Suffering from Duplicate Apps & Cloud Waste? You're Not Alone!

business continuity. But after the cloud adoption phase came the phase many companies are in now, which is struggling with how to streamline cloud use and overcome cloud waste. Cloud waste equates to having more applications in your business network than you actually need. The symptoms are bloated cloud subscription costs and paying for duplicate apps that perform a function another app you already have can do. For example, a company paying for Microsoft 365 and also paying for a service like Zoom for video calls, are wasting money because within their M365 subscription is Teams, an app that can make video calls. How bad has the cloud waste problem become? A report from Blissfully, 2020 Annual SaaS Trends, shows that this is a growing problem. Here are some of the statistics from 2019 as compared to the year prior:

1. Cloud waste is nearly doubling year over year

2. Companies churn through 30% of their cloud apps

3. Companies on average have 3.6 duplicate apps

4. Orphaned app subscriptions rose almost 100% All of these statistics point to cloud use being out of hand for a majority of businesses and the need to streamline and optimize. Costs due to cloud waste can quickly add up, so it’s vital to get those costs under control sooner rather than later.
   

Steps for Reducing Cloud Waste & Excess SaaS Costs A typical company wastes as much as 35% of its cloud budget. Contributing factors include paying for redundant apps, not policing shadow IT, and leaving resources unused. Here are some ways you can stop the waste and bring your cloud costs down as a result.

Survey Employees About Cloud Use The first step in controlling your cloud use is to find out exactly what cloud apps all your employees are using in their workflows. Shadow IT, which means applications used without knowledge of a company or their IT team, can often go unchecked. A survey will help in a number of ways:

1. Identify shadow IT

2. Identify most and least used apps

3. Identify which apps employees find the most or least helpful

4. Identify redundancies and gaps in your cloud tools

List Out All Company Apps and Compare Along with the apps identified in employee surveys, get a list of your app subscription costs from your accounting department. Next, list out all the apps your team uses and compare their features and costs. The goal is to eliminate redundancies and streamline to as few different platforms and apps as possible.

Consider All-in-One Platforms The benefit of using an all-in-one productivity platform, like Microsoft 365, Zendesk, or Google Workspace is that all apps within the platform are natively integrated and designed not to be redundant. Users also become familiar with a single interface, and blanket security policies can more easily be implemented across your entire cloud infrastructure.

Choose Your New Cloud Strategy Eliminate the apps you no longer need and choose your new cloud strategy and workflow. The guidance of an expert IT consultant can help here, because they will give you a roadmap and help you with all your data migrations to ensure a smooth transition.

Securely Deactivate Old Cloud Apps It’s important that you properly and securely deactivate old cloud applications that you’re no longer going to be using. You want to ensure that you’re not leaving any data behind that could be compromised. It is also important that you have all your data (records, customizations, automations, etc.) exported prior to ending your subscription. Once your subscription is ended, have your accounting team keep an eye out to make sure you’re not billed again accidentally by the provider.

Train Your Team on the New Workflows & Policies For employees to be successful with a new cloud tool workflow, they need time to learn the tools and processes and receive training. Don’t just drop a new set of tools on your team and expect them to learn everything themselves. Take the time to have a professional like your IT provider or the SaaS customer support team, train your employees. When you’ve streamlined your interface it’s important to put policies in place about approved app usage to ensure new apps aren’t being added by employees without your knowledge. Make sure employee training includes cloud use policies.

Get Help Optimizing & Streamlining Your Cloud Use Texas I.T. Pros can work with your Denton or Wise County business to streamline your use of the cloud to increase productivity while reducing waste and cost. Contact us today to learn more! Call 940-239-6500 or reach out online.