“We're being asked to pull user-role reports for 19 apps, every single week. No APIs, no SCIM, no exports. It’s not sustainable.”
That quote came from an identity lead at a well-known financial institution. Their team is responsible for managing SaaS access across the business, including tools used by security, development, and business ops.
Most of those apps don’t integrate with the company’s identity provider. Some are modern. Others are legacy. All of them sit outside the reach of automated offboarding or role reviews. And now, thanks to internal audit mandates, they require fresh, human-reviewed access reports on a weekly basis.
This is not unusual anymore. Especially in regulated industries, IT teams are being pulled into manual evidence loops for tools that were never designed with governance in mind.
And it’s not just about compliance. These disconnected apps are creating risk, eroding team capacity, and leaving IT ops accountable for tooling they don’t fully control.
This is the real cost of fragmented SaaS, and it’s time the industry started treating it like the operational tax it really is.
The modern stack isn’t unified. It’s scattered.
The promise of SaaS was simplicity. Centralized identity. Seamless access. And in many ways, it delivered: tools like Okta and Entra ID pushed identity logic deeper into apps, while SCIM and SSO brought provisioning and login under control.
But here’s what doesn’t get advertised:
- Not every app supports SCIM
- Many put SSO behind enterprise paywalls
- Internal tools, niche vendors, and fast-moving startups often have no API at all
- Legacy apps still in use can’t even export a user list
What’s left is a stack full of partial coverage. A network of admin panels that don’t talk to each other. Shadow access that doesn’t get flagged until audit time. And a growing number of IT teams who feel like they’re flying blind on the apps that actually matter.
Why spreadsheets have become the default stopgap
One IT lead told us their security team enforces strict rules: no static API keys, no long-lived credentials, no vendor workarounds. If a tool doesn’t support federated access or OAuth, it’s out of scope.
Every Friday, someone logs into 19 different admin panels, manually pulls user lists, and checks them against HR records to ensure nothing is out of place.
“It’s painful, honestly. We’re not trying to build dashboards here. We just don’t want to do this every Friday forever.”
Thousands of teams are doing this right now, not because it’s smart, but because there’s no other way to see who has access.
Until that changes, manual spreadsheets are the compliance stopgap.
Legacy tools aren’t helping either
You might think that legacy SaaS management platforms would cover this. But they don’t. Most of them are API-dependent. They integrate where the vendor allows. And when the vendor doesn’t? The system goes silent.
That leaves IT with a choice:
- Accept incomplete data and cross their fingers during audits
- Build brittle, one-off scripts to scrape user data (and own the maintenance)
- Or go back to spreadsheets and manual exports
None of these scales. None provides assurance. And none work for mid-sized teams already stretched thin.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many teams are now turning to browser automation and cross-checking user access without relying on native integrations.
A simple framework to map where you're flying blind
You don’t need to audit every app in your stack right now. However, you do need to know which ones can’t provide the access evidence your security team will request.
Here’s a simple two-axis framework to get started:
Step 1: Score each app on two dimensions
Step 2: Use the quadrant to prioritize
Example Table
The goal here isn’t perfection. It’s awareness. If your team knows which tools are out of sight, you can start closing the gaps manually or with help.
The real cost of manual compliance
It’s not just time. Manual audits have real costs:
- Error risk: One mistyped name in a spreadsheet and you’re out of alignment.
- Human bottlenecks: Reviews stop when someone goes on leave or changes teams.
- Slow offboarding: Delays in reconciling user lists result in active accounts remaining weeks after departure.
- Burnout: Senior staff are spending hours compiling data instead of solving strategic problems.
In fast-moving orgs, these costs compound. And they can quietly undermine security posture, audit readiness, and operational resilience long before anyone notices.
What IT really needs isn’t more tools — it’s fewer blind spots
You don’t need a new dashboard. You need to see who has access in every app, regardless of whether it integrates or not.
You need:
- A reliable way to ingest user and license data, even from apps that don’t support SCIM.
- A method for linking those accounts to real people in HR and IDP.
- A system that flags mismatches, anomalies, and stale access without relying on guesswork.
- Ideally, a process that automates reviews, rather than adding to the ticket queue.
That’s what “zero-touch assurance” looks like, not in theory. In the real world, where apps don’t always play nice, IT is still held accountable.
Where to start
If this all feels familiar, here’s a low-lift way to begin:
- Pull a list of your most critical SaaS tools.
- For each, ask: Can we get a user list out of this without vendor support?
- Cross-check that with your HR and IDP systems.
- Flag anything you can’t reconcile in under 10 minutes.
That shift from reactive spreadsheet fire drills to planned, trackable access governance is how confidence begins.
Final thought
Disconnected apps are no longer edge cases. They're the new normal in every growing SaaS environment. Tools that won't integrate, can't export, or don't follow your access logic are now scattered across your environment.
Auditors don’t care if the vendor doesn’t have an API. They care whether you can prove that a former employee doesn’t still have access.
And IT teams shouldn’t have to spend hours stitching together visibility that should have been built in.
The real work now is owning the gaps. And building systems that close them.
Ready to stop flying blind?
If you’re spending Fridays stitching together spreadsheets, it’s time for a better way.
Stitchflow gives you real-time SaaS compliance visibility—no SCIM, no API, no guesswork required.
→ Book a demo and see how it works
Aishwarya is a product builder who enjoys the intersection of product thinking, design, and creative storytelling. She’s currently building tools for IT teams to simplify SaaS user management, formerly having built and scaled SaaS products from ground-up.
