Taking a Data-First Approach to Corporate IT Tool Sprawl

Modern IT teams manage anywhere from dozens to hundreds of tools. Core systems include Okta, JAMF, and Active Directory. Company-wide platforms include Slack, Zoom, and Office 365. On top of that are function-specific SaaS tools like Salesforce, Asana, and Airtable.

Core tools are especially complex. They hold layers of employees, contractors, apps, groups, and channels. The result is a system that is hard to read and harder to control. Problems show up in user access, onboarding, security, audits, and cost management.

This article looks at how IT can handle tool sprawl with a data-first approach. We cover the main challenges and explain the benefits of making data the foundation for IT visibility and control.

TL;DR

• Modern enterprises face IT tool sprawl as teams adopt dozens of disconnected SaaS apps, making access, audits, and cost management difficult.
• Decentralized procurement and inconsistent APIs create fragmented, unreliable data that automation tools like Zapier or Okta Workflows can’t fully solve.
• A data-first approach, modeled after customer data platforms, can unify data across systems to give IT consistent visibility and control.
• A single pane of glass helps IT detect access gaps, reduce manual reconciliation, and act proactively with real-time, unified data.
• Stitchflow delivers this data-first foundation by connecting to 100% of apps, building a real-time IT graph, running 100+ automated checks, and enabling continuous remediation.

SaaS sprawl is overwhelming corporate IT environments

Modern enterprises have embraced SaaS at scale, but cloud-first strategies have an unintended consequence: massive application sprawl. What started as a promise of simplicity (no servers to manage, rapid deployment, instant scalability) has turned into hundreds of disconnected SaaS tools.

The decentralized procurement problem

SaaS can be bought with a credit card and set up instantly. Departments and even individual employees often bring in tools without telling IT. Marketing grabs analytics platforms, sales adds CRM extensions, HR signs up for recruiting software, and finance uses expense management tools.

The problem is that each of these apps works on its own. They have different interfaces, login systems, and ways of storing data. Vendors promise easy integration, but in reality, it’s tricky. APIs are inconsistent, connections break, and keeping everything synced takes constant attention.

Why workflow automation falls short for IT tool sprawl reduction 

IT teams have tried to solve sprawl with automation and self-service:

• AI-powered service desks like Moveworks, Aisera, and ServiceNow
• Workflow orchestration tools like Okta Workflows, Workato, and Zapier
• Identity and access management with single sign-on

These tools can help in small, controlled scenarios, but they rarely solve the bigger problem. Sprawl is not just about repetitive tasks—it’s about fragmentation, inconsistent data, and overlapping systems. 

‼️SaaS sprawl creates messy, inconsistent data across systems. Duplicate records, context loss, and unclear ownership make automation and AI unreliable. Without clean, unified data, adding workflows only increases complexity instead of reducing it.

📚Also read: Why hasn’t workflow automation worked for Corporate IT teams?

How modern data platforms solve SaaS sprawl

The old approach of connecting every tool and data source no longer works. Building more integrations only adds complexity without solving the real problem. 

A data-first approach flips that around. You start with a unified data layer, and then build applications and workflows on top of it. This keeps data consistent and gives full visibility across systems.

To see this in action, IT can look at how other teams handle complex data environments. Marketing teams, for example, deal with data scattered across dozens of tools—ad platforms, analytics, CRMs, and more. To manage this complexity, they use modern customer data platforms (CDPs).

CDPs pull data from every tool into a single warehouse, keep it clean and consistent, and make it available through one interface. They’re cloud-based, simple to configure, and designed to give marketers a complete picture without constant manual work. The result is fewer silos, faster decision-making, and more reliable operations.

💡This same principle applies to IT: a centralized, data-first approach can reduce fragmentation, simplify management, and give IT leaders trustworthy visibility across their environment.

The components of the modern data stack are:

• Data ingestion: Ingesting data from every tool that you need to integrate
• Data storage: A data warehouse that is used to store all the collected data
• Data transformation: Once all the raw data from each tool is ingested, it will need to be joined and collated into useful data models
• Visualization and data analytics: A way to view or analyze the transformed data
• Data governance and RBAC: A way to track sources of data, quality, and access control

The case for a single pane of glass in IT

Corporate IT teams can take a data-first approach to sprawl management, similar to how marketing and other functions centralize data. A single pane of glass that stitches together disparate systems and data sources gives IT full visibility across the environment. 

Better visibility, cost, and security

Teams can detect gaps in user access, monitor resource drift, track compliance, and monitor SaaS app usage. They can also cross-reference and reconcile data between tools that don’t normally integrate, like Okta and Active Directory, or MDMs and IDPs.

Operational efficiency

A unified interface eliminates the need for spreadsheets, VLOOKUPs, and manual reconciliation. IT can understand distributed context instantly and take single-click actions across multiple tools instead of logging into each one separately. This reduces repetitive work and frees teams to focus on higher-value tasks.

Proactive vs. reactive service

With a single source of truth, IT can act on changes in real time rather than waiting for tickets to arrive. Teams can address potential issues before they impact users. Machine learning can also be applied to the full state of end-user data, rather than relying solely on ticket titles and descriptions, improving predictive and proactive capabilities.

📚Also read: Why are IT teams reactive?

