The Total Economic Impact™ Of 1Password AI And SaaS Manager

Optimized SaaS License Spending

Evidence and data. Interviewees consistently reported that AI and SaaS Manager helped optimize SaaS license spending by improving visibility into software usage, identifying inactive and duplicate licenses, consolidating overlapping applications, preventing unnecessary purchases, supporting vendor negotiations, automating license reclamation, and enabling more informed renewal decisions. Interviewees said that their organizations, which range from approximately 1,200 employees to more than 5,000, experienced savings ranging from tens of thousands to millions of dollars annually. Interviewees told Forrester that they used AI and SaaS Manager to not only discover and recover existing waste, but also sustain that improvement through continuous reclamation, renewal decisions, and workflows that prevented unnecessary expenditure. As a result, they saw the solution as an integral part of their ongoing asset management programs and one that continued to deliver increasing financial benefits over time. The interviewees also noted the following benefits that led to savings:

• Improved visibility into SaaS utilization and spend. A foundational benefit cited by all interviewees was gaining visibility into what applications exist across the enterprise, who uses them, and what the organization is paying for them. Prior to AI and SaaS Manager, interviewees’ organizations often relied on spreadsheets, manual tracking, or disconnected systems that made software spending difficult to manage. The CIO of a travel and hospitality company explained, “From a licensing perspective, just getting visibility into how much we were paying I think was a big return on investment.” Similarly, the head of enterprise applications and identity at a healthcare concern noted: “It helped us understand the unit cost per employee as a new hire. What we are spending per employee on the software that we procure.” This visibility enabled the interviewees’ organizations to identify waste, track ownership, understand utilization, and make data-driven decisions regarding renewals and license allocations both upfront and on an ongoing basis.

• Eliminated unused licenses and reclaiming waste. Several interviewees described finding large numbers of licenses assigned to inactive or departed users. The senior manager of enterprise applications at an automotive company reported that AI and SaaS Manager uncovered substantial waste, noting, “We were able to find a ton of licenses that were still assigned to terminated employees.” The same interviewee said their organization also discovered many licenses assigned to employees who had not used the software for years, stating, “There were a lot of licenses where the users hadn’t even logged into the platform for well over two years.” The head of enterprise applications and identity at a healthcare firm noted that they now use the product’s automated workflows to continuously reclaim unused licenses, saying, “If somebody’s not using a license within so many weeks or months, we will pull it and then assign it to somebody else who needs it.” The senior manager of IT asset management at a home services company echoed that approach, noting, “If someone hasn’t had an event in [the app] in 90 days, it just removes their license.” Interviewees emphasized that ongoing automated reclamation prevented license counts from growing unnecessarily between renewals and helped maintain a right-sized software portfolio, providing continued financial benefits for their organizations.

• Consolidated duplicate applications. Interviewees said another common source of savings came from identifying overlapping applications and reducing redundant software purchases. The CIO of the travel and hospitality company relayed that AI and SaaS Manager increased visibility into existing applications so departments could reuse approved platforms rather than purchase new ones, reporting, “When someone wants to bring on a new app, the first question we ask is ‘Hey, do we have something already in the cloud that we can reuse?’” This interviewee attributed substantial savings to avoiding duplicate purchases and consolidating similar tools, saying, “We’ve seen somewhere between $400,000 to $600,000 in savings from either avoiding duplication or retiring something that’s not anymore in use.” Similarly, the senior manager of enterprise applications at an automotive company stated that consolidation was one of the largest drivers of value for them.

• Strengthened renewal and vendor negotiation outcomes. Interviewees told Forrester that AI and SaaS Manager improved negotiations with vendors by providing accurate utilization data and making overlicensing visible before renewals. The senior manager of enterprise applications in the automotive sector reported, “It’s helped us with all of our contract negotiations.” They described vendors reacting when the company could finally demonstrate actual utilization, saying, “[Some of our vendors] got nervous because they were thinking ‘Uh-oh, they found out that we’ve been overcharging them for so long!” At the home services provider, the senior manager of IT asset management related that AI and SaaS Manager enabled procurement teams to begin negotiations earlier and with greater confidence: “It actually speeds up our negotiation process with vendors, which gives us better leverage with them. In [one] example, we ended up cutting our contract in half. Out of a $60,000 contract that was $30,000 in savings.” The CIO at the travel and hospitality company noted that the improved visibility AI and SaaS Manager provided gave them improved discounts because they were able to consolidate software and come to a single vendor with a larger order, saying, “Having a bigger negotiation, having a bigger order, we got a better discount.”

