How Lead Venture Scaled SaaS Management & Cut Costs

How did LeadVentures uncover 10x more SaaS apps than expected and save over $100,000 in year one? Discover the exact steps they used to turn acquisition sprawl, shadow IT, and scattered credit-card spend into a single, governed view. See how multi-tenant visibility, usage benchmarks, and automation reclaimed licenses before renewals, consolidated tenants for volume discounts, and tightened onboarding and offboarding controls.

In this video, John Christ, Director of IT at LeadVentures, and Dwayne Molanson, CTO, share hard-won lessons. They walk through the journey from fragmented Google and Microsoft estates to Torii-powered discovery via Intune, weekly reports that surfaced unknown apps, a 10x expansion of the application inventory, first-year savings topping $100,000, and centralized Teams alerts monitoring around 1,600 users. Get five practical tactics to start small, integrate with identity and MDM, educate teams, and automate workflows that flag risky tools and align spend with usage. A must-watch for IT, finance, and security leaders battling shadow IT, remote sprawl, and looming renewals that demand data-driven decisions now.

This article was originally a video (YouTube link here). Below is the full transcript:

Welcome to today’s webinar on reining in the SaaS brawl: how Lead Venture turned their SaaS pains into SaaS management platform requirements for a scalable SaaS management experience.

Housekeeping: please use computer audio; microphones are muted. Submit questions through the chat and we will address them at the end.

My name is John Baker from Torii. I am joined by John Kreis, Director of IT at Lead Venture, and Dwayne Melancon,, CTO. Today we’ll cover what sparked Lead Venture’s push for a SaaS management platform, how they translated pains into platform requirements, short- and long-term results, and five practical takeaways for successful SaaS management.

Dwayne, can you describe Lead Venture’s situation and what prompted the search for a SaaS management platform?

Lead Venture is a SaaS provider of digital dealer solutions for independent dealers across North America. We offer online retailing, e-commerce, OEM programs, digital marketing, e-catalogs, and other services across verticals such as powersports, RV, marine, pre-owned auto, service, and outdoor power equipment. We support just over 55,000 independent dealers in the US and Canada.

As CTO I oversee software development, corporate and customer-facing IT operations, cybersecurity, and business applications. Lead Venture is a parent company for several go-to-market brands that serve different verticals.

When I joined four years ago, one charter was to standardize and consolidate. Lead Venture had grown primarily through acquisition, leaving a variety of technologies spread across multiple locations. We lacked a reliable way to know what we were running, where it was running, and who was using it. We had pockets of Google Workspace, Microsoft Office 365, and many other systems spread across the company.

This fragmentation produced shadow IT and limited oversight. We needed visibility across the portfolio to improve efficiency, control, and governance.

We also suspected we were spending more than necessary. Separate tenants and contracts meant missed volume discounts and no clear picture of license utilization. We needed an accurate inventory to rightsize licensing, optimize spend, and reduce waste.

Operationally, SaaS management challenges forced significant manual effort: scripts, surveys, and talking to people. Due diligence during acquisitions relied heavily on self-reporting, so it was difficult to know what users actually did day to day. We were concerned about corporate data ending up in personal accounts and whether we had control over data when employees left.

All of this translated into risk: financial waste, exposure of data assets, and unclear onboarding and offboarding controls. We needed a platform to locate our data, understand who was using it, and manage access appropriately.

You painted a broad picture. John, how did you convert those pains into specific requirements for a SaaS management platform?

The unknown applications problem was fundamental: you cannot act on what you cannot see. Growing through acquisitions and relying on self-reporting left many knowledge silos and incomplete information. We needed a uniform solution to give us a single view across the organization.

Waste and redundant technology were top concerns. The same tools were often licensed across different tenants. We needed a way to identify overlap, consolidate tenants, and create a strategy for consolidation to capture volume discounts and reduce duplication.

Our help desk needed to be proactive rather than reactive. We wanted employees to get up and running with the right tools and the right licenses. That required knowing which licenses were appropriate and how often they were used.

Visibility was essential: known apps vs. unknown apps, who used them, how often they were accessed, and whether usage matched paid licenses. Armed with that data, we could make data-driven decisions about preservation of productivity while protecting the company.

Because of acquisitions, multi-tenant visibility was another requirement. We needed to identify tenants that required consolidation and bring them under corporate management.

We also needed granular usage insights to benchmark license needs. With benchmarks, we could reclaim underutilized licenses ahead of renewals and negotiate from a position of data-driven strength. Consolidation decisions could then establish a corporate standard to reduce the burden of supporting many different tools.

Another practical challenge was payment fragmentation. Small acquired companies often paid with credit cards, scattering billing across many statements. We needed a tool that could tie usage back to spend and centralize billing visibility so we could plan forward.

