Taming SaaS Sprawl: How Business Process Management Brings Order to Your Tech Stack

Every workday, employees toggle between emails, project management tools, messaging apps, CRMs, and document-sharing platforms. Multiply this by the entire workforce, and organizations quickly find themselves buried under dozens of overlapping applications.

Welcome to SaaS sprawl.

The problem runs deeper than convenience. According to Grip Security’s recent report, 90% of SaaS applications and 91% of AI tools remain unmanaged, leaving organizations vulnerable and often unaware of what they’re actually paying for.

While Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications have made businesses more agile, they’ve also created a new challenge: tool overload. Organizations often don’t even know how many applications they’re paying for, which ones overlap, or whether employees are using them securely. What began as a way to simplify work has spiralled into complexity.

So, how do you rein in this chaos without stifling innovation? The answer lies in taking a process-first approach—this is where Business Process Management (BPM) for SaaS sprawl steps in as the game-changer.

What is SaaS Sprawl and Why Does it Happen?

SaaS sprawl happens when organizations lose control over the number and usage of SaaS applications across the business. Instead of a neatly managed tech stack, you end up with a patchwork of apps—some performing the same function, some rarely used, and others completely invisible to IT.

Why does this happen?

1. Decentralized purchasing: Marketing wants one tool for analytics, sales wants another, and HR brings in something entirely different. Without centralized oversight, everyone picks their own flavor.
2. Shadow IT: Employees often download apps or sign up for free trials without IT’s knowledge. What seems harmless quickly snowballs into SaaS risk management challenges and compliance gaps.
3. Rapid scaling: As companies grow, they adopt tools quickly to fill gaps, but don’t revisit them later to see what’s still relevant.
4. Convenience over governance: Teams want tools that work fast, and SaaS governance often takes a backseat.

The end result? A cluttered stack of applications with overlapping functions and no clear strategy behind them.

The Hidden Costs and Risks of SaaS Sprawl

On the surface, SaaS sprawl may look like a harmless case of “too many apps.” But dig deeper, and the impact is far-reaching.

1. Financial Waste

A 2025 U.S. report highlights that companies waste up to 53% of their SaaS licenses, which translates to an average of $21 million wasted per year.

Organizations spend millions on SaaS subscriptions every year, but a significant chunk of this goes to waste. Duplicate applications, unused licenses, and forgotten renewals quietly drain budgets. A lack of proper SaaS management makes it nearly impossible to reduce SaaS costs.

2. Security and Compliance Risks

Shadow IT—the apps IT doesn’t even know exist—creates massive blind spots. Sensitive data can end up in unauthorized tools, increasing the risk of data breaches and compliance violations. One overlooked SaaS app could mean regulatory fines or reputational damage—proving why SaaS risk management must be a priority.

3. Operational Inefficiency

When employees juggle multiple apps with overlapping features, workflows become fragmented. Teams waste time switching between systems, re-entering data, and managing workarounds instead of focusing on meaningful tasks.

SaaS sprawl isn’t just an IT issue—it’s a business performance issue.

What Should Companies Do to Prevent SaaS Sprawl

The first instinct for many leaders is to call in consulting firms. And yes, consultants can certainly help identify redundancies and clean up the SaaS mess. They’ll run an audit, suggest consolidations, and give recommendations.

But here’s the problem:

• It’s expensive: Hiring consultants to manage SaaS sprawl can cost a fortune.
• It’s temporary: Their work is often a one-time fix. They’ll deliver a report, and once your company grows or evolves, you’ll find yourself back at square one.
• It doesn’t scale: As your business expands, new tools will inevitably enter the stack. Without a sustainable strategy, complexity creeps back in.

What organizations need is not just a quick clean-up but an ongoing, scalable solution. One that ties every SaaS decision back to how the business actually runs. This is where Business Process Management SaaS solutions provide a long-term answer.

How Business Process Management Brings Order to Your Tech Stack

BPM provides a structured, repeatable framework to align your technology with your business needs. Instead of chasing after every new tool, it helps you step back, analyse, and design processes that dictate which tools are necessary, how they’re used, and where they fit in the bigger picture.

Visibility and Redundancy Elimination Through Process Mapping

A major driver of SaaS sprawl is the lack of visibility into how applications are used across the enterprise. BPM solves this with process mapping—laying out workflows to show exactly where tools fit in, who uses them, and for what purpose. This transparency not only uncovers hidden shadow IT but also highlights overlapping subscriptions and duplicate functionalities. By consolidating tools that serve the same purpose, organizations eliminate redundancy, cut costs, and ensure that every application in the stack adds real value.