• Right-sized entitlements and license tiers. Interviewees reported that AI and SaaS Manager helped their organizations match users with the correct license level, reducing premium-license waste. This was an especially important factor in helping these organizations to continue getting financial benefit from the solution in the years since its initial deployment. The senior manager of IT asset management in home services explained that AI and SaaS Manager exposed entitlement data that was difficult to obtain directly from the application vendor: “That allowed me to figure out where we had people who were over licensed. Not necessarily people who needed to be removed from [the app] entirely, but people who had more expensive licenses than they necessarily needed. On another enterprisewide app, I found that we had a fairly colossal amount of waste, and we saved about $150,000 there.”

• Prevented future overspending through automation. Interviewees explained that rather than relying solely on periodic audits, their organizations used AI and SaaS Manager workflows to continuously enforce optimization policies and avoid unnecessary spending even after the initial rationalization work. The head of enterprise applications and identity at a healthcare company described how their organization adjusted windows based on cost and usage patterns: “We have it set up so that [people lose their licenses] with certain applications in as little as 30 days. And then on other applications, we’ll give them six months.” They reported savings of $50,000 to $85,000 annually from ongoing license optimization alone, after larger initial savings from workflow consolidation.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• There are 3,000 employees who each use one or more SaaS applications.

• The organization invests approximately $2,000 per user on the SaaS applications that help them do their jobs productively.

• Through a combination of license rationalization, more effective offboarding, stronger negotiating position, and elimination of duplication, the organization reduces this annual investment to $1,750 per employee in Year 1 after its initial rationalization and then to $1,650 in Year 2 and $1,500 in Year 3 as a result of continuous reclamation and workflows that prevent unnecessary spending.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• The size of the organization and number of employees/users.

• The number and cost of SaaS applications in place before deploying 1Password.

• The degree of visibility and control the organization achieves over its SaaS applications before deploying 1Password.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $2.3 million.

Increased Employee Productivity

Interviewees consistently described AI and SaaS Manager as a productivity platform as much as a SaaS governance solution, reporting that it increased IT team productivity by replacing manual application management processes with centralized visibility, automation, workflow orchestration, and self-service governance capabilities. Interviewees described reducing time spent on onboarding and offboarding, license administration, renewal preparation, audit support, compliance activities, software discovery, and application portfolio management. Several interviewees also noted that AI and SaaS Manager allowed their IT teams to shift effort away from repetitive administrative work and toward higher-value strategic initiatives. Finally, the same reduced onboarding time benefited new employees by getting them to work faster, while automated workflows saved all end users time and frustration related to access, renewals, updates, and other administrative processes. Other employee productivity benefits included the following:

• Eliminated manual application and application security administration. Before implementing AI and SaaS Manager, interviewees’ organizations often relied on spreadsheets, manual reviews, and disconnected systems to manage application inventories and software access. By centralizing application, license, contract, ownership, and usage information, AI and SaaS Manager provided these organizations with a single system of record that reduced the effort required to locate and validate information across multiple platforms. Interviewees noted that this significantly decreased administrative overhead and allowed their teams to respond more quickly to operational requests.

• Automated onboarding and offboarding activities. Interviewees said a major source of productivity gains came from automating user provisioning and deprovisioning processes. Interviewees explained that workflow automation eliminated large numbers of manual clicks, account modifications, group assignments, and application-level provisioning activities that IT staff previously performed by hand. The CIO at the travel and hospitality company described substantial time savings from AI and SaaS Manager workflows that automated previously manual provisioning tasks: “They have just been able to automate that provisioning and get it done very quickly. That alone has saved the equivalent of one person’s time annually on my team.” Similarly, the head of enterprise applications and identity at the healthcare company said they use AI and SaaS Manager workflows to automate application access provisioning and removal across numerous systems.

• Replaced recurring audits with continuous automation. Interviewees emphasized that AI and SaaS Manager reduced the need for periodic manual audits by continuously monitoring licenses and usage patterns. The senior manager of IT asset management in the home services industry explained that one of their license management processes previously required “two or three days every four to six months.” They reported that, after building the workflow on AI and SaaS Manager once, “now it just runs in perpetuity on its own.” They highlighted an additional benefit of this automation, stating, “It’s more accurate because it’s happening with a higher degree of frequency.”

