerts for renewal and opt-out dates, helping you stay ahead of auto-renewals and plan better.

Vendor Management

• You can search for solutions using plain English. Just describe your problem, and HCL BigFix SaaS management will suggest tools that fit.
• It connects you with peers to see what similar companies are using, giving you more confidence in your choices.
• The platform shows reviews, pros, and cons pulled through machine learning, so you don’t have to jump across review sites.
• A feature prioritisation tool filters out the noise and highlights only the features that matter in your industry.
• Plus, a side-by-side comparison tool lets you easily stack up vendors based on pricing, features, support, and more.

Renewal Management

• HCL BigFix SaaS Management gives you insights backed by benchmarking data, like how your SaaS usage and spend are compared to industry standards.
• You’ll spot where you might be overspending or underutilising tools compared to others in your space.
• Renewal cards highlight key info like contract value and vendor spend, giving you a solid footing to negotiate better deals.
• By using real usage stats, industry data, and your own history, you can walk into renewal talks with leverage.

6: Improving Operational Efficiency and Streamlining Workflows

SMPs can simplify day-to-day operations by automating tasks that usually take up too much time and energy. With the right workflows in place, your team can stop chasing repetitive work and start focusing on what matters.

Here’s how SMPs make things easier behind the scenes:

• Renewal workflows
  No more last-minute surprises. Tools like HCL BigFix SaaS Management start the renewal process up to 90 days in advance. They loop in the right people, share usage insights, and highlight areas to optimize, so your team has time to make smart calls, not rushed ones.
• Procurement workflows
  Instead of messy email threads, employees can request new software through Slack or another central spot. The requests go through a built-in approval chain, keeping things smooth, secure, and compliant while cutting down on shadow IT.
• Provisioning and deprovisioning
  The system can automatically give the new hires access to the tools they need based on their role. When someone exits, it pulls access across all apps, no follow-up is needed. That means better security and no wasted licenses.
• License harvesting workflows
  These platforms keep an eye on usage patterns and flag underused or inactive licenses. Depending on your setup, it can ping the user or manager—or just pull the license back after a set period. Either way, you stop paying for tools no one's touching.

The big picture of SMP adoption is less manual effort, fewer mistakes, and faster processes. So, you can put forward to your leadership that it’s not just about automation but all about improving your organization's agility in managing its SaaS portfolio and making the business more nimble.

Take the Next Step 

As a SAM expert, you now have compelling reasons to justify the need for a SaaS management platform. To transform your SaaS management strategy, if you want to experience firsthand how a SaaS management platform, HCL BigFix SaaS Management, can work for your business, contact us today.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Can a SaaS Management Platform Integrate With Our Existing IT Infrastructure?

Yes, the best SMPs are designed to integrate seamlessly with your existing IT infrastructure.

They typically offer APIs and pre-built connectors for popular systems like SSO providers, HRIS, and financial software. This integration capability ensures smooth data flow and enables comprehensive SaaS management across your organisation.

2. How Does a SaaS Management Platform Handle Data Security and Privacy?

SMPS prioritise data security through encryption, access controls, and regular security audits. They comply with industry standards such as SOC 2 and GDPR.

Additionally, these platforms enhance your overall security posture by providing visibility into shadow IT and ensuring proper access management across your SaaS applications.

3. Can a SaaS Management Platform Help With Software Budgeting and Forecasting?

Absolutely. SMPs provide detailed spend analytics and usage trends, enabling accurate budgeting and forecasting.

They offer insights into upcoming renewals, potential cost savings, and growth patterns in SaaS usage. This data-driven approach allows you to create more precise budgets and make informed decisions about future software investments.

SAM experts face new challenges as businesses shift from on-premise apps to SaaS. Learn how to justify your leaders' need for a SaaS management platform.

References:

1. https://www.saasacademy.com/blog/saas-statistics
2. https://gdpr-info.eu/
3. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html