Why SaaS license waste is a cost and security problem

Unused SaaS licenses are a budget drain and a security risk. The need to easily track and manage SaaS licenses and identify unused ones is a challenge that every modern organization faces. 

The problem is that most IT teams can’t confidently answer a basic question: Are we using the licenses that we’re paying for? Why? Answering this simple question is more complicated than it seems.

Why tracking license usage matters

Every inactive user account or orphaned license is wasted budget and a potential door for bad actors into your environment. Without visibility into license usage, you’re likely:

• Paying for licenses that no one’s using

• Wasting time during renewals or facing true-ups because you can’t validate user counts

• Exposing your business to risk with accounts tied to former employees

Tracking SaaS licenses is difficult because it stems from a range of other issues. These issues often persist in organizations, despite best intentions to simplify and streamline deprovisioning:  

• Apps are decentralized. Teams sign up for or purchase their own tools, making it difficult for IT to know which SaaS apps are in use, let alone which licenses each employee is using. 

• Usage is a black box. At renewal time, it’s often difficult to gain visibility into how many licenses are actually in use and the last time employees logged in to their accounts.

• Understanding license use requires manual processes. License and contracts may still be stuck in individual applications and finance tools. Validating usage may require internal surveys to understand where and how tools are used.

• IT is stretched thin. Admins don’t have time to chase usage reports across dozens of tools and multiple teams.

The challenge of tracking license usage

Tracking license usage goes beyond simply understanding which apps are being used or counting seats. It’s about building a real-time system of record that gives IT, finance, and security teams full confidence in your SaaS stack and how licenses are being used. It effectively requires:

• SaaS discovery to uncover sanctioned and unsanctioned apps being used across the business 

• Usage data on who is and isn’t using which tools

• Integrate with finance tools to track license entitlements and understand how many licenses you’ve paid for directly from contracts

• Reclaim, removing, and downgrading licenses that are no longer being used by employees

Given the number of tools and the variety of teams involved, it’s not feasible to manage all of this manually or maintain individual dashboards across multiple products. If you take these approaches, the inevitable outcome is exactly what we stated above: security risk and wasted budget.

How 1Password SaaS Manager optimizes license usage 

SaaS Manager empowers IT teams to optimize license management. It connects to your identity provider/SSO (e.g., Okta and Google Workspace), finance tools, and 350+ business apps to provide real-time usage insights and workflows that enable you to take action.

With SaaS Manager, you can:

• Identify unused licenses automatically 

• Eliminate duplicate tools across teams

• Right-size renewals and avoid unnecessary true-ups

• Reclaim licenses automatically when employees leave

• Remove or downgrade licenses when employees no longer need access

• Cut costs without cutting productivity

With over 350+ integrations, SaaS Manager makes it easy to see who is (and isn’t) actively using each app. SaaS Manager also enables teams to integrate with Finance tools and import contacts to understand license entitlements. With automated workflows, you can identify and reclaim unused licenses, eliminate overspend, and be better prepared when renewals and true-ups inevitably come up. Learn more about 1Password SaaS Manager.

Start optimizing licenses today

License waste isn’t just a cost problem; it’s also an access risk. The longer you wait to fix it, the more it costs, and the longer potential security risks from unused licenses persist.

You can learn more about how SaaS Manager can make you an IT hero in our upcoming webinar, or start getting control over your license usage today with a demo of SaaS Manager.