The challenge

Transparency is one of the key elements creating self-managed teams and enabling people to make informed decisions in progressive organisations.

Every single activity we conduct at work — recruiting, sales, accounting — is dependent on information processing and knowledge transfer. If we can tap into our collective intelligence, we can accomplish amazing things. And so it’s somewhat surprising how little time we spend on our information architecture — our approach to discovering, storing, and sharing what we know.

(Source: [Dignan, Aaron. Brave New Work (pp. 129-130). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.] (https://lesen.amazon.de/kp/embed?asin=B07D93TF33&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref=cm_sw_r_kb_dpA9VHX4ENJTZRAG4SYYKM))

However, many SaaS subscriptions and on-prem software packages are licensed by the number of users. In order to save money, organisations are thus limiting the number of users and subscriptions to the minimum required. This creates information silos that are addressed in several ways:

• One way is exporting the data into some kind of data lake or repository where it can be added to reports and dashboards. As these data exports can become large, they are often scheduled to load once daily - slowing down data updates into a 24h pattern. Having data copied into another system just to make it viewable is an overhead. As the exported data cannot be edited, data quality is not improved.

• Another way is creating gateway users that retrieve and update records on behalf of other users that don’t have direct access. This creates information asymmetry, frustration and slows down the whole organisation.

• Probably the worst option is to simply share login credentials across multiple people. This is not only a usability nightmare, but also unethical and generally a bad security practice.

None of these practices address the issue at hand, which is that additional users only incur marginal cost; the main cost are usually to be found in customer acquisition, infrastructure (transfer, storage and processing of data), support and development.

In addition, many tools that help organize work benefit from a network effect: Their value increases as more parts of an organization start using them (including customers and providers).

The solution

My suggestion is for software providers and SaaS vendors to allow unlimited - at least read only - accounts to be created so progressive organisations can create the required transparency without incurring prohibitive cost. This would also enable organisations to grant access to customers and providers - creating an interesting cross-selling opportunity.

There is also mounting evidence that traditional per user pricing models (which are not coupled to actual cost) are detrimental to the actual growth of subscriptions.

My suggestion

Organizations need to prioritize their organisational goals over technology decisions and make this transparent to providers. This may be uncomfortable, but I regard it as necessary to grow as an organization. SaaS providers need to understand that holding customers hostage using arbitrary limits is not only alienating, but fundamentally hurts both in the long term.