Additionally, there are economic uncertainties to contend with now. Plus, there’s sky high employee turnover.

It all leads to the big question: Where should you focus your 2023 IT spending? 

Regardless of your industry or company size, your IT budgeting for 2023 should include automation. Let’s take a look at several reasons why.

7 reasons your 2023 IT budget should include automation

Using original BetterCloud data published in two research reports, The Rise of Zero- Touch IT and the recent 2023 State of SaaSOps, we pulled out the main reasons why your budget needs to include automation.

With that, let’s move on to the first reason.

1. Your competitors are actively automating some of their SaaS operations

Right now, more than 75% of organizations currently use automation. 

About 29% have automated more than half of their SaaS-related activities. About half have automated between a quarter and a half of their SaaS tasks. 

The rest don’t use any automation, nor do they plan to do so. If your organization is in this group, it’ll be tough to compete within your industry and for talent.

How do we know? IT professionals told us. 

According to our original research, IT struggles with an annual turnover rate that approaches 23%, while 81% of IT professionals say they’re open to new opportunities. 

This leads us to the next reason to add automation to your IT budget for 2023.

2. Your IT team is at risk of leaving for another organization that does automate SaaS operations

With an ongoing talent shortage and ever-present recruiting challenges, your IT department is at a disadvantage without automating. After all, automation is a hot, in-demand IT skill. 

IT professionals know it, too. 

More than half of IT professionals say they’re considering new positions that allow them to learn or advance their IT automation skills.

Almost as many would love to find a new job that doesn’t have the slog of repetitive, manual work that could be automated away.  

This brings us to the third reason why you need automation.

3. It’s impossible to effectively manage increasingly complex SaaS environments without automation

As SaaS adoption rises and companies grow, so does the amount of data. As a result, SaaS environments get harder and harder to manage. Access management, permissions, file security, user lifecycle management—it all amounts to a mountain of routine, time-consuming tasks that are never done.

A whopping 92% of Future Automators agree they spend too much time on repetitive, manual work. And 80% of them say it prevents them from working on projects with real strategic business value.

Routine activities take IT time away from more strategic projects—important ones, too. 

Instead of building a SaaS governance policy and better managing shadow IT or improving SaaS data security, IT is mired in tedious tasks like offboarding. 

Improving security is a perennial IT budgeting issue, and 2023 is likely no exception. And while we’re on the topic of security, let’s move onto the fourth reason why you need to include automation in next year’s IT budget.

4. Automation can help improve your security posture and reduce human error

Every IT department struggles with securing their SaaS environment. 

Insider threats—regardless of whether it’s rooted in malice or well-intentioned negligence—continually threaten your organization’s security posture. And as each new SaaS data file gets added, that risk only grows one file at a time.

As a result, it makes sense that the single biggest reason to automate is to boost security. 

Let’s take a minute to explain how automation improves security posture. For one, it reduces human error and, in turn, the mistakes that can create security vulnerabilities. 

Automation also helps eliminate misconfigurations. And by automating file or folder settings, automation also helps eliminate inadvertent sharing or exposed public links.

And then there’s the sharing of confidential information. Automation, using rules on what’s considered proprietary or personal, notifies IT with an alert that there’s a shared file or folder that could be a potential security violation. The violation can be automatically remediated, protecting data without any friction to the end user. 

Remember that SaaS security needs to scale. It’s simply impossible to secure your environment without automation.

Now that we’ve covered the single biggest reason to automate, let’s talk about that second most common reason: to grow IT efficiency.

5. Organizations that take advantage of automation have more efficient IT departments

The 2023 State of SaaSOps Report discusses the three types of workplaces in the world today. 

SaaS-Powered Workplaces are extraordinary, running almost entirely on SaaS. Compare this to Workplaces in Transition and Traditional Workplaces, which use far less SaaS. 

At the same time, consider their IT ratios, which show the number of employees per IT team member. SaaS-Powered Workplaces have one IT team member for every 83 employees. 

Meanwhile, Traditional Workplaces have one IT team member for every 59 employees. 

This means that SaaS-Powered Workplaces are about 30% more efficient. These organizations use more SaaS and effectively orchestrate entire processes, which is why they operate such lean teams. It’s also why they experience larger operational efficiency gains. Automation is one of the most powerful ways IT can accomplish more in less time, with fewer resources.