• Accelerated software renewal and licensing processes. Interviewees noted that centralizing usage and entitlement information dramatically reduced the effort required to analyze license utilization and prepare for software renewals, saving IT teams from repeatedly accessing individual vendor consoles, exporting reports, and manually reconciling license data. The senior manager of IT asset management in the home services industry recalled how the process worked before deploying AI and SaaS Manager: “I would have downloaded all those [vendor reports] and I would have done the analysis by hand. Instead, now all that data is visible to me fairly immediately. It not only saves me time, but it speeds up our negotiation process with vendors.”

• Streamlined compliance and audit preparation. Interviewees also reported meaningful productivity gains associated with governance, compliance, and audit readiness. By maintaining access records, workflow histories, and application ownership information automatically, AI and SaaS Manager reduced manual evidence collection and compliance tracking activities at the interviewees’ organizations. The CIO in the travel and hospitality industry pointed out, “It helped us address some of the findings around role-based access and around cutting people’s access.” They further noted that their cybersecurity team also realized similar productivity gains from automated audit trails, compliance reporting, and access reviews.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Ten technical employees manage the SaaS estate (among other assets).

• The automation of onboarding and offboarding workflows allows the team to redeploy the equivalent of one technical employee (2,080 hours) to other critical tasks or projects.

• The automation of governance and audit workflows, along with automated audit trails, reporting, and access reviews, frees up an additional one-quarter of an FTE (520 hours) on the asset management team and another one-quarter of an FTE (520 hours) on the cybersecurity team to take on other high-value work.

• The average fully burdened salary for these team members is $129,200.⁴

• Automated onboarding workflows allow approximately 300 new employees per year to get to work 8 hours faster.

• Improved management and maintenance of SaaS licenses saves all 3,000 SaaS application end users a half an hour (assuming 50% productivity recapture on 1 hour of time saved).

• The average fully burdened hourly wage for all employees at the composite organization is $34.⁵

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• The size of the organization.

• The size of the team managing SaaS applications before deploying 1Pasword.

• The average fully burdened pay rates of the employees affected.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $690,000.

Reduced Compliance-Related Security Risk

Evidence and data. Interviewees told Forrester that AI and SaaS Manager reduced compliance-related security risk by improving visibility into application access, automating user offboarding, supporting role-based access controls, maintaining more accurate user inventories, and providing centralized governance over SaaS applications. Interviewees emphasized that the platform ensures former employees did not retain access to corporate systems, strengthened audit readiness, and enabled more consistent enforcement of security and compliance policies.

• Automated user deprovisioning and access removal. A primary risk-reduction benefit cited by interviewees was the ability to automatically remove access when employees depart or change roles. The head of enterprise applications and identity in healthcare opined that AI and SaaS Manager automated offboarding across applications they might otherwise miss, noting, “It’ll start and remove access from all those applications that your typical workflows may not do.” This reduced the likelihood that former employees retained access to business-critical SaaS applications after termination or transfer.

• Improved visibility into SaaS access and shadow IT. Interviewees explained that AI and SaaS Manager provided a centralized view of applications, users, and ownership, helping IT teams identify unmanaged applications and access risks. Prior to 1Password deployment, the interviewees’ organizations often lacked comprehensive visibility into their SaaS environments. By creating a centralized inventory of applications and users, AI and SaaS Manager allowed IT and security teams to understand who had access to which systems and identify applications operating outside established governance processes. Interviewees noted that greater visibility helped prevent unauthorized software adoption and supported stronger control over each organization’s SaaS footprint.

• Stronger role-based access governance. Several interviewees described using AI and SaaS Manager workflows to standardize onboarding and offboarding processes and enforce consistent access management practices. The same automated workflows that accelerate provisioning also help ensure access is granted according to established policies and removed when no longer required. Interviewees indicated that standardized workflows reduce reliance on manual processes, which can introduce compliance gaps and human error.

• Eliminated orphaned and dormant accounts. Interviewees described identifying accounts belonging to terminated employees or inactive users that represented unnecessary security exposure. By identifying and removing these accounts automatically, interviewees’ organizations reduced the risk associated with dormant credentials while improving overall SaaS governance.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The organization faces an average annual breach exposure of $2.1 million.⁶

• Seventy-seven percent of breach exposure is associated with external attacks, remote-environment attacks, and internal incidents.⁷

• Ten percent of that exposure is addressable through improved management of SaaS applications and their usage.

• Improved visibility, standardization, governance, and access control reduce this addressable risk by 20%.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• Existing SaaS application management maturity.

