Work data for shadow IT

Find the software nobody expensed, because somebody opened it

Your asset register is complete about every tool that went through a system. The one a department bought on a card, or somebody installed for free, went through none of them.

Desk-based knowledge work.
WindowsmacOSLinux
*Full access. No credit card required.
Voted Best Value in Workforce Analytics
by
and
Insightful software features shown on product dashboard: Productivity Trends, Activities/Timeline and Office vs. Remote
“We scaled to 30,000+ contractors without losing millions to work fraud.”
Shaun VanWeelden
Head of CX & Ops, Mercor
Case Study
"With Insightful, we address issues in real time — so we're far more proactive than reactive with our employees."
Nathan Yap
CEO, SupportZebra
Case Study
"When we started with Insightful, productivity was in the high 70s. Now we're at 92% — and people come asking, 'How did I do today?' It's gamified their work."
Brett Vance
Agency Owner, Farmers Insurance
Case Study
"Insightful shows us the when, where, and what of problems. Not micromanagement — transparency."
Grant Knaggs
COO, Caduceus Health
Case Study
“It’s very easy to learn and understand how Insightful works.”
Willmar Marin
Chief Strategy Officer, Lean Solutions Group
Case Study
5,000+ teams worldwide read an inventory built from what was opened.

Turn a complete register into an accurate one

Without Insightful

Without Insightful

The register comes back complete

Every tool that went through a system is on it, reconciled and signed off.

Expense data is the source of truth

A free tier generates no transaction, so there is nothing for it to read.

A card payment never reached IT

One department bought it, expensed it, and nobody outside that team knows.

A vendor review covers what was submitted

A tool nobody submitted was never in scope for the review at all.

Contractors arrive with their own stack

They sit outside the expense system and outside single sign-on.

Insightful logo

With Insightful

The list is accurate, not just complete

The list is what people opened, which is a different list from what was bought.

A free tier is visible here anyway

No transaction exists, and it still lands on the list with hours against it.

It appears under the team using it

Named against the team, with the working hours going into it each week.

Unreviewed tools are named first

You find out what has been holding company data before the next review.

Contract seats are on the same list

Same deployment, same report, whether a person is staff or on contract.

No credit card required

See what the register missed

Before this gets signed off

The inventory names tools, never their contents

What comes back is an application name and a domain, and nothing that was inside either. Collection scope is agreed with you per team before a device is deployed, then published, versioned and dated.

Desk-based knowledge work
Windows, macOS and Linux, on a primary computer. Not a warehouse floor, a retail floor or a driving fleet.
Only on managed devices
A tool running on a personal laptop or a phone is outside what any desktop application can see, including this one.
What is never captured
We see which application and site was open and for how long, never what was inside it. No keystroke logging at any tier.
Shadow IT discovery

The first list is longer than anyone expects

Most of what comes back is somebody solving a problem quickly. Three questions decide what happens to each name on it.

Which of these are AI tools?

A free assistant in a browser tab is its own governance problem, and it has its own page.

What are the approved ones costing?

Seats you renew every year with almost no working hours behind them. That is a renewal question.

How do we deploy this without a fight?

Silent installation, MDM distribution and admin scoping, written for the people doing it.

Client results

The tool that had been running for a year

productivity tips work from homeproductivity tips work from home
When we started with Insightful, productivity was in the high 70s. Now we’re at 92% — and people come asking, ‘How did I do today?’ It’s gamified their work.
productivity tips work from homeproductivity tips work from home
Discover how Insightful helped TRG optimize its people and processes to become 76% more productive in just 6 months.
productivity tips work from homeproductivity tips work from home
Learn how this leading US bank unlocked hidden savings with the help of Insightful’s workforce and capacity analysis.

Connected to your stack, sourced from the desktop

Discovery starts on the device, which is how a tool that reached none of your connected systems turns up at all. 50+ integrations cover the rest. You can talk to your work data with MCP connectors.

Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Jira Logo
Explore Insightful Apps Directory
Top Rated Software Globally. Loved by Customers.

The register, or the list of what ran

Two weeks of application and website activity returns a list of what is in use, by team, with the working hours behind each name on it.
No credit card required
FAQ

What IT and security leaders ask us most

How is this different from a SaaS management platform?

Those platforms read expense records and single sign-on data, which Insightful does not have, and they are good at contracts and connected applications. This reads what somebody opened on the device. The two sources return genuinely different lists, and teams who want the whole picture tend to run both rather than choose between them. If your register is built from contracts, this is the half of it that contracts cannot reach.

What is shadow IT, and why does it matter?

Shadow IT is software in use inside an organization without approval from IT, usually adopted by one team to solve an immediate problem and never entered on any asset register. It matters because those tools hold company data outside any security review, and because nobody can remove what nobody has named. Insightful is a work insights platform. It collects hours, application use and meeting load from desk-based teams and reports them by team, each measure against the period before. Unsanctioned software surfaces in that activity, named against the team using it and the working hours going into it. Expect the first list to be longer than the register and less alarming than it looks.

How do you find it without expense data?

By reporting what was opened. Every application and website in use on a managed device appears in the activity record whether or not the company paid for it, so a free tier ranks beside an enterprise contract, the week it turns up rather than at the next asset review. Two limits are worth having in front of you. The first is in that sentence: managed device. Anything running on a phone or a personal laptop sits outside it, and that is true of every discovery method rather than of this one alone. The second is that Insightful does not block anything. Blocking belongs to your endpoint or network tooling, and what this gives that stack is a target list with working hours against each name.

Is this the same as our unused software licenses?

No, and the two are one sentence apart. A tool nobody approved is a risk question: it is running, it holds company data, and no review has been near it. A tool nobody uses is a renewal question: it is approved, it is paid for, and the seats are going to waste. This page is the first one. IT Spend is the second, and it prices the approved half against the working hours spent in each seat. One deployment produces both lists, and they split into two conversations: one with security, one with procurement.

How is this different from the Shadow AI page?

Shadow AI reads the same activity for AI tools specifically, and it is a separate page because the reader and the first objection are different. There, the question is always how you know without reading what was typed. Here it is whether the asset register is already complete. This page covers unsanctioned software of every kind, AI assistants among them. If AI governance is the whole of what you are solving, that page is narrower and better aimed at it.