The team needed to solve a problem quickly. The IT department was busy. The response was taking too long. Someone found a free application online, another employee built a more sophisticated Excel spreadsheet, and a third started using an online platform to manage internal requests.
No meetings.
No project.
No bad intentions.
Just because work needed to continue.
This is how most cases of shadow IT come about.
Not through major strategic decisions, but through small solutions created to meet real needs. The problem is that, once these solutions become part of the organization’s daily routine, they stop being temporary and start supporting critical processes. In the end, it’s often the case that no one has a complete view of what’s actually happening.
Shadow IT doesn’t emerge because teams want to bypass the IT department. It emerges because they need to respond faster to business needs.
What is shadow IT?
Shadow IT refers to the set of applications, platforms, databases, automations, or tools used within an organization without being part of the officially managed technology architecture.
This can include:
- Excel spreadsheets that have come to support critical processes;
- SaaS applications purchased directly by departments;
- automations created by users;
- local databases;
- collaboration tools used without integration with company systems;
- Artificial Intelligence platforms used without any internal policy.
None of these solutions are created to cause problems—quite the opposite, almost all of them emerge because someone tried to solve a problem that needed an immediate response. This is precisely why shadow IT keeps growing.
The real problem isn’t technological
For a long time, shadow IT was seen purely as a security risk. Today we know its impact is far greater.
When different teams start working with isolated tools, the organization loses one of the most important things for any management process: a single view of information.
- Data stops flowing.
- Processes stop being consistent.
- Responsibilities become less clear.
- Traceability decreases.
- And trust in information slowly starts to fade.
The problem isn’t having multiple tools, but the fact that they’re no longer part of a shared strategy.
Why is shadow IT growing so quickly?
In recent years, creating technological solutions has become much simpler.
Today, any employee can:
- create automations;
- use AI platforms;
- develop small workflows;
- store information in the cloud;
- share data between applications.
This democratization of technology represents a huge opportunity, but it also calls for a new form of governance.
Organizations that continue to respond to business needs only through lengthy projects inevitably end up encouraging the emergence of parallel solutions.
The greater the gap between what the business needs and what technology can deliver, the more room shadow IT will occupy.
Shadow IT is often a symptom. It reveals that the organization needs greater adaptability, not more restrictions.
The most common mistake: trying to eliminate shadow IT
When an organization identifies this problem, the immediate reaction is often to ban tools, block applications, restrict access, and create new rules.
These measures may reduce some risks, but they rarely address the root cause. Teams still need to work, respond to customers, and adapt processes. If the organization doesn’t offer them a fast and flexible enough alternative, new parallel solutions will emerge.
The challenge isn’t preventing innovation, but creating the conditions for that innovation to happen within a governed model.
How to reduce shadow IT without losing agility
There’s an important difference between control and rigidity. The most mature organizations don’t try to control every technological initiative.
They seek to create a common platform where different areas can evolve their processes autonomously, while maintaining integration, security, and governance.
This involves:
- centralizing critical processes;
- integrating existing systems;
- reducing duplication of information;
- creating configurable workflows;
- ensuring traceability;
- providing tools flexible enough to meet business needs.
When these conditions are in place, the need to create parallel solutions naturally decreases.
A cross-functional platform reduces the need for parallel solutions
This was precisely the challenge behind many of the projects developed by Masterlink. Instead of responding to each new need with a different application, the approach is to provide a cross-functional platform capable of keeping pace with the evolution of the organization’s processes.
At DGERT, for example, the platform evolved over time to keep up with legislative changes, new certification