More Than Half Of SaaS Tools Are No Use

More than half the SaaS tools in organisations contribute “little or nothing to organizational outcomes”.

A post by Tom Fishburne of Marketoonist fame caught my eye last week.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomfishburne_marketing-cartoon-marketoon-activity-7360671448283168768-C_N8

It cited research from Zylo that said the average firm had 275 tools in their technology stack.

16% of tools were purchased by IT, half by the business line, and the rest were shadow IT purchases.

In conversations with sustainability managers, a version of the following story comes up again and again.

1. We’re drowning in spreadsheets.
2. There is no budget for hiring, or we’re struggling to get people to do these jobs.
3. Internal audit has highlighted weaknesses that we need to improve.
4. Senior management think we need a system – someone has recommended XYZ software.
5. The software doesn’t save us any time in the work we need to do – but now we need to format everything so it fits the interface so that’s more work.
6. Any changes are complicated, costing more in changes or we have to do this outside the software.
7. We’re still paying for the license, but have gone back to Excel to get the work done.

There also seems to be a bit of a price war going on with sustainability software – one manager said they had shifted to another tool that cost 66% less. There is an oversupply of tools out there and the sector is probably overdue for a shakeout, so it’s not surprising that prices are plummeting.

We’ve approached this from the other end. Rather than building software, we use lean processes to get the data flowing cleanly, so that it can be used in the next stage, whether that’s in a DIY PowerBi system, internal management reporting, or a SaaS platform that clients have invested in.

Let me be clear, I’m not against SaaS – the data just shows that there’s a disconnect between what people buy and how they use it.

And if you’re a SaaS vendor customers seem to be looking at the level of implementation support that comes with your product.

If you’re a senior manager, talk to your team doing the work and see if the tools they have are really saving them time.

And if this is a problem, get in touch. We can help streamline the process, get the most out of your existing investments and get that tech stack working for you.