Compliance as a Cost Saver

Why compliance frameworks are your secret weapon against rising IT costs

CIOs and CTOs don’t need reminding: IT budgets are under relentless pressure.
Every new SaaS license, every “per-user/per-month” subscription, every compliance audit adds to the sense that IT is a cost center.

It doesn’t take long before SaaS spend spirals out of control. Creative Cloud here, Salesforce there, a dozen productivity apps everywhere—it all adds up fast. And when compliance gets thrown into the mix, it often feels like just another tax on the business.

We’ve been there. We hear you.

But here’s the twist: compliance frameworks like ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and NIST are not just checklists.
Done right, they’re blueprints for efficiency—and they can actually drive costs out of the business.

Compliance That Pays Back

Let’s start with the familiar: Single Sign-On (SSO).
Yes, SSO improves compliance, centralizes authentication, and reduces password reset tickets. But here’s the thing—SSO is table stakes. Everyone knows it. Most enterprises already have it.

The real opportunity? SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management).

SCIM: The Missing Piece

SCIM automates the entire user lifecycle: onboarding, role changes, and offboarding.

Without SCIM, here’s what usually happens:

• IT manually provisions accounts.
• Former employees keep “zombie” accounts.
• SaaS licenses pile up unused.
• Audits become painful.

With SCIM, all of that is automated:

• HR adds an employee → SCIM provisions the right apps instantly.
• Role changes in HR flow seamlessly across all systems.
• Employee leaves → SCIM de-provisions every account immediately.

No tickets. No wasted licenses. No audit fire drills.

The Cost Equation

Industry data is crystal clear:

• 30% of SaaS licenses go unused (Productiv, BetterCloud).
• 20–30% of SaaS budgets are wasted annually.
• Manual provisioning costs $15–25 per user per app (Gartner).

Example:
A 500-employee company with a SaaS budget of $200/employee/month = $1.2M/year.
At 25% waste, that’s $300,000/year burned.

All because identity management wasn’t automated.

Compliance + Cost Savings = Win-Win

The beauty is that SCIM doesn’t just cut waste—it also satisfies your compliance obligations.

• ISO 27001: Automates onboarding/offboarding (A.9.2.1), supports RBAC (A.9.2.3).
• HIPAA: Ensures unique IDs and audit-ready account records (§164.312).
• PCI DSS: Simplifies access reviews and monitoring (Req. 7, 8, 10).

Instead of dreading compliance audits, you can point to SCIM as proof that IT is not just secure—it’s efficient.

Why It’s Overlooked

So why isn’t every enterprise using SCIM?

1. Awareness – SSO is widely understood. SCIM? Not so much.
2. Complexity – Even when apps support SCIM, implementation requires schema mapping, connectors, and testing.

That’s where Timberwolf comes in.

How Timberwolf Helps

We help CIOs and CTOs turn compliance obligations into cost-saving opportunities by:

• Rolling out SCIM across SaaS and custom apps.
• Integrating SCIM with SSO for full lifecycle automation.
• Extending SCIM to your own products, making them more attractive to enterprise buyers.
• Demonstrating ROI through hard cost savings and audit-readiness.

Call to Action: Flip Compliance Into Savings

Every month without SCIM means wasted SaaS spend, compliance risk, and IT time lost to manual tasks.

Book a SCIM Cost-Savings Assessment with Timberwolf We’ll map your current identity processes, quantify the hidden waste, and build a roadmap to automate it away.

Because compliance isn’t a cost—it’s the business case for efficiency you’ve been waiting for.