Every new SaaS tool expands your attack surface. Progress Software’s John Yang reveals three strategies Australian organisations can adopt to strengthen compliance
What’s Happening: Australian organisations are caught in a bind. They’re under pressure to innovate quickly whilst meeting stricter compliance demands from regulators like APRA and the Privacy Act. Many have responded by adopting numerous specialised SaaS tools, creating fragmented workflows and heightened security risks rather than solving the problem.
Why This Matters: Fragmented workflows create security vulnerabilities that are costly to manage. Each additional tool expands an organisation’s attack surface, making it harder to monitor and patch systems consistently.
Australian businesses are under growing pressure to innovate faster—while navigating increasing and stricter compliance requirements from government and industry bodies such as the Consumer Data Right Act, the Privacy Act, the recently updated PCI-DSS mandate, or APRA’s CPS 230 framework.
Businesses are often torn between delivering seamless digital experiences—prioritising investing in digital tools to help teams collaborate better, as well as promote innovation—and keeping pace with increasingly complex compliance rules. Creating a balancing act can feel like trying to solve a puzzle with mismatched pieces.
Many business leaders end up stuck between a rock and a hard place, feeling that they have to choose between prioritising security at the expense of productivity and innovation, or keep delivering on their digital innovation agenda bearing the risk of jeopardising data security and compliance.
As a result of this pressure, organisations have adopted a wide range of SaaS tools to try and meet every need of their workflow—one for e-signing, one for maintaining client portals, one for secure data and document sharing, and so on. But these SaaS tools, often introduced in silos, have led to fragmented workflows, heightened security vulnerabilities, and thus rising compliance challenges.
Balancing all sides of the compliance-collaboration-innovation coin is not an easy feat, but there are ways to both meet expanding data security and privacy requirements, while remaining a dynamic, digitally-driven business.
Step 1: Addressing The Sprawling SaaS Tools Epidemic
SaaS tools are often brought in to help employees save time, reduce costs for the organisation, and keep data secure—each tool usually having its own built-in security layer. But too many tools defeat the whole purpose of using SaaS to help improve security and productivity:
- How much time is truly lost? It takes employees an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain focus after an interruption, like switching apps. Multiply that by 36 SaaS apps—the average number an employee uses—and that equals a lot of lost productivity. This unnecessary and time-consuming process is the first pitfall of having an app for every workflow need.
- Are you really saving money? Relying on too many apps quickly drives up technology spend. And if budgets are tight, like it’s the case for a lot of small and medium businesses, this means having to prioritise which capabilities to invest in—sometimes at the expense of collaboration, efficiency, or even security.
- Security: ‘more is (actually) less’. Every additional tool that is added to the SaaS stack increases an organisation’s attack surface, making it harder to keep everything patched, monitored and secure.
Stopping SaaS sprawl is an important first step for every organisation looking to solve their growing compliance duties and actually improve workflow efficiency. This necessary consolidation leads directly to an integrated approach to data and document management.
Step 2: Adopting an Integrated Approach to Data And Document Management
Instead of cobbling together point solutions, business owners need to look at building a unified experience that’s easier for both internal teams and for clients. That’s the promise of a consolidated platform designed for the entire workflow, with security, automation and collaboration built in from the start.
It is not about getting rid of every single piece of SaaS tool the organisation uses. It is about looking at ways that some workflow functions can be brought in together to improve collaboration, reduce cost, and ensure better security of the data through the entire workflow chain.
For example, bringing together e-signing, document sharing and client portals into one single platform makes a lot of sense. Such a platform can streamline client document processes while ensuring the confidentiality of client data. With a centralised client portal, clients can upload documents, approve requests and track progress in one secure place, eliminating the need to track down emails or piece together updates. Clients can also view and e-sign documents directly within the platform, so everything happens in one seamless workflow—no app switching, no lost paperwork.
Such an integrated approach to data and document management can also result in great savings—in addition to improving workflow efficiency, security, and client satisfaction.
This consolidated, high-efficiency model is not just about bringing tools together. This is where AI changes the equation. Instead of adding complexity, modern AI capabilities make it easier to stay compliant while improving productivity.
Step 3: Using AI to Your Advantage
Take sharing files, for example: it’s a necessary task, but if it’s not handled carefully, it can introduce real security risks. But in a consolidated workflow platform, AI-powered share setting recommendations can guide users to the most secure choice. If personally identifiable information (PII) is detected, you’ll receive an instant prompt to use a more secure sharing method. No screen-switching needed—just select your security settings and generate your document link all within the same simple interface.
Or imagine collecting all the client documents you need without the endless back and forth. This is made possible with features like AI-powered document request lists. This workflow can help keep everyone in sync, and help gather documents up to 3.5x faster.
Let’s say you need answers from a document or a summary. Employees can skip the hassle of manually digging through pages of details and simply ask a question and get instant insights with AI-powered Document Q&A. AI can also help condense complex files into key points.
These are just a few examples of how an integrated platform with built-in AI can help organisations get away from a doomed sprawling SaaS tools environment leading to more costs, less productivity, and greater security risks.
Business leaders shouldn’t have to choose between innovation and security. Instead, it is about finding smarter ways to achieve both. By consolidating tools, integrating workflows, and using AI responsibly, businesses can make these mismatched puzzle pieces finally fit together.
Such approach and use of a consolidated workflow platform can be particularly relevant for Australian organisations operating in highly regulated environments, such as financial services, government, and healthcare. But also, for organisations that are highly dependent on document-related workflows such as legal, accounting, research, and higher education.
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