Once we had visibility and utilization data, the next step was monitoring adoption and enforcing standards. If employees avoided corporate tools, we needed to understand why—functional gaps, special vendor requirements, or valid exceptions—and then decide whether to change standards or accommodate exceptions.

Risk reduction mattered as well. With classification and notifications, we could run security assessments, flag risky tools, and trigger workflows: notifications, helpdesk tickets, and remediation. Workflows and logging enabled auditing and, ultimately, reporting to highlight outliers and reduce overall risk.

Vendor selection was another key point. No SaaS tool is perfect out of the box, and Lead Venture was evolving, too. We needed a vendor willing to grow with us, listen to feedback, and adapt. That partnership approach was critical in our selection of Torii.

With that context, what results did you see after implementing Torii? Both immediate impacts and longer-term outcomes?

We began selection in late 2019 and deployed around early 2020. The timing coincided with a sudden shift to remote work, which made distributed discovery via browser plugins especially valuable. Torii provided visibility into endpoints and remote sessions that we otherwise would not have had.

The discovery was eye-opening. Our initial estimate of the application landscape was far too small. In practice, we discovered at least ten times more applications than we expected. Weekly reports consistently revealed unexpected apps, multiple instances of the same app, and small deployments we had not known about.

The Torii plugin deployed through Intune returned a wealth of data from across the estate. That insight was crucial to understanding real-world usage, especially for remote employees.

On the cost side, Torii’s billing module and ability to auto-associate bills with users and accounts made it easier to talk to finance. In the first year we estimate more than $100,000 saved through reclaiming unused or over-provisioned licenses and consolidation that enabled better volume discounts.

Beyond license savings, automation reduced manual work. Notifications, workflows, and automated ticket creation eliminated many hours of manual follow-up. Where manual monitoring would have required poor returns on effort, automation covered larger reach more efficiently and improved security posture.

Examples of automated workflows include a Teams channel notification for newly discovered applications and automated surveys to users who log into new tools. These workflows gather context—what the app is used for, whether a manager is aware—and help decide whether to adopt, replace, or retire a tool.

Onboarding and offboarding reports ensure licenses are assigned appropriately and removed when employees depart. This preserves productivity for new hires and reduces the risk of orphaned accounts.

Finance and FP&A now use Torii reports for governance and planning, reducing the time needed to gather data for budgeting and renewals.

What five practical tips can you share for successful SaaS management?

1) Don’t try to do everything at once. Start with an inventory of what you have and what you spend on. Prioritize by size and risk: address the biggest areas of spend or highest risk first.

2) Prioritize complete discovery and visibility. Identify identity stores and domains, deploy browser plugins and endpoint agents, and iterate. Deploying broadly returns rich data that surfaces opportunities.

3) Choose a platform that integrates with your existing tools. Ensure it connects with identity providers, MDM/Intune, Teams, and your service desk. Verify the vendor is responsive and willing to adapt to your needs.

4) Educate and create transparency. Make reporting visible to the business, explain why you care about application discovery and cost control, and show how corporate standards help users. Encourage adoption of supported tools rather than punitive enforcement.

5) Use automation and workflows. Automate notifications, ticketing, and license reclamation to reduce manual effort, improve coverage, and lower risk.

Any final implementation tips for vendor selection or proof-of-concept?

Ask vendors how they would answer the specific questions you need to solve. For example: how do you identify over-provisioned licenses? How do you correlate credit card spend to applications? Ask for a POC so you can see answers using your own data. A POC reveals fit fast and shows whether the tool will deliver value in your environment.

Also, discuss endpoint management and deployment strategy with prospective vendors. Visibility is strongest when you can deploy plugins or agents across desktops and identity stores.

Q&A highlights

Q: How has Torii impacted day-to-day operations? A: Before Torii we spent a lot of time hunting for credentials, checking multiple portals, and doing manual utilization analysis. Torii centralized visibility and provided alerts directly in Teams. When Torii finds an issue overnight, we get an alert and can act immediately with manager and department context. That integration has made day-to-day operations much more efficient.

Q: Many SMPs focus on one area—discovery, spend, or automation. Did you start with one use case? A: We began focused on discovery and shadow IT, then expanded into cost optimization and license reclamation. Over time we discovered additional use cases—onboarding/offboarding reports, automation, and audit-ready reporting. Start with one or two priorities and expand as the platform reveals new opportunities.

Q: Do you plan to expand Torii usage going forward? A: Yes. Torii is now core to our tech stack. We monitor around 1,600 users and will continue to find new use cases as the organization grows.

Q: What questions should teams ask SMP vendors during selection? A: Ask vendors to demonstrate how they will answer your specific questions. Request a POC with your data. Verify integration with your identity and endpoint management tools and ask how the vendor will help with billing association, credit card spend discovery, and automation of remediation workflows.

Thank you to Dwayne and John for sharing their experience and insights. If we did not get to your question live, we will follow up after the webinar. Thank you all for your time. Have a great rest of the week.