How ServiceTrade’s two‑person IT team supports 400 people with secure access, device trust, and SaaS visibility

Saved approximately $72,000/year in in excess AI spend avoided after a model-setting change was detected

75 to 100 OS-update tickets eliminated per week

Nearly 1,000 applications surfaced across the organization

Approximately $19,200/year in potential savings identified from 40 inactive Cursor seats

ServiceTrade supports approximately 400 employees and contractors with a two-person IT team. By combining 1Password Enterprise Password Manager, Device Trust, and AI & SaaS Manager, the company standardizes access, supports secure developer workflows, applies device health checks across a largely BYOD workforce, and centralizes visibility into SaaS and AI usage. The approach helped eliminate 75 to 100 operating-system update tickets per week, surface nearly 1,000 applications, prevent approximately $72,000 in annual AI overspend, and identify approximately $19,200 in potential yearly savings from inactive Cursor seats.

Scaling IT without adding layers of support 

When Steve May joined ServiceTrade’s formal IT function in 2021, the company had approximately 100 employees and no standardized hardware or password-management program. For the most part, employees used their own devices, with credentials stored in browsers, personal password managers, or other tools. 

As the company grew, application ownership became distributed across IT, DevOps, go-to-market operations, and individual departments. Inventory, ownership, access, and spend data lived in different systems, spreadsheets, and individual knowledge.

That made routine questions difficult to answer: Which applications exist? Who owns them? Who still needs access? What happens when someone changes roles or leaves? Which AI tools are generating variable usage charges?

BYOD brought its own security and privacy considerations as ServiceTrade worked to meet SOC 1 and SOC 2 requirements. More recently, AI has added another category of software usage and spend to manage. 

Rather than adding more manual processes and hiring people to carry them out, May needed systems that could take routine work off IT’s plate and give employees more ways to help themselves. 

One platform, more ways to manage IT

Existing familiarity with 1Password reduced the change-management burden of standardizing credential management. The same low-friction experience also supported broader adoption as ServiceTrade extended the platform into developer workflows, device posture, and SaaS governance.

1Password’s role has grown considerably since then. What started as a way to secure credentials now touches several parts of ServiceTrade’s IT operations. 1Password Enterprise Password Manager underpins secure access, 1Password Device Trust helps the company manage a BYOD workforce, and 1Password AI & SaaS Manager gives May a clearer picture of the applications employees are using and what they cost. 

Usability has been important to adoption. May wanted a well-designed experience to help people embrace security tools. 1Password provides this, helping ServiceTrade expand its use across the organization over time. 

Enterprise password management

ServiceTrade initially rolled out 1Password Enterprise Password Manager to approximately 100 employees over the course of two months. It is now one of the core applications introduced to every new employee and contractor during IT orientation. Group-based permissions simplify access management, eliminating the need to maintain permissions on a person-by-person basis. 

Developer tools for secure workflows

Developers use 1Password for secrets, as well as SSH and CLI workflows. This helps keep credentials out of source code without forcing developers into a separate process that gets in the way of their work. 

1Password AI & SaaS Manager 

Application information once lived across spreadsheets, Snipe-IT — an IT asset management platform — and the people responsible for individual tools. AI & SaaS Manager gives ServiceTrade a shared view of an environment that turned out to include nearly 1,000 applications. The app catalog provides a consistent place to request software. Enhanced visibility helps IT provision and deprovision access as employees join, change roles, or leave. A view into the AI coding tools that developers use also helps IT monitor adoption, usage, and associated spending across the development environment. 

AI spend and consumption management with AI & SaaS Manager 

AI & SaaS Manager also gives ServiceTrade a clearer view of AI consumption. May spent about an hour each day piecing together usage information from vendor dashboards and spreadsheets since spend was variable, rather than fixed per-seat fees. He can now see usage and spend across the organization and use that information to shape AI capacity around the needs of different teams. 

A change to the organization-wide default AI model moved users to a more expensive premium model. AI & SaaS Manager surfaced the resulting consumption spike the following day. May traced the increase to the configuration change, corrected it, and avoided approximately $72,000 per year in excess spend.

1Password AI & SaaS Manager gives us visibility into AI consumption so we can help teams plan better and connect premium usage to real business value.

Steve May
Director of IT at ServiceTrade

1Password Device Trust

With a largely BYOD workforce, ServiceTrade needed to meet its security and compliance requirements without unnecessarily intruding on employees’ personal devices. 1Password Device Trust helps the company monitor operating system updates, verify required applications, and enforce basic security standards without full mobile device management (MDM). These capabilities complement ServiceTrade’s MDM tools and extend security checks to contractors using their own devices. Device Trust checks device and browser health, tying compliance directly to single sign-on (SSO) while giving employees and developers specific remediation instructions before accessing company applications so they can get back to work quickly. 

With 1Password Device Trust, we can get ahead of problems and help people fix them before they become support tickets.

Steve May
Director of IT at ServiceTrade

Empowering a two-person IT team to do more 

Device Trust eliminated between 75 and 100 weekly tickets related to operating-system updates, removing a repetitive support process from a two-person IT team.

1Password AI & SaaS Manager is also reducing the manual work involved in managing software and spend. May previously combined up to five spreadsheets each month for accounting to reconcile spending, a process that’s no longer necessary. The added visibility is helping ServiceTrade find costs that could have been easily overlooked before, including 40 inactive Cursor users, representing approximately $19,200 per year in potential savings. 

As a result, the two-person IT team spends less time chasing updates, piecing together usage reports, or fulfilling tickets. Instead, they can improve systems design, automation, and security while providing proactive service.

We want our systems to do more of the heavy lifting as we grow. 1Password gives us the tools to build smarter processes that can scale with the business.

Steve May
Director of IT at ServiceTrade

Next, May plans to connect Google Workspace and 1Password through SCIM to further automate provisioning and deprovisioning. ServiceTrade is also expanding its group mappings, while the App Catalog is already about 80% populated and continuing to grow. 

1Password’s AI Spend and Consumption Management will continue to evolve as well. May wants to use historical consumption and alerts to make budgets more responsive to how teams actually work, with flexibility to increase capacity for projects that need it. 

1Password AI & SaaS Manager gives us hope that we can finally wrangle all of this. We can understand what we have, make sure people have what they need, close security gaps, and eliminate unnecessary spending.

Steve May
Director of IT at ServiceTrade