Software as a service (SaaS) is taking over the world. According to Gartner, global spending on SaaS in 2025 is predicted to grow by 19% over 2024 levels, exceeding $295 billion. By now, the benefits of cloud-based software are well understood. But an organization can also have too much of a good thing. SaaS sprawl — when applications are used without sufficient oversight or control — is a growing problem for businesses, and startups in particular.

If left unmanaged, it can create security gaps, cost overruns, operational headaches, and productivity challenges. That’s why vendor management is a critical task for IT managers and administrators. AccessOwl recently sat down with several IT leaders to hear their tips on reducing SaaS sprawl.

Turning back the clock

Several of the IT managers AccessOwl spoke to admit they wish they’d started sooner with SaaS vendor management. Peter Fallowfield, IT Support Manager at Solidatus, explains that when he joined the company, oversight of SaaS was fragmented, with no centralized management.

“You couldn't speak to one person about it, because everyone would say slightly different things,” he says. “There wasn't really a central repository for software contracts. People were just expensing software through the general expense platform, along with their lunch or client meetings.”

Quantum Workplace Information Security and Technology Manager Wesley Laughlin claims vendor management has “blown up out of control” and would have benefitted from his taking stricter oversight earlier in his role.

“We should have been tracking all of the different software we use to run the business. Who’s the business owner? Who has an admin login? How much are we paying for the contract? It would be nice to have been more organized on that front,” he says. “When we were smaller, everyone had a credit card, and they just signed up for whatever software they wanted.”

The top three tips for managing SaaS vendors

Reducing SaaS sprawl is all about gaining visibility and control. Here are three tips from the IT experts we spoke to:

1. Establish relationships with vendors

Nathan Goodfellow, IT Manager at Gearset, explains that when he arrived at his current role, SaaS purchases were made in a highly decentralized and ad hoc manner by employees using their corporate credit cards. He recommends speaking first to the relevant SaaS vendors, to understand if the organization is using the best software version or plan. Selecting the most suitable option can bring additional benefits like SSO, greater control over authentication, or other “enterprise” capabilities, he says.

“There was a fair bit of establishing those relationships, setting up the renewal dates, getting the right tooling in place — moving beyond just going to someone and saying ‘here's a credit card, give us access’,” Goodfellow adds. “It’s always that thing with a startup, when you get the growing pains because you’re not just 20 people anymore.”

2.  Gather more information internally

While it’s important to build close relationships with key vendors, much of the information that an IT manager needs to reduce SaaS sprawl can be sourced internally. Solidatus’ Fallowfield uses a SaaS management tool to keep track of things like ISO/SOC 2 compliance and other benchmarks, to make sure he’s getting the most for his money.

“It’s good to know who the admins are for the system, how many seats or licenses there are. Or API requests, because sometimes you get charged by that,” he explains. “Then find out what the renewal periods are, because I’ve been stung a few times with auto-renewals, where you have to tell the vendor 90 days before if you don’t want to renew.”

XTB IT Asset Manager Jakub Łączak-Król also began his previous role with a major internal information-gathering drive.

“One of my first responsibilities was to go around and talk with people and try to understand what we were paying for, why we needed it, how we utilized it, who was administering it, and so on,” he explains. “In a few weeks, I created a huge catalog of all those SaaS licenses.”

3. Use finance as an ally

It always helps to get senior-level buy-in for projects. And in the case of Solidatus’ Fallowfield, who was reporting directly to the CFO, it worked best to cite financial visibility as the driver for greater control over the SaaS estate. So he created a new system with a separate payment provider to manage software spend.

“It was about consolidating and keeping track of the spending, seeing which tools and licenses we could get rid of,” he says. “I wanted that single pane of glass view of what software we were using. And one of the reasons I managed to get the signoff to switch was that it also helped finance.”

It’s clear from these interviews that — at least early on — SaaS spend is often unregulated within startups. After all, the culture and focus at the beginning is on growth, and ensuring staff have all the tools they need to maximize their productivity. But it’s also clear that, as companies mature, they need more control over these tools — not just to keep costs down, but also to ensure they’re optimizing the SaaS provider’s potential feature set. Gaining that control is a critical task for IT.