Standardization Through a Single Source of Truth

When teams operate in silos, they often use different tools for similar tasks, creating fragmentation and inefficiencies. Using a business process management solution, you can establish standardized workflows across the enterprise, providing a single source of truth for both processes and supporting technologies. This harmonization ensures that teams aren’t reinventing the wheel with disparate solutions, but instead collaborate through aligned systems that drive consistency, efficiency, and transparency.

Aligning Tech With Business Goals

SaaS sprawl often occurs when software decisions are made in silos without tying back to organizational priorities. BPM ensures that every tool serves a defined purpose in achieving business goals. By aligning technology with strategy, organizations prevent random tool adoption and focus investments on systems that truly move the needle.

Scaling Without Adding Complexity

Growth should not mean chaos in the tech stack. BPM helps organizations scale processes intelligently, choosing solutions that can grow alongside the business instead of piling on disconnected tools. This balance between scalability and simplicity ensures long-term operational agility without the baggage of unnecessary systems.

Compliance and Risk Management

Each additional SaaS application introduces potential compliance, security, and data governance risks. BPM embeds compliance checks directly into business processes, ensuring that only vetted, compliant solutions are adopted. This proactive oversight protects the organization from regulatory pitfalls and strengthens data security.

System Implementation

Introducing new tools into an already sprawling SaaS environment often leads to integration headaches. BPM mitigates this by defining clear workflows before system implementation. With structured processes as the foundation, new software can be integrated seamlessly, reducing disruption and ensuring faster adoption.

Real-World Success of Insurance Provider: Bringing SaaS Sprawl Under Control

One global insurance provider struggling with SaaS sprawl turned to a BPM-led approach to regain order. With dozens of overlapping tools and rising costs, inefficiency had become the norm. By applying structured process management, the organisation was able to decommission unnecessary tools and allocate resources more effectively—leading to immediate cost savings.

The impact didn’t stop there. With improved visibility and governance, the company projected future savings of around 150 million Pesos ($7.52 million) annually for ongoing projects.

This success shows how a structured Business Process Management SaaS framework reduces waste and drives significant, measurable long-term value.

Additionaly, in highly regulated sectors like banking and financial services, where compliance and cost efficiency are mission-critical, SaaS governance through BPM ensures reduced spend and improved audit readiness.

Get Started with the Right Tool

The reality is that SaaS sprawl isn’t just an IT headache—it’s a business challenge that impacts efficiency, cost, and even customer experience. To regain control, you need more than a spreadsheet of applications; you need a structured way to see how each tool fits into your business processes.

This is where PRIME BPM becomes a game-changer. By giving you a clear, end-to-end view of your processes, it helps identify which applications are truly adding value and where overlaps or redundancies exist.

With this end-to-end business process management solution, you can rapidly map your processes (even importing existing flowcharts or Excel sheets), run cost and value analysis to highlight unnecessary SaaS spend, and standardise best-practice workflows so teams stop relying on ad-hoc apps.

By starting with the right tool, you shift from firefighting to strategic management of your technology landscape. Ready to take control of SaaS sprawl and unlock sustainable savings? Discover how PRIME BPM can help by signing up for a free trial.

FAQs

1. What is SaaS sprawl in business?
SaaS sprawl occurs when organizations lose visibility and control over the number of SaaS applications being used across departments. This often results in duplicate tools, underutilized licenses, security risks, and escalating costs.

2. Why does SaaS sprawl happen?
SaaS sprawl typically happens due to decentralized purchasing, shadow IT, rapid scaling without governance, and teams prioritizing convenience over structured SaaS management. Without oversight, applications multiply quickly and overlap in functionality.

3. Can BPM really help with SaaS sprawl—and how?
Yes. BPM brings structure via process mapping, standardization, and alignment between departments. It ensures SaaS decisions tie back to strategic business processes and are scalable, secure, and efficient.

4. Can BPM software reduce SaaS costs?
Yes. BPM software helps organizations identify unused or duplicate applications, align technology with business value, and standardize tools across departments. This structured approach can significantly reduce SaaS costs while improving efficiency.

5. What is the difference between SaaS management and BPM for SaaS sprawl?
SaaS management tools track and monitor SaaS usage, while BPM for SaaS sprawl goes deeper—aligning applications with business processes and goals. BPM not only manages apps but ensures every tool adds measurable business value.