Five Best Practices For SaaS Governance

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions are an essential part of business strategy in the age of the customer, as they enable better collaboration between employees and customers and support a faster, more agile approach to enabling new business capabilities. In recent surveys, we've found that solution buyers choose SaaS to get better business agility, to support business innovation, and to better collaborate with customers. Yet enterprise SaaS buyers are facing new challenges as SaaS grows from small point solutions to large-scale, strategic business enabler. In particular, they are facing increased complexity, leading to higher costs and reduced business benefits as the number of SaaS solutions grows, and the risks become clearer. To get the most business benefit out of your SaaS purchase, prepare a governance approach that balances rigor to mitigate risks and agility to maximize business value. This report discusses five essential elements of SaaS governance and the organizational models required to support them.