Roundup: One Reason SaaS Products Drive CIOs Crazy

March 11, 2024: As businesses add more SaaS subscriptions, CIOs often outsource their purchasing and management to other departments. That makes things complicated.

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CIOs Scramble to Keep Up as End Users Drive SaaS

Software may smooth the work of a vast number of employees, but CIOs aren’t among them. As businesses add more SaaS subscriptions, purchasing and management is often outsourced to other departments. That makes things complicated.

The work-clothing company Carhartt today pays for 121 SaaS services, said The Wall Street Journal. That’s up from 59 five years ago, and 20 five years before that. The spread of these solutions often outpaces the headcount growth within IT, leading CIOs to outsource the purchase and management of many solutions to other departments. That leaves them concerned about duplication of services, data integration challenges and less cost-efficiency. 

Usually, businesses buy technology solutions from a small group of vendors, followed by a long tail of smaller services, the Journal said. CIOs must balance the need to simplify their technology stack against not putting too many eggs in the same baskets. Also, the hype surrounding AI is pushing businesses to look for new companies that offer the latest and greatest solutions.  

While all this is happening, more vendors see end users as a new avenue into a company’s budget, which makes managing the IT spend more difficult. When enough people use a particular product, IT departments are pressured to give those solutions a closer look, and vendors raise the ante by offering enterprise-wide licenses. It doesn’t help that today’s workforce feels right at home with technology.

“Next thing you know, I’ve got tens of thousands of dollars going out to a SaaS provider that I didn’t even know existed,” said one executive.

Lattice Integrates OpenAI Tools into Platform

Lattice introduced a variety of features that integrate AI into its workforce management platform.

The overall effort is called Lattice AI. Its first component is AI Engagement Insights, which analyzes employee survey comments. Launching later this month, the module synthesizes open-ended survey responses, identifies key trends and helps surface recommendations that HR can implement more quickly.