Imagine what you could achieve if your team was a third more efficient? Imagine how much easier it would be to recruit and keep IT talent? 

Efficiency is only one benefit, but there are other reasons why your 2023 IT budget ought to include automation. 

6. Automation meets expectations and delivers on promised benefits

We’ve covered both operational efficiency and security in previous reasons for automation. However, the fact that automation meets expectations is another reason to pursue it.

IT projects can be risky. Ever migrate a legacy application to the cloud? Who knows if that app migration will deliver a positive return on investment? Who knows if that app provides the required performance? 

But when it comes to IT automation projects, there’s much less risk. While success is never 100% guaranteed, automation projects are activities of incremental improvement. 

You start by automating a few simple tasks. Over time, you refine it to include the entire process. A good example is help desk tickets—these time-consuming, tedious, manual tasks are a great place to start to increase operational efficiency. 

This brings us to the seventh reason to add automation to your IT budget in 2023.

7. Automation enables you to build a faster, more effective help desk

When it comes to automation, help desk-related tasks are rich with automation possibilities. These processes are done over and over, are time consuming, and often leave employees idle and unproductive in the meantime.

Right now, nearly half of all organizations already automate onboarding, while more than 40% automate offboarding and the dreaded password and multifactor authentication resets. 

About a third are just getting started with creating initial automations, and around 20% are hoping to jump into the automation arena.

If you’re in the 6 to 11% of organizations that have no plans to automate any help desk tasks, it will be difficult to remain competitive.

The bottom line on IT budgeting in 2023: Automation is the future 

As you contemplate your IT budget for 2023, we hope you’ll consider these seven reasons and make automation a key priority. After all, you’ll be joining the 72% of IT professionals who believe that zero-touch automation is the future of SaaSOps. This next evolution of automation encompasses the orchestration of end-to-end, automated workflows, in order to help IT more easily manage repetitive, manual IT processes. 

Getting started is easy. First, pick your processes for your first automations. 

To do this, simply look at your most common requests, or help desk tickets. Look for the requests that frequently reoccur. Next, prioritize them according to how time consuming they are to resolve or those that most frustrate employees, partners, and customers. 

These are the processes that are ripe for automation. Remember that automation is a journey, so the faster you get started, the faster you’ll reap the rewards.

To learn more about how BetterCloud can help you automate your SaaS operations, request a demo.

We’re back this year with our tenth annual exploration of trends in SaaS operations (SaaSOps). 

Earlier this year, we surveyed 700+ IT and security professionals to uncover the trends, challenges, and priorities defining SaaSOps. After a burst in pandemic-driven SaaS app growth, IT is facing more challenges (and opportunities) than ever. And our data shows that IT teams are doubling down on automation to manage it all. But what does this look like in practice? And what will it mean for IT in the future?

Grab your popcorn, and let’s take a look at some of the key trends from this year’s State of SaaSOps report. 

Organizations are still using more SaaS apps than ever, but growth has slowed a bit 

This year, 40% of IT professionals said they consolidated redundant/duplicate SaaS apps, in part prompting a slower growth rate this year. After rapid acceleration of SaaS adoption in the beginning of the decade, the yearly growth pace has finally slowed down a bit for the first time. 

Despite that, the net growth of SaaS apps used is still up 18% this year, with organizations now using 130 apps on average. 

SaaS security is increasingly IT’s responsibility, and it’s not going away anytime soon

The line between security and IT is blurring. A whopping 81% of IT professionals say they are responsible for protecting sensitive data within SaaS apps. 

And the amount of sensitive data is rising too, which makes security even more challenging. 43% say they’ve added a new SaaS app that stores sensitive data in the last 12 months. Another 42% say they have difficulties securing users’ activities within SaaS apps.

Nearly everyone finds automation critical to overcoming today’s SaaSOps challenges

An overwhelming 86% of IT professionals believe automation is important to effectively managing SaaS operations, but nearly two-thirds (64%) lack insight and visibility to automate effectively.

For many enterprises, the automation journey is underway—bringing new automated processes, skill specialization, and the right tools to get the job done

71% of respondents have already automated at least one help desk process, like onboarding or password resets. Carving out specialized automation teams is on IT’s roadmap too. 43% already have a dedicated SaaSOps automation role or team where they only develop and manage automated workflows, and another 23% plan to. 

