Ibotta is a free cash back rewards and payments app that gives consumers real cash for everyday purchases when they shop and pay through the app. The company provides thousands of ways to earn cash on purchases by partnering with more than 1,500 brands and retailers. Ibotta has paid out over $1 billion in cash rewards to more than 35 million users since its founding in 2012.

Challenge: 

Jon Aviles, now Ibotta’s Senior IT Identity Management Engineer, joined the organization five years ago. At that time, the IT department consisted of two employees who handled everything from front-end IT support to user lifecycle management (ULM) to securing access for over 100 SaaS applications. 

The growth of Ibotta over the last decade meant increased adoption of SaaS applications throughout the company. “It ultimately grew out of anyone’s control how many apps we did end up buying,” Aviles said. 

“Teams that had a credit card and budget approval could purchase the applications they needed… We needed a solution to help wrangle all the SaaS apps together and make sense out of who was accessing what.” 

As Ibotta’s IT team set out to discover, manage, and secure their SaaS stack, they quickly realized the importance of automation in increasing IT efficiency.

“We had one person responsible for removing users and licenses. It would take hours to offboard an engineer with a lot of access, clicking and following documentation,” Aviles explained. “[A SaaS management platform like BetterCloud] allows you to just put everything that you were doing in a row and execute it.”

With a small IT department, it was critical for Aviles to find a solution that would decrease time spent on repetitive tasks, like onboarding or offboarding employees, allowing the IT team to increase productivity and focus on more strategic initiatives. 

Solution:

After exploring options that lacked automation capabilities and important app integrations, Ibotta viewed a demo of BetterCloud. Aviles was particularly wowed by the BetterCloud Integration Center, which serves as the hub for all of the SaaS applications that can connect with BetterCloud. Adding integrations in the Integration Center enables all of that integration’s functionality within BetterCloud, allowing the extension of policies to new apps and a broader scope of automations.

“The Integration Center just happened to match so perfectly to our needs,” noted Aviles. “It checked off all the boxes of the wide umbrella of SaaS applications Ibotta has, so it was an immediate winner off the bat.” 

Streamlined onboarding and offboarding reclaimed time for high priority work

Ibotta launched BetterCloud at the peak of the pandemic. The company was able to go fully remote because of their use of SaaS apps, but like many organizations, Ibotta was looking to hire rapidly. This organizational need made it imperative for Aviles to overhaul Ibotta’s onboarding and offboarding processes. 

“BetterCloud helped us shine in the early dark time of the pandemic. We got to take so many hours off of people’s plates of onboarding and offboarding and really focus on getting people situated remotely.”

With streamlined processes using BetterCloud workflows, the IT team could use reclaimed time to help employees maintain productivity in this new work-from-home environment. The time savings was, and still is, a big win for Ibotta and something Aviles is most proud of. 

“It is a huge thing to have processes automated and I don’t have to feel like I’m the person giving more manual tasks. The last thing I want to do is give my front end team more things to have to do,” explained Aviles. “I want to continue to reduce manual tasks to the point where we just monitor BetterCloud. Most of the time we don’t even have to look at it because it’s doing its thing.”

An end to wasted SaaS spend

With growth brings the challenge of over licensing applications. The increased understanding of employee SaaS usage through BetterCloud has had a huge impact on reducing SaaS spend at Ibotta. 

“It saves us a lot of money because we’ve run into holes before where we’re over licensed.”

Identifying redundant or unused apps has enabled Ibotta’s IT team to remove users in a timely manner, avoiding the need to later communicate with departments that they are losing licenses. 

From reactive to proactive SaaS management

BetterCloud has enabled Ibotta’s IT organization to work proactively by providing a clearer picture into its SaaS environment. In particular, Ibotta has leveraged features such as OAuth discovery and automatic alerts.

“BetterCloud fills in a gap that bigger security suites couldn’t,” said Aviles. “We are already connected to the cloud applications through BetterCloud and can alert them or deactivate users.” 

Additionally, at an organization like Ibotta, taking the company public is something that could be right around the corner. Ensuring an upstanding security posture is important to be ready for a potential IPO. “IT is looking very good because of BetterCloud’s automations, PII alerts, and app alerts,” Aviles continues. “Having BetterCloud in place for two plus years has been a big shining point with us [IT] and security.”

Getting a seat at the strategic table

With BetterCloud, Aviles now automates the manual tasks he was responsible for, freeing up his time for more meaningful work. When asked if BetterCloud helped the trajectory of his career, he said that if there was a scale, “It would be beyond a hundred percent.” 

He went on to share that he likely wouldn’t be in his current role without BetterCloud. The successful implementation brought him credibility throughout the organization and has allowed him to take on more responsibility, becoming an IT liaison and even joining the procurement committee. 

Results:

• Saved hours of time by eliminating manual work, focusing on high priority initiatives
• Reduced unused SaaS app licensing and wasted cost
• Increased security posture 
• Up-leveled IT

“BetterCloud has given me so much support as far as being able to try new features, providing a platform to speak about it, and getting to meet the CEO on multiple occasions. If you’re looking for that relationship alongside a useful product with a smooth UI, BetterCloud is obviously the choice.”

Jon Aviles, Senior IT Identity Management Engineer, Ibotta