How to efficiently discover, manage, and secure SaaS tools with Auvik’s Automated SaaS Discovery
A case study from Braden Business Systems
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Braden Business Systems saw multiple benefits with our Automated SaaS Discovery
Accurate insight into client environments
Auvik SaaS management paints a comprehensive picture of the SaaS being used across an organisation at the push of a button, eliminating errors from manual surveys.
A huge return on investment
Time is money, and the replacement of low-accuracy manual processes for SaaS discovery with Auvik SaaS management has led to time-saving across Braden Business Systems.
More time for client-focused discussion
Strategic consultants are able to quickly access the data they need, allowing more time for strategic discussion with clients and less spent on laborious meeting preparation.
Efficient client onboarding
Auvik automates time-consuming manual onboarding tasks, making for a much more streamlined and efficient onboarding and offboarding process.
About Braden Business Systems & Jon Fitrzyk
Since 1989, Braden Business Systems has been committed to helping every customer achieve their business goals by providing the optimum combination of innovative technology, local decision-making, and quality service.
Braden Business Systems proudly provide state-of-the-art office hardware and software, on-site service, and custom-designed workflow solutions for businesses of all sizes. But what truly sets them apart is their commitment to providing value, excellent service, and a wide range of skills for every client.
Jon Fitrzyk is the Director of IT Services at Braden. Jon brought his 20+ years of IT experience to help grow Braden Business Systems IT Services division two-fold in the past three years while increasing margins. Upon joining Braden, he was responsible for rebuilding the service offerings, pricing and delivery team from the ground up to produce a high-quality client experience.
“From a software reporting standpoint, [Auvik SaaS management] saves massive amounts of time. The tools that we had in place before would give us a complete on-prem software inventory, and then we’d have to spend lots of time interviewing, watching, and figuring out what people were using and how. And even then, we’d be missing probably 30 to 40 percent of the picture, because the customer didn’t realize they were using something or the person we were talking to wasn’t one of the two people in a 100-person organization leveraging a particular platform.”
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Needs and Challenges
As a Managed Service Provider, Braden Business Systems ensures clients have the right tools and software to meet their business needs. However, as more and more businesses began adopting SaaS tools, Braden found it challenging to discover, manage, and secure them. With SaaS, businesses often have multiple applications managed and maintained by different vendors, making it challenging to track which applications are being used and by whom. Add into the mix that nearly 80% of SaaS is shadow IT, and solving the SaaS sprawl problem becomes very challenging.
Since SaaS sprawl and Shadow IT are problems that often stem from employees, Braden wanted to approach these topics in their strategic business reviews with their customers. This would create an alliance between the MSP and the client, allowing them to work together to solve the problem.
With pre-built reporting in the platform, Auvik SaaS Management allowed Braden to introduce the SaaS Management topics in these strategic discussions and talk about security incidents, top shadow IT, and pre-built recommendations for their clients’ ecosystems.
Furthermore, Braden could not support client operations inside their MSP around SaaS due to a lack of SaaS inventory for client environments. Operations around employee lifecycles, such as onboarding and offboarding, were areas where automated reporting could reduce guesswork and increase efficiency. Furthermore, automated assessments to discover the customer’s software inventory would immediately decrease the number of manual hours the Braden Business Systems team would have per client onboarding journey.
How Auvik solved these challenges
Automated SaaS Discovery
Managing what you cannot see is impossible, and manual surveys to discover what software is being used by every employee uses across an organization is time-consuming and often inaccurate, or out-of-date as soon as they have been taken. Using Auvik’s SaaS Discovery tool automates the entire process, providing deep insights that traditional SaaS management tools cannot while saving time and reducing error. “Understanding where data resides is absolutely critical, from both a day-to-day security and operational standpoint, but also in the event of a major issue or security event. If we don’t know where our data is, that’s obviously a major problem. Using Auvik SaaS Management to identify that on a lot of different levels makes it an invaluable tool for us,” said Jon Fitrzyk.
Reporting for strategic discussions about SaaS and business applications
“Where the ROI has come in is that our strategic consultants, who are expensive resources, are quickly able to pull data and then have those discussions with clients. It has cut down the time it takes to get that data by a lot, and from our point of view, all we have to sell is time. The fact that they’re spending less time preparing for meetings is a huge return for us.” Managing SaaS applications takes time and is something that requires a business strategy. With the built-in customer business review functionality in Auvik SaaS Management, Braden can now quickly prepare a health report in the platform to share with the customer during their quarterly business review cycle. The report includes six key health metrics to be reviewed during the customer QBR. Braden can summarize their entire SaaS ecosystem in just a few minutes by discussing only the most critical things on a regular cadence.
More efficient client onboarding and employee offboarding
From an operational standpoint, the time-saving benefits of Auvik SaaS management are huge allowing for a seamless onboarding process, and a smooth transition when staff offboarding is required, especially when subject to compliance requirements. With it, Braden now know everything customers touch from a software perspective alongside other user risks, such as shared and generic accounts, information which would be virtually impossible to know otherwise.
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We understand the challenges of MSPs and can help
Give visibility into client environments
Auvik SaaS Management provides a unique level of insight over and above competitors to understand SaaS usage in detail.
Save money on expensive resources
Replacing time-intensive manual processes with the click of a button, key team members have more time, saving you money.
Increase overall efficiency
Driving operational time back to service delivery teams, by providing them with the solution they need to do their job efficiently.
Combat Shadow IT and SaaS sprawl
Having such an insight into the software being used makes for much easier client discussions.
From a software reporting standpoint, [Auvik SaaS management] saves massive amounts of time.
The tools that we had in place before would give us a complete on-prem software inventory, and then we’d have to spend lots of time interviewing, watching, and figuring out what people were using and how.