App sprawl is more than a nuisance. Disconnected apps are blockers to productivity, AI readiness, and collaboration between field teams and back-office operations. CIOs leading the next phase of digital transformation are reviewing their SaaS spend and doubling down on flexible, low-code platforms.

SaaS sprawl is a problem in all industries. Midsize organizations average 61 SaaS applications and larger ones with over 1,000 employees use an average of 200, according to one report.  

In construction, manufacturing, and other industries with field operations, SaaS sprawl has quietly become a major drag on productivity, collaboration, and innovation.

According to a recent study on minimizing app sprawl to reach the promise of AI, 81% of respondents in construction and manufacturing expressed frustration, citing how disjointed systems hinder collaboration and access to real-time information. Even more alarming, 90% of IT professionals believe app sprawl is obstructing their AI adoption plans.

Leading CIOs unwind shadow IT and SaaS sprawl

SaaS sprawl, shadow IT, and the resulting integration gaps should be a wake-up call for CIOs. Too many tools, too little alignment, and an opportunity to reset.

I recently wrote about how CIOs turn shadow IT into a competitive edge by establishing low-code governance models. In this week’s Coffee with Digital Trailblazers, we discussed how navigating the digital sprawl is the silent drag on productivity.

“We had much more software than we thought,” said John Patrick Luethe, a leading speaker at the Coffee With Digital Trailblazers. “We started making a list of every piece of software we could find in the company and partnered with the accounting team to look at what people are expensing.”

What many CIOs are finding is that no one really knows the full inventory—until they ask. And when they do, it’s often eye-opening.

“You do that audit before the audit. You ask departments what applications they are working with, and it’s a deer in the headlights type of reaction you get back,” added Derrick Butts, CEO and enterprise cyber-business resilience advisor at Continuums Strategies. “The problem was that the departments were not talking to each other, so one department may have a software package, and the other department didn’t know that, so they bought something similar.”

Duplicate tools, overlapping capabilities, and disconnected data are more than inefficiencies—they’re blockers to digital transformation. “We have a productivity story, a cost saving story, and a risk mitigation story, while SaaS pricing goes up 10 to 20% a year when you’re only using a third of their capabilities,” I remarked.

The impact of gray work on employee productivity

But consolidation is more than a cost play. Teams aren’t just dealing with too many tools—they’re spending their day trying to work around them.

“We kept hearing over and over from customers that there was a set of things they were doing every single day that seemed to be moving them further and further away from getting work done,” shared Christian Potts, director of public relations at Quickbase and sponsor of the Coffee With Digital Trailblazers episode.

Potts was defining gray work and its invisible impacts. Gray work shows up when employees do their work across too many disconnected tools. Other times, gray work is the spreadsheets, emails, and meetings required to fill communication gaps and connect workflows.

The lack of collaboration, integration gaps, and missed opportunities to transform to dynamic work management are significant genAI era issues. They impede capturing the workflow’s end-to-end data needed to improve decision-making, drive efficiencies, and enable pragmatic AI capabilities.

Gray work’s impact in field operations: From efficiencies to safety

Gray world is most evident between the field and the home office in manufacturing, construction, and other service industries. Mid and larger businesses in these industries have the opportunity to establish field service management as a competitive differentiator.

Joe Puglisi, MTEC board director and fractional CIO at 10Xnewco, noted, “We could talk for hours about the disconnection between the field and the home office and all the subcontractors, construction managers, owners, and financiers using their own systems and mostly spreadsheets in the construction industry.”

This is where low-code platforms offer a strategic advantage. When adopted as multi-use platforms in manufacturing and construction—not just for building new apps but for orchestrating workflows, integrations, and automations—CIOs can reduce sprawl and build agility.

“In field operations,  gray work issues are much more than a, it’s harder to get my job done thing, and is more of a revenue or, in many cases, a safety issue,” added Potts. “Safety is about the right data at the right place at the right time to make a decision that keeps people out of harm’s way, keeps jobs moving forward, and promotes the right kind of culture you want to have in your organization.”

CIOs drive people-first strategies to deliver business value

Top CIOs should recognize that having the right technology strategy isn’t enough to gain stakeholder buy-in and end-user adoption.

“Where IT drops the ball is making the business aware that just because the tool is designed to do X and Y does not mean it’s not also designed to do Zed,” said Joanne Friedman, PhD and CEO of Connektedminds.

Being strategic means going beyond everyone’s feature asks for, and a new SaaS sells as the latest shiny object. Instead, ask a different question. What can we stop buying because we leverage a dynamic work management platform to help create an integrated experience?

As Christian Potts warned, “80% of the companies that we’ve surveyed say that they are increasing their investment in productivity, work management, collaboration tools. But meanwhile, 59% of the employees say that those tools are making it harder for them to get their work done.”

Friedman recommends changing the dialogue with stakeholders the next time they want to choose a tool. She might say to stakeholders, “We’re not necessarily trying to enlarge the technology estate. We’re going to be more creative in how we do those requirements to make sure that we don’t have hidden overlaps that drag productivity down. We’re becoming very purposeful about our new investments and how we’re pairing down the estate and recovering from sunk cost and technical debt.”

Thoughts for CIOs on platform strategies

This is the time to lead as organizations race to experiment with AI while delivering operational efficiencies. Look in the rearview mirror and the last generation of SaaS buying. Review where there’s SaaS sprawl, swivel chair integration, and other gray work in your organization.

Start by running that application inventory—bring in finance, talk to the field, and map the true sprawl. Find out what employees are doing to find information and compensate for gaps in their end-to-end workflows. From there, create a platform strategy that leverages low-code capabilities with everyday operations.

Consolidation isn’t just cleanup—it’s the foundation for smarter, faster, more connected digital operations.

Watch the episode on The Silent Drag on Productivity: Navigating Digital Sprawl on LinkedIn and the StarCIO Digital Trailblazer Community.

This post is brought to you by Quickbase.

The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Quickbase.