As for automation tools? Insights are key. 75% prefer SaaS management solutions that enable insights-driven automation.

Download the full report to learn: 

• IT’s top priorities in 2023
• Why SaaS security continues to be a major concern
• The operational challenges most crucial to solve in SaaS environments
• Which types of tickets your peers are currently automating (and planning to automate in the upcoming year)
• The strategic projects your peers are working on by automating more

To learn more about how BetterCloud can help you discover, manage, and secure your SaaS environment, request a demo.

Since 2012, we’ve been surveying IT professionals and publishing research to better understand what the shift to SaaS means for IT, end users, and the broader organization. Every year we explore IT’s biggest challenges and concerns, trends in SaaS adoption, and what the future holds—making this the industry’s largest and longest running research of its kind. 

This year’s survey of 523 IT and security professionals reveals the latest challenges of managing SaaS at scale, particularly as digital transformation catapulted forward in 2021—and IT kept the momentum going. It also sheds new light on SaaS file security, the state of SaaSOps automation, the workplace of the future, and more. 

Here’s an excerpt from the report.

Key takeaways

1. SaaS adoption continues to explode. The average organization uses 110 SaaS apps this year, up 38% from an average of 80 apps last year. 
2. More SaaS brings more SaaS management challenges. More than half of respondents (55%) say the top challenge to solve in their SaaS environment is lack of visibility into user activity and data. Additionally, nearly a third of respondents said they waste 20-39% of their total SaaS spend on unused or underutilized SaaS licenses. 
3. IT is facing new SaaS security concerns and challenges. This year, as SaaS file security violations spiked 134%, over half (55%) of respondents say their biggest security concern is not knowing where sensitive data exists.
4. Every organization will eventually become a SaaS-Powered Workplace. SaaS has crossed the chasm. While many organizations are still in the early stages of their SaaS adoption journey, at some point, every organization will be powered by SaaS.
5. Levels of SaaSOps automation will nearly double in the next three years. SaaS-Powered Workplaces report that today 45% of their routine SaaS operations is already automated and estimate it will rise to nearly 80% in three years.
6. In response to the past year, IT’s role is becoming more strategic. 76% of respondents report being more or much more strategic over the last 12 months.
7. The SaaSOps role will be critical to every IT team. All told, 60% of IT professionals already have “SaaSOps” in their job titles/descriptions or plan to add it in the future—a whopping 100% increase from last year.

SaaS adoption continues to explode, as organizations use an average of 110 SaaS apps in 2021

As organizations continue to embrace (and accelerate) their digital transformation journeys, SaaS adoption remains unabated. Up from an average of 80 apps last year, this year organizations use 110 apps, for a 38% increase. This is nearly a 7x increase in SaaS app usage since 2017, and almost a 14x increase since 2015.

The biggest SaaS management challenge? Lack of visibility

More SaaS brings more challenges. 

The number one challenge according to our respondents is lack of visibility into all user activity and data. What data are users downloading, sharing, exporting, and forwarding? What apps are employees using? 

Without visibility and actionable insights into their SaaS environment, IT is flying blind. And as SaaS adoption continues to massively climb, these challenges only compound.

Lack of visibility results in wasted SaaS spend

Forty-two percent of respondents said finding unused or underutilized SaaS app licenses was one of their most crucial challenges to solve. And indeed, 80% of respondents concede that some percentage of their SaaS spend is being wasted. 

License waste comes in many flavors. It could be the apps that go unloved and unused. It could be similar apps solving the same use case, like having six different project management apps across the business. It could be different departments using the exact same app, only with different accounts. In all of these cases, there are massive untapped opportunities to cut costs and properly allocate licenses. But without visibility, it’s incredibly difficult to identify these opportunities.

So how much of total SaaS spend is wasted on unused or underutilized SaaS licenses? Nearly a third said between 20-39%—which can mean thousands (or even millions) of dollars, depending on your SaaS spend.

Top SaaS security concerns: not knowing where sensitive data lives, unsanctioned apps, and more

The biggest security concern plaguing IT when it comes to SaaS is not knowing where sensitive data exists. If you don’t know where your data resides, you can’t protect it.

