Topic starter
16/09/2026 9:21 am
TL;DR: SaaS spend management becomes a control problem, not just a finance problem, because unused licenses, auto-renewals, and orphaned accounts are all tied to identity lifecycle gaps, according to Josys. The operational fix is continuous discovery, access review, and offboarding-linked deprovisioning, because spend waste and access risk usually share the same root cause.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Josys: “SaaS Spend Management: Find and Cut Software Waste”.
By the numbers:
- In practice, Josys typically finds around 25% of SaaS spend is going to waste.
Key questions
Q: Why do SaaS sprawl and identity governance fail in the same place?
A: They both depend on discovery happening before control.
Q: Why do orphaned SaaS subscriptions create security risk?
A: Orphaned subscriptions create risk because they leave live access paths in place after the organisation has stopped using them.
Q: How do organisations know if SaaS licence cleanup is actually working?
A: They should see a shrinking gap between seats purchased and seats with meaningful activity, plus fewer renewals approved without usage evidence.
Practitioner guidance
- Map every SaaS app to a named identity owner Build a single inventory that joins application name, business owner, license count, renewal date, and the identities holding access so renewals and entitlement review use one dataset.
- Use identity-side discovery to find shadow SaaS Correlate SSO logs, OAuth grants, and browser activity to identify applications that never appeared in finance records, including free tiers and departmental purchases.
- Reclaim seats based on 90-day activity Separate zero-activity seats from low-activity seats and over-tiered seats, then reclaim or downgrade only where usage evidence supports the action.
Bottom line: SaaS spend management becomes an identity governance problem when licences remain tied to identities that no longer need them.
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16/09/2026 9:21 am
Identity lifecycle, not procurement, is the real control boundary: SaaS spend grows when access ownership, renewal ownership, and lifecycle ownership are split across teams. That split allows wasted seats to persist after the human identity has changed status, which means the organisation has turned a governance problem into a recurring charge. The practical conclusion is that SaaS cost control belongs inside identity governance, not beside it.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 92% of organisations expose NHIs to third parties, raising concerns about supply chain security, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should organisations treat SaaS renewal decisions as an access review?
A: Yes. Renewal is the right moment to confirm business value, active usage, user ownership, and entitlement scope. If a tool still matters, recertify its users and admin roles. If it does not, decommission the subscription and remove the access paths that came with it.
👉 Read our full editorial: SaaS spend management is really an identity governance problem