Four ways IT can help keep SaaS from being ‘shelfware’
Make the right bet on licenses, one pro cautions.
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Make the right bet on licenses, one pro cautions.
Getty Images
That new help desk software, password manager, or employee recognition system sure seems convenient, but it doesn’t take much for that SaaS tool-du-jour to turn into “shelfware,” a term noting a platform that sits—ware, you ask?—on the shelf, unused.
Pros and analysts who spoke with IT Brew said IT can help keep SaaS off the shelf and on their fellow colleagues’ minds in four major ways.
Integration conversation. Brian Westfall, associate principal analyst at Gartner-owned Capterra, recommended IT pros answer integration questions before the company selects a tool. Can data from a new employee engagement tool, for example, be fed to a talent-management service like Workday?
“If [IT is] coming in after the purchase, just for implementation purposes, that’s too late,” Westfall said.
“If you make a bad bet, you have a lot of waste in there. And I like to say: Your dollars are stuck in licenses that are expiring,” Matillano told IT Brew.
He suggests starting with the low number and not falling for the potential “trap” of purchasing swaths of licenses at a discount. “Oftentimes you can negotiate going up in terms of licenses; it’s very difficult to negotiate down,” Matillano said, noting sales-team pressures.
Friction restriction. IT can also find integration points, including everyday communications platforms like Slack or Teams, to encourage use and prevent employee frustration—like when employers want feedback, according to Westfall.
“If you’re telling me you want me to fill out a pulse survey for my employer, and I have to drop what I’m doing, I have to go log into a new tool. I have to add all my information, I have to figure out how it works…You’re going to see participation rates just plummet,” Westfall said.
Metrics system. Capterra’s 2023 HR App Sprawl Survey found that HR employees say 50% of their software systems perform overlapping functions.
IT has a role to play to learn how an SaaS tool’s usage rates (often available within the products themselves), and to perform regular audits to see where features overlap, according to Westfall, who hinted at a finding soon to be featured in upcoming Capterra research: IT teams need to be off the shelf and in on SaaS implementation.
“We’ve found consistently that successful software buyers, they do better. They land on a purchase they are happy with more often when they have IT involved,” Westfall said.
