Managed SaaS is a rapidly growing space in the MSP space. In 2020, your clients rapidly adopted new SaaS technologies to solve issues that arose when COVID disrupted the business world. As a result, there’s a lot of waste that needs to be cleaned up. Solving this problem won’t be easy, but clients wouldn’t be leaning on you to solve their problems if it was easy.
Covid changed digitization from an expansion tactic to a survival tactic. Digitization is no longer an option, it’s now a minimum requirement. We’ve all personally been on far more Zoom calls than we can recount. Now some technologies can even take your Zoom calls and tell you how well you did on them! There’s really a SaaS solution for everything, but how can it all be wrangled?
What Does A Client Look Like That Needs Managed SaaS?
Dipping your toes into the Managed SaaS vertical may at first feel overwhelming. However, just like all innovation, your practice has overcome, and SaaS is just the next hurdle.
First, it’s all about identifying the characteristics of a client in need. It’s recommended to find a client that you have trust with as you will be solving new problems. Find the ones that match one or more of the following criteria:
Rapidly Innovating Industries: These clients are trying innovative technologies and often they’re forgetting to cancel subscriptions. Furthermore, they are likely not effectively managing the operations of these SaaS solutions as they grow. Offer them a discovery audit and start with some simple questions: “What role does this play in your business?” “Who manages these solutions?” or even sometimes the most important one “Why do you even use this?”
Professional Services: Your traditional back-office accounting, finance, HR companies are great use-cases. Rapidly growing SaaS companies & consulting firms are also great examples. With their core goal of serving the client being what drives them forward, it’s often not their focus to operationalize SaaS. This leaves a large opportunity for you to come in and be the CFO’s best friend by finding them huge savings!
Highly Compliant Organizations: For your clients that are highly compliant (PCI, HIPAA, NIST, etc.), it’s critical that you’re looking at the inside of their cloud, not just building a wall around the outside. The leaders in these companies are reaching outside all of the security you’re building, and bringing in new technologies without approval. Understanding their security posture on SaaS is important as they may be at risk.
What Kind of Problems Can Managed SaaS Solve?
The Managed SaaS vertical isn’t a silver bullet for all cloud problems in your client’s environments. It is, however, a great starting point to talk about deeper, higher-value problems. What we always recommend is solving one problem at a time versus boiling the entire ocean. Here are some recommended issues to listen for while listening to your client:
Data Sprawl Concerns: Are your client’s frustrated with half of the team using Slack & the other half using Teams? How about that employee that used their personal dropbox to share code with a teammate and it leaked at Tesla? What about the HR team who just found that slick new solution so they’re starting to store applicant (PII) data in it? A discovery report from Saaslio could help equip you with the data to help streamline operations on SaaS adoption.
Security Posture: Help your clients look at more than their cybersecurity posture. Compliant organizations often select their solutions based on the SaaS company’s certifications to ensure there is no risk for their regulations. However, 8 out of 10 SaaS purchases coming from business owners and not technical leaders. This means there is almost undoubtedly Shadow IT putting your client’s compliance at risk. Help your client feel safe by letting them know what’s in their environment.
Expensive Licenses: Check out our list below for areas to start, but there are some seriously expensive solutions out there that could use some optimization! Trimming even 10% of one of these product’s license fees could justify an entire discovery project. Focus on the key solutions that fuel their business, this is often where there is oversubscription. This happens due to everyone being granted a license by default on these platforms. Don’t forget the 365 & Google Business tools that everyone is licensed to as well! SoftwareLicense Cost *
Software | License Cost* |
SAP | $110 per user/per month |
Salesforce | $125 per user/per month |
Bullhorn | $99 per user/per month |
Freshdesk | $15-$99 per user/per month |
Zendesk | $49-$99 per user/per month |
Adobe | $33-$80 per user/per month |
Hubspot | $45-$80 per user/per month |
Atlassian** | $14-$80 per user/per month |
Quickbook | $35-$75 per user/per month |
Docusign | $25-$40 per user/per month |
Box | $15-$25 per user/per month |
Microsoft 365 – E3 | $20 per user/per month |
Google Business Standard | $12 per user/per month |
*Pricing is based on generally-available information and may change per client’s negotiated rates.
**Product bundles can range from one solution to many.
How Do I Position Managed SaaS To Key Stakeholders?
CIO (Chief Information Officer): Most often the CIO is exhausted trying to keep up with all the solutions the other leaders are implementing. Their job is to lead technical decision-making, however, people are making decisions outside of their purview. Talk to the CIO about returning control of SaaS to him/her and how SaaS isn’t a bad thing, but Shadow IT is.
CEO (Chief Executive Officer): The CEO is busy looking at the big picture of the company and the objectives that they’ll be clearing in the next quarter/year. They resonate with employees using technology that they’re no longer aware of. They know these solutions are paid for but are not sure of the value they get out of it. Talk to them about the fact that you can help ensure their investments are producing value.
CFO (Chief Financial Officer): The CFO is looking to trim the bottom line. They see new subscriptions popping up and they’re often overwhelmed with requests coming in for new SaaS solutions. Their job is to ensure the business is at peak financial performance. Talk to them about how you can ensure that all the licenses they are paying for are being used and not wasted. Delight them by saving them massive chunks of their SaaS spend.
CISO (Chief Information Security Officer): The CISO is there to make sure their security posture is strong. They want to know both internal and external threats to the company. You’ve likely helped this person out by providing cybersecurity audits already. Talk to this person about a security audit of their SaaS solutions and make Shadow IT visible for them.
In Summary
Managed SaaS is a rapidly growing market, but you don’t have to go at it alone. If you need help having a conversation about it with your clients, book a time below & talk to our Managed SaaS experts.
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