• Percentage of applications operating outside managed environments before deploying 1Password AI and SaaS Manager.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $67,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:

• Improved business user experience and self-service management. Interviewees observed that the productivity gains experienced by IT teams also translated into faster service delivery for end users. The CIO of a travel and hospitality company described the following: “[It is] a much more streamlined process for the onboarding and for the approvals. [Users] are seeing a lot faster provisioning. They get on the platform very quickly.” As a result, employees spent less time waiting for access and IT spent less time responding to those routine requests.
  AI and SaaS Manager also helped distribute responsibility for software management to application owners and business stakeholders. Interviewees reported that this gave business users direct visibility into application utilization, costs, invoices, and user assignments, reducing the number of information requests directed to IT teams and enabling more informed decisions without IT intervention. According to the head of enterprise applications and identity at the healthcare organization, “You can give the ownership to John Doe, they can log into the product, and they can see all the applications in use.”

• Enhanced governance and software standardization. The interviewees’ organizations established greater visibility and control over their SaaS environment, helping IT teams understand which applications were in use, who owned them, and how they were being used across the business. This helped their organizations identify overlapping tools, guide employees toward approved platforms, and encourage use of the right solution for the right purpose rather than allowing departments to independently adopt alternative products. The asset management team steered business users toward existing approved tools, reducing fragmentation and improving adherence to technology standards.
  AI and SaaS Manager helps the composite organization create a centralized inventory of applications, giving decision-makers a consistent source of truth for software ownership, licensing, contracts, and renewal activities. It becomes a key component of software procurement, renewal, and application review processes, helping reinforce standardized workflows and approval practices at the composite. Collectively, these capabilities can strengthen organizational governance, improve alignment between IT and business stakeholders, and promote a more consistent and manageable software portfolio.

• Better data-based decision-making. AI and SaaS Manager provides the composite organization with a centralized, continuously updated view of its software environment, enabling leaders to make more informed decisions based on accurate usage, licensing, spending, ownership, and application data. By bringing together information from identity systems, financial systems, contracts, renewal records, and application activity, the platform helps stakeholders evaluate technology investments with greater confidence and less reliance on spreadsheets or manual research. The composite organization uses these insights on an ongoing basis to identify redundant applications, validate software needs before renewals, determine appropriate license levels, and assess opportunities for consolidation or standardization.
  The visibility AI and SaaS Manager delivers (especially in concert with 1Password’s Enterprise Password Manager) helps the composite organization’s teams understand who is using each application, how applications are being accessed, and whether tools are delivering sufficient value to justify ongoing investment. Interviewees provided evidence to support this and reported using the platform to support procurement decisions, vendor negotiations, governance discussions, security reviews, and technology planning efforts. By creating a trusted source of truth for SaaS data, AI and SaaS Manager can enable faster, more consistent, and more evidence-based decision-making across IT, security, finance, procurement, and business leadership teams.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement AI and SaaS Manager and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Optimized AI spending. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimates that US private firms will invest $280 billion in AI adoption and AI-related technologies in 2026 and that, per employee, represents a 50% increase over 2025.⁸ Forrester’s research shows that leaders in this environment are dealing with a real risk of fragmented, escalating, and poorly governed AI costs.⁹ As enterprises scale AI across the organization, they face cost challenges that traditional FinOps methods and ad hoc controls do not adequately address. AI introduces greater cost fragmentation and volatility, making reactive reporting insufficient.¹⁰
  These concerns were also growing for the interviewees in this study. They reported that their leaders were beginning to ask difficult questions about AI spending and its effectiveness. While their leaders plan to continue (and even accelerate) their use of AI, they want to understand what their organizations are spending on AI and what it is doing for them, so they can direct the investment into the highest return areas. Interviewees described several ways they saw AI and SaaS Manager playing a role in understanding and controlling that AI spending.
  First, interviewees noted that AI and SaaS Manager can help reduce AI spending by making the addressable expenditure visible for their organizations. Once leaders have quantified the extent of their organization’s AI spend and identified the specific use cases driving it, they can begin to make decisions about whether and how much to limit spending, as well as which pockets to target for reduction.
  Second, interviewees said that AI and SaaS Manager can help their organizations optimize the investment they will continue to make in AI. By combining AI consumption and cost information with associated business-outcome measures, leaders can make more informed decisions on how to direct investment toward productive AI use. Success may mean spending more on AI with better returns, not simply shrinking the bill.
  Finally, interviewees reported that AI and SaaS Manager can assist businesses in recouping their AI spending in situations where it can be attributed to specific products or customers. For instance, token consumption attribution can provide a foundation for mapping AI costs to project cost codes (supporting pricing actions to maintain margin), or to engagements to allow for client billing where contracts permit.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).