Why a single pane of glass solution for IT sprawl reduction is tricky

The challenge is that none of the components needed to build a true single pane of glass for IT exist out of the box. It’s not just a matter of connecting tools—each part of the system requires careful design, ongoing maintenance, and domain-specific knowledge. Specifically:

• Ingesting data: There’s no ETL solution built for Corporate IT tools, and certainly not one that works in real time. Connectors need to be created and maintained for every tool, from core IT systems like Okta, Google Workspace, and Active Directory, to company-wide platforms like Slack and Zoom, and all the function-specific SaaS applications your teams rely on.
• Relationship mapping: It’s not enough to pull data from tools. Relationships between data fields, both within a single system and across multiple tools, need to be mapped and joined into meaningful structures that IT teams can actually use.
• Actions, not just data: Visibility alone isn’t enough. IT teams need actionable control across all connected tools—remediation, updates, and configuration changes—directly from the unified interface.
• Useful IT applications: Even with data and actions connected, it still needs to be packaged into use cases relevant to IT teams. Simply having access to raw data doesn’t solve the everyday problems of managing users, apps, compliance, and costs.
• Fully managed solution: Most IT teams don’t have dedicated budgets for building and maintaining data pipelines, IT graphs, or custom applications. Any real solution needs to be fully managed and maintained by a platform provider.

‼️Automation tools like Zapier and Power Automate can move data and trigger workflows, but they aren’t built to automate IT sprawl. They don’t provide real-time data across systems or integrated actions across multiple platforms. At best, they add another layer on top of fragmented data without solving visibility, consistency, or control issues.

📚Also read: Why modern IT teams need a data lake

How Stitchflow’s data architecture addresses IT tool sprawl reduction

At Stitchflow, we’re addressing all of these challenges and building a solution purpose-built to give IT teams 360 visibility across their entire environment.

Key capabilities of the Stitchflow SaaS management platform

The platform is built for how modern IT really works: quick to set up, able to pull all your data into one place, and focused on turning that data into clear actions that cut manual work and close security gaps.

• Data pipelines: Stitchflow provides ETL built for every key Core IT tool, company-wide platform, and SaaS application. Each integration requires just a one-click connection and syncs live data, often covering more than 100 data and action endpoints per tool.
• Connected IT graph: A real-time graph links all IT resources—users, devices, permissions, and resources like channels or groups. The graph includes fine-grained RBAC, letting teams control access to data fields and actions at the individual or group level.
• Visibility: Live boards combine data from any tools and fields for instant analysis. Federated search and detailed filters let IT teams query any combination of tools and conditions in seconds.
• Actions: Teams can act directly from Stitchflow. Share live boards, download CSVs, take single actions on any data field, or bulk-remediate filtered data across multiple records with one click.
• Proactive protection: Once connected, Stitchflow continuously monitors your environment. With over 100 automated checks across employee management, resource drift, security, compliance, and application usage, it identifies active gaps that can be remediated instantly.
• Ad-hoc analyses: Stitchflow supports instant ad-hoc queries across every tool. With more than 60 prebuilt templates covering common IT use cases—from onboarding and offboarding to license optimization—teams can quickly build the views they need to act immediately.

Real-world impact: How Rula unified fragmented identity data with Stitchflow

Rula scaled to 15,000+ providers with a contractor-heavy workforce, 1,200+ internal users, and 140+ SaaS tools—many outside Okta’s reach. The result: siloed identity data, manual offboarding, orphaned accounts, growing license waste, and compliance reviews that dragged on for weeks.

Stitchflow became Rula's data-first SaaS visibility layer

By layering Stitchflow on top of Okta, Rula built a real-time IT graph that unified data across 140+ tools in under 30 minutes. This data-first foundation gave IT complete visibility into every user, account, and license—whether or not the app supported SSO/SCIM. With Slack-based workflows for access reviews, automated orphaned account detection, and centralized audit reporting, they gained control without costly SCIM upgrades or brittle workflows.

The results:

• Full visibility across both Okta-managed and disconnected apps
• 2 days per week reclaimed from manual offboarding
• 1 FTE freed from audits and access reviews
• 250+ compliance gaps closed with instant, audit-ready reporting
• 200+ orphaned accounts removed, shrinking the attack surface

Rula’s experience shows how a data-first approach to IT tool sprawl reduction—powered by Stitchflow—can turn fragmented identity data into full-stack visibility and actionable control.

📚Read more about how Rula unified identity management and SaaS governance with Stitchflow

Join the free Stithcflow pilot, and reduce IT tool sprawl

IT teams today manage dozens of systems, each with its own data and policies. That fragmentation makes it hard to know who has access, where gaps exist, and whether controls are working as intended. The result is manual audits, spreadsheet reconciliations, and delays in closing security or compliance issues.

Stitchflow is designed to solve this. In minutes, it connects to 50+ IT and SaaS tools and gives you a single view of your environment. From there, it runs 100+ automated checks—covering access, groups, devices, compliance, and unused licenses. The platform shows you exactly what needs attention. 

The Stitchflow pilot gives IT teams a full audit of their environment in 30 days—no setup required. In a single 30-minute connection call, you link your IDP, connect up to 150+ apps, and upload CSVs for tools without APIs. That’s it.

By the end of the pilot, you get:

• A complete, app-by-app business value report
• Quantified time saved from manual reconciliation
• License and offboarding gaps identified and remediated
• Structured access reviews ready for upcoming audits

Book a free Stitchflow pilot and get unified SaaS visibility and control across all your apps. Not ready for a pilot? Start with a one-time access and license audit—your first report is free.