Software sprawl: Uncovering the full range of employee application usage
With an ever-increasing number of software applications employed by every department of your agency, it is sometimes difficult to know exactly what is under the technology hood of your company.
While your IT department may manage the main platforms you use within your agency, individual departments may subscribe to their own software programs that are unique to their work. For instance, accounting may use QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite. Your marketing team may have its own project management software as well as a social media management platform such as Sprout Social, Buffer or Hootsuite.
And then there is the sales department, which may tap into dozens of sales and promotional applications specific to the real estate market.
With all that is out there, an agency can end up with software sprawl, which PC Magazine defines as “when the number of applications or software components within an environment rapidly grow and change, significantly increasing complexity and causing traditional software management methods to fail.”
It sounds like an illness without a cure, but the best way to prevent problems in our current technology multi-verse is through awareness and monitoring.
The state of sprawl
According to research by Productiv, the average SaaS portfolio of small businesses grew from 242 applications to 253 between 2021 and 2023. For medium-sized businesses the number grew from 238 to 335 and for enterprise level organizations from 317 to 473.
The challenge is that more applications rarely result in increased productivity, but instead may lead to technological traffic jams, lack of effective oversight and monetary loss as the tech stack becomes unwieldy.
Uncovering the range of apps
While you may think a trip down to the IT department will give you the information you need about the applications your employees are using, this actually represents only a portion of programs your employees use in their day-to-day work.
The second level of app usage, as mentioned above, has to be discerned department by department. While many companies require – for good reason – that all software be approved by and contracted for by the IT department, this is not always the case. Even if you believe this is the working protocol in your company, it’s necessary to canvas your departments to ensure you have a comprehensive list of all programs being accessed by your staff.
There is yet another tier of software usage that is rarely recognized and that is the use of shadow IT. Shadow IT refers to applications employees use completely outside of the oversight of the IT department, including chat rooms, unsanctioned devices such as personal tablets or smartphones, file sharing apps, cloud storage, and personal email accounts for business communications.
According to Cisco, 20% of organizations have experienced a cyber event due to unsanctioned IT resources and 46% say Shadow IT makes it impossible to protect their data and systems.
To ensure your technology resources are bringing you greater efficiency and that safety measures are being followed, an annual audit of all systems being used is imperative.
But more importantly, providing your staff with comprehensive education about what is safe and appropriate to use and what is not can go a long way to protecting your agency from unwanted cyber intrusions.
At VizionX, we know that comprehensive production technology can cut down on the number of apps needed by your agency. VizionX will shortly be rolling out what we believe will become the gold standard for title production technology. That SaaS based offering will be launching in 2025. Please contact us if you would like additional information.
