Uri Haramati of Torii On How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level

Applying “quality over quantity” to your tech stack. Companies’ technology transformations have launched a plethora of new software. Torii has found that businesses are deploying 18–20 new SaaS tools every month on average, making for a constantly expanding ecosystem of cloud apps. However, this can lead to waste, as some of the tools will be redundant to ones that are already in use, and subscriptions to other tools that were expensed on employee credit cards may perpetually renew without finance’s knowledge. To protect against this, companies should use a SaaS management platform, which will enable them to monitor usage and spending on every single application, eliminate applications that are no longer needed, and licenses that are not being used.

As part of our series about “How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Uri Haramati, co-founder and CEO of Torii.

Uri Haramati is co-founder and CEO of Torii, whose automated SaaS management platform helps modern IT drive businesses forward by making the best use of SaaS. A serial entrepreneur, Uri has founded several successful startups including Life on Air, the parent company behind popular apps such as Meerkat and Houseparty. He also started Skedook, an event discovery app. Uri is passionate about innovating technology that solves complex challenges and creates new opportunities.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I’ve always considered myself a builder and a maker. From woodworking to software, I love being a part of the process of bringing ideas to life. In college, this led me to start an entrepreneurship program that brought together other like-minded individuals where we discussed our business ideas and innovations that inspired us.

After graduating I found myself at Deloitte where I was a senior consultant in their financial services advisory group. When I left and became a freelance financial consultant, I found my passion for running my own business and being an entrepreneur. Over the last few decades, this has led to founding several startups including Life on Air, which is the parent company behind popular apps such as Meerkat, Houseparty and Skedook.

When it comes to how Torii was created, it started as a curiosity to solve a personal need, but quickly expanded into much more. In my previous roles, I was always looking for tools to help manage the constantly growing stack of cloud applications that my organization was dealing with every day. Turns out, no tool existed to help IT gain an understanding of what SaaS was being used. As I kept diving deeper, I noticed several trends and began brainstorming.

First, cloud, or SaaS, applications were working their way into organizations at rapid speed. At many companies, cloud applications are more plentiful than installed software. This led to the second trend of legacy systems being left behind — but IT was still operating as if they weren’t, creating a disconnect between what companies offered and what employees needed to be productive. Lastly, because of the pandemic and an increase in dispersed workforces, these SaaS applications were getting increasingly harder to track and control.

This ultimately is what inspired me to leave the consumer tech space to build Torii and tackle these problems by creating a platform that would offer both visibility into tech stacks and give IT teams the tools needed to take automated actions to manage them.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

When we started Torii, no one really understood what we were doing, we weren’t even sure how our solution was going to work. There was no product, no funding and no team, but we knew we needed to develop our technology using real data from actual companies. I reached out to several friends and said I would give them Torii for free for life if they would let us work with them. Our product has evolved significantly since then, and my friends have moved on to new companies. I don’t remember who was promised what, and don’t know when they’ll come back to cash in on my promise. Good thing I love surprises!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Uri Nativ and Tal Bereznitsky, my co-founders at Torii, have been instrumental in helping me achieve success. The CEO position can be a lonely one, but Uri and Tal help me see things in ways I hadn’t seen before. They tell me when I do a good job, but, more importantly, they tell me when I don’t. When I need to change my ways, when I need to step up. We have zero ego between us, zero politics. We have been there for each other in good and bad times from the start and will continue there in good and bad times.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

“Getting Things Done” by David Allen was very impactful. It’s all about efficiency and how to better manage tasks. When you’re a founder and CEO of a startup, you’re working on so many different aspects of the business and have many different priorities. The sheer amount of work to do is always expanding. This book really helped me learn how to organize and prioritize.

Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?

Since being founded in 2017, Torii has been focused on helping customers drive their businesses forward by making the best use of their incredibly fast-growing SaaS ecosystems. Torii automates the discovery and actions around management of SaaS applications. In other words, Torii offers a bird’s eye view of what SaaS spend and usage look like, and enables IT, finance, procurement and line of business users to take automated actions to manage these apps. For that reason, educating business leaders about the importance of SaaS management and the insights it can provide has been another of Torii’s purposes. Our ultimate mission is to create one software to manage all software.

Are you working on any new, exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

In the beginning stages of a startup, you’re working hard night and day getting the business off the ground. It can be all-consuming. Now that our business has grown more and matured, we’re also focusing on how we can give back to the communities we live and work in. Social responsibility is incredibly important to me personally, and I’m very excited to dive into how all of us at Torii can make a real impact.

Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion about Digital Transformation. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like to engage in a Digital Transformation?

Over the past few years, a revolution in business processes and operations has been steadily gaining ground, as more and more companies turn to digital technology–and cloud-based software in particular–for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The pandemic accelerated this shift as more people needed to access software and collaborate while working from home. Digital transformation signals a fundamental change to how employees work, how enterprises learn from and interact with customers, and how they deliver products and solutions.

In practice, this might manifest as rapid adoption of new technologies, such as the collaboration taking place on Zoom and Asana. Data is now generated and easily accessible in cloud apps — making it a driver of nearly every aspect of business, from sales and marketing to IT support, product development, finance and operations.

Which companies can most benefit from a Digital Transformation?

Virtually any company in any industry can benefit from digital transformation. It helps streamline processes, reduce costs, better inform business and department decisions, improve customer relationships, boost revenue, enhance hiring and retention and more.