Additionally, it’s never been easier for end users to procure and deploy SaaS by themselves. Nearly three-quarters (69%) of our respondents worry about unsanctioned SaaS apps creating security issues.

This year SaaS file security violations have spiked 134%, and the number of files containing PII has grown 1944% year over year.

SaaS cuts both ways. While SaaS is a gamechanger for productivity, it also gives employees new levels of control over critical company assets. And with this new control come new risks related to app misconfigurations, excessive permissions, and uncontrolled file sharing.

The well-meaning but negligent employee poses the biggest data loss threat—by far

According to our respondents, the greatest risk to data loss isn’t the hoodie-wearing hacker or disgruntled employee. 

Overall, a whopping 72% of organizations feel that the greatest risk to data loss is the well-meaning employee who unwittingly shares sensitive information. These employees have good intentions and are just trying to do their jobs, but often lack the training or knowledge to keep sensitive information safe.

Employees who are merely trying to get work done or circumvent friction may share data publicly across the organization (or even publicly on the internet) without realizing the implications of their actions. Because they have access to confidential data and systems, it’s critical to implement thoughtful and thorough security training and develop a healthy security culture. 

Every organization will eventually become a SaaS-Powered Workplace

As SaaS adoption continues to reach dizzying heights, a new type of workplace has clearly emerged: the SaaS-Powered Workplace. These are organizations that are running almost entirely on SaaS. But of course, not every organization is as reliant on SaaS yet. Three segments stood out in our study, all with varying levels of SaaS maturity, which illustrate how the digital workplace is evolving:

Many organizations are still in the early stages of their SaaS adoption journey. But the data clearly reveals that they too are trending in the same direction as SaaS-first workplaces. SaaS has crossed the chasm—and at some point, every organization will become a SaaS-Powered Workplace.

Levels of SaaS automation will nearly double in the next 3 years

Given how time consuming it is to manage manual work, wrangle SaaS sprawl, and secure data, IT teams are increasingly turning to automation. The top benefit that IT teams expect from automating SaaS management? Improved operational efficiency.

SaaS automation will make big gains over the next few years. SaaS-Powered Workplaces report that today 45% of their routine SaaS operations is already automated and estimate it will rise to nearly 80% in three years. Workplaces in Transition and Traditional Workplaces, too, expect to double their automation levels.

Any organization adopting SaaS will eventually face the same operational challenges that come with discovering, managing, and securing SaaS apps, users, and files at scale. As SaaS apps proliferate, IT is beset with more and more manual tasks. And as SaaS-Powered Workplaces have learned, automating SaaSOps is the only way to scale and create more capacity.

In 2021, IT’s role (finally) shifted from functional to strategic—and will continue growing in importance

Amid the accelerating pace of technology and explosion of SaaS adoption, IT is helping organizations address new challenges and evolving its role from ticket taker to tech enabler. To continue driving momentum and enabling their modern workforces, IT changed to think strategically—as 76% told us.

In the past year, they’ve become less reactive, more proactive. They’re participating in strategic planning, driving customer outcomes, and becoming trusted strategic partners to the business, ultimately leading the way to tomorrow’s workplace.

The SaaSOps role will be critical to every IT team

Additionally, SaaSOps is increasingly influencing the evolution of job titles. All told, 60% of IT professionals already have “SaaSOps” in their job titles/descriptions or plan to add it in the future—a whopping 100% increase from last year. For many respondents, SaaSOps is where they’ll realign their career goals, if they haven’t started to already.

Workplaces in Transition and Traditional Workplaces are more established organizations with legacy infrastructure—and they, too, recognize the need to hire for SaaSOps roles and skills. 

The future of SaaSOps is now.

Download the full report to learn: 

• The current state of SaaS adoption across organizations of all sizes
• The top five most common types of sensitive data stored in cloud apps
• File sharing settings benchmarking metrics by industry
• The strategic projects your peers are working on by automating more
• The future of SaaSOps
• And more

Regardless of whether you’re a SaaS-Powered Workplace, Workplace in Transition, or Traditional Workplace, download the report and see how you compare.

To learn more about how BetterCloud can help you discover, manage, and secure your SaaS environment, request a demo.

In just a matter of weeks, organizations around the world leveraged SaaS platforms to shift employees out of traditional offices and into distributed, mostly home-based work environments.

