Justin Gates, IT Manager at New Season, vividly describes the initial struggle that led his organization to seek a SaaS management solution: a severe lack of time.
For the IT department, the day-to-day demands of onboarding and offboarding employees, coupled with the complexities of general application management, consumed valuable hours. This was exacerbated by a significant challenge: the proliferation of unknown applications within the organization, often referred to as shadow IT.
“There’s no time that we really have on a day-to-day basis when it comes to onboarding and offboarding, and when you really get into application management as well, and a lot of unknown applications that we just maybe don’t know about ourselves,” Gates explains.
Without a dedicated SaaS management platform, New Season lacked visibility into what applications were being used, by whom, and whether they were truly necessary. This created not only an operational drain, but also a financial one. Gates noted the inability to bring information back to the financial department to assess the need for various applications, leading to wasted resources.
He emphasized, “Those were things that were severely missing without a SaaS platform. We just didn’t have anybody in place, any specific department, any specific user that was set in place to work on those things. And a lot of those things just ended up being lost because, I guess, honestly, we just didn’t think that we needed it at the time. We need to use our resources more wisely.”
New Season had previously attempted to address these issues with a “cheaper” platform, but it proved ineffective, offering “basically nothing” in terms of real value or functionality. A critical pain point with the previous solution was the inability to properly manage permissions, leading to incorrect or insufficient access for users.
The solution
Recognizing the urgent need to optimize its IT operations, control costs, and enhance security, New Season turned to BetterCloud as its SaaS management platform.
BetterCloud quickly began to deliver tangible benefits for New Season.
Discovering shadow IT and optimizing spend
One of the immediate impacts was BetterCloud’s ability to uncover unknown applications. This newfound visibility allowed Gates’s team to engage with the finance department, asking critical questions about application usage and necessity. This direct insight empowers New Season to make more informed decisions about its SaaS investments, ensuring that resources are used more wisely.
Streamlined permission management
A particularly significant improvement came in the area of permissions. Gates lauded BetterCloud’s understanding of its specific needs. “With BetterCloud, it made things simple because you all understood our situation. You all were able to get down to the specifics of what this person should have and should not have.” This precision in permissioning ensures that employees have exactly the access they need to perform their daily tasks, eliminating both security risks from over-provisioning and productivity hurdles from under-provisioning.
Justin Gates is confident in the ongoing partnership: “It’s definitely been helping already, and I think it’s going to continue to help.” New Season has successfully leveraged BetterCloud to transform its SaaS management, moving from a reactive, time-consuming approach to a proactive, efficient, and financially responsible one.
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