We’d love to hear about your experiences helping others with Digital Transformation. In your experience, how has Digital Transformation helped improve operations, processes and customer experiences? We’d love to hear some stories if possible.

Torii’s customers rely on cloud applications. They’ve all benefited by streamlining and accelerating operations, and using data generated in Torii to inform decision-making. For example, our customer Rock Content had acquired two companies — and all the software they used — as well as new staff around the world. They tapped Torii to help identify and control what they assumed was an overabundance of cloud apps, many of which were likely purchased by employees without IT’s assistance or even knowledge. On day one we found 700+ applications in their ecosystem. Rock Content used Torii to centralize all the information related to the apps — including licenses, contracts and costs — and found redundant applications that had the same capabilities. They also automated key actions such as onboarding and offboarding employees to and from applications. As a result, Rock Content saved $1 million in cloud app spending, cut hours spent on offboarding by 75% and eliminated the risk of former employees being able to access the company’s cloud apps and the sensitive information they contained.

Has integrating Digital Transformation been a challenging process for some companies? What are the challenges? How do you help resolve them?

Digital transformation, for all the positives that come out of it, can be extremely challenging. Businesses are taking on new software, techniques and strategies, which alone could make leadership’s head spin. And as a result of the pandemic, companies have been moving to the cloud at a fast and furious pace. Sometimes it seems they’re trading old challenges for new ones — including too many unknowns and too much time spent trying to get a handle on all their cloud applications. Torii helps them not only discover all their apps and gain control over their entire cloud app ecosystem, but also provides insights and automated actions that save them the time and money that digital transformation had promised to enable.

Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are “Five Ways a Company Can Use Digital Transformation To Take It To The Next Level”? Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Evolving the role of IT. IT teams have historically been in a “command and control” role when it comes to deploying and managing technology. But that is changing fast — and it needs to in order to reap the flexibility, productivity and financial benefits of digital transformation. In this new decentralized, cloud-powered business world, IT teams should take on the role of collaborator, working closely with departments throughout the company to help them get the most benefit from technology, quickly. After all, departments have a better understanding of which applications will drive their success and will be better equipped to act on opportunities to achieve their goals faster. IT needs to be the strategic enabler and orchestrator of this new cloud reality.
2. Managing “Shadow IT”. Thanks to the ease of finding and subscribing to cloud apps, many employees purchase the software they need to do their jobs on their own. In fact, Torii customers have found that up to 75% of their company’s cloud apps are purchased by employees outside of IT, often without IT’s knowledge. Employees taking the reins here is indicative of innovation and growth. And may also be key to employee retention. One industry study found that 42% of millennials would quit their jobs due to “substandard technology”. Rather than try to squash this trend — which would be nearly impossible to do anyway — businesses need to accept it and adopt technology that can help them discover all their apps, easily take needed actions, and foster collaboration among everyone from IT and finance to procurement, HR and lines of business, around their cloud application usage and spending.
3. Making the employee lifecycle smooth and airtight. In order for digital transformation to fuel progress and growth, businesses will need more employees to enable that growth. You want to get these new hires on board and productive as quickly as possible — which means giving them easy and fast access to the technology they need. Companies should create app catalogs where employees can digitally request access to already sanctioned apps, and in a matter of minutes, be able to start working with them. This requires policies and workflow around who can access which apps, and technology that automates onboarding actions. Likewise, when people leave the company, it’s also important to automate actions that remove access to applications — otherwise you’re at risk of former employees being able to access sensitive data.
4. Embracing innovation. Digital transformation oftentimes means that a company is exploring new tools, techniques or even ways of thinking. Embracing new ideas, whether from leadership or a LOB team member, is key to driving success. If an employee proposes using a new CMS system because the current version isn’t offering the capabilities they need, it will only benefit management to hear and listen carefully to their recommendations. With new software and capabilities being developed and released all the time, it’s likely your employees will be the first to know when the next best thing comes to market.
5. Applying “quality over quantity” to your tech stack. Companies’ technology transformations have launched a plethora of new software. Torii has found that businesses are deploying 18–20 new SaaS tools every month on average, making for a constantly expanding ecosystem of cloud apps. However, this can lead to waste, as some of the tools will be redundant to ones that are already in use, and subscriptions to other tools that were expensed on employee credit cards may perpetually renew without finance’s knowledge. To protect against this, companies should use a SaaS management platform, which will enable them to monitor usage and spending on every single application, eliminate applications that are no longer needed, and licenses that are not being used.

In your opinion, how can companies best create a “culture of innovation” in order to create new competitive advantages?

The key to innovation is being open and adaptive. These are two of Torii’s core values. Everyone can have great ideas, and all should be able to share them. At Torii, nothing is off limits. We want everyone to be open to both listening to new innovations and to sharing their own. Companies should be open to change and take action to be the change. The evolution of a company is in the hands of every single employee.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

From my time in the army, I learned “if you don’t have a solution, you might be part of the problem.” This has helped shape my perspective when navigating my career by always aiming to figure out solutions instead of passing the problem to someone else.

How can our readers further follow your work?

I’m active on LinkedIn sharing the latest and greatest in regards to SaaS management and making software deployment at scale easier and more efficient. Follow me there to see what I’m working on. If SaaS management and Torii, more specifically, is what you find interesting, follow our blog at https://blog.toriihq.com/ and LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/toriihq/ to stay up-to date.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!