Up until this point, most companies were adopting a cloud-first approach for their IT infrastructure. But now, that strategy has shifted to cloud only. What happened this year will prove to be the tipping point for SaaS adoption in the enterprise. We haven’t just finally crossed the chasm—we’ve catapulted across it.

But what are the biggest challenges, priorities, and goals when managing SaaS at scale?

To find out, we surveyed nearly 700 IT and security professionals. We’ve been publishing this kind of research for nearly a decade—with past findings appearing in WSJ’s CIO Journal, CIO.com, Forbes, and more—but this year’s report seems especially relevant.

Here’s what the data uncovered. The path to success with SaaS is turning into a bumpy and unpredictable ride. Ad hoc approaches to SaaS management tasks are breaking down; concerns over cost, security, and lack of control are on the rise.

The good news is that IT organizations are uniting behind a proven solution to their SaaS challenges. SaaSOps, a discipline for discovering, managing, and securing SaaS environments through centralized and automated operations, is helping to reduce friction, improve collaboration, and create better employee experiences.

We hope the 2020 State of SaaSOps report shows you why SaaSOps is such an important part of this story and that it helps you prepare your IT organization for success with it.

David Politis
Founder & CEO, BetterCloud

7 key findings

1. On average, organizations use 80 SaaS apps today. This is a 5x increase in just three years and a 10x increase since 2015.
2. The top two motivators for using more SaaS apps are increasing productivity and reducing costs.
3. Only 49% of IT professionals inspire confidence in their ability to identify and monitor unsanctioned SaaS usage on company networks—yet more than three-quarters (76%) see unsanctioned apps as a security risk.
4. The top five places where sensitive data lives are: 1. Files stored in cloud storage, 2. Email, 3. Devices, 4. Chat apps, and 5. Password managers. But because SaaS apps have become the system of record, sensitive data inevitably lives everywhere in your SaaS environment.
5. The top two security concerns are sensitive files shared publicly and former employees retaining data access.
6. IT teams spend an average of 7.12 hours offboarding a single employee from a company’s SaaS apps.
7. Thirty percent of respondents already use the term “SaaSOps” in their job title or plan to include it soon.

SaaS usage has exploded

Today, SaaS dominates the business IT landscape—and there’s no going back to the legacy ways of working now.

Everyone wants to realize the full potential of SaaS

In theory, using best-of-breed applications unlocks incredible potential. Employees can work securely, stay productive, collaborate easily, and drive organizational success. According to our report, the top two motivators for using more SaaS apps are:

1. Increasing productivity
2. Reducing costs

Everyone wants to reach that “promise land” where they can realize the full potential of SaaS.

But IT organizations face major challenges managing and securing large-scale SaaS environments

In reality, however, SaaS adoption creates costly and complex challenges. As organizations scale up their SaaS environments to manage more apps for more users, these challenges become much harder to solve.

Our research identified three categories of challenges: unsanctioned app usage, an overreliance on tedious, manual tasks, and pervasive data security issues.

IT leaders see SaaSOps as a necessity driven by the challenges of managing SaaS at scale

If there’s one word that describes the state of SaaSOps, it’s momentum.

As organizations struggle with the impacts of app sprawl, surging adoption, and business growth, SaaSOps gives IT a single framework for solving all of these problems. As a result, SaaSOps is evolving into a core IT discipline—influencing strategic priorities, technology investments, and even job titles.

“Enablement of SaaSOps in our environment is critical to the overall success of our company.” — IT Director, healthcare company with 950 employees

These changes will help prepare IT for a future where SaaS shapes and dominates the technology landscape, allowing teams to drive important advantages across every business unit.

Download the full report to learn:

• The 3 most crucial challenges to solve, according to nearly 700 IT pros
• SaaS adoption trends based on company age, company size, and length of time using SaaS
• The tools organizations are using to manage and secure their SaaS environment
• Why automation has a game-changing impact on SaaS operations
• How SaaSOps is reshaping IT skill sets, careers, and even job titles
• And more

For more information on SaaSOps, including webinars, books, and success stories from SaaSOps practitioners, check out https://www.bettercloud.com/saasops/.

To learn more about how BetterCloud can help you on your SaaSOps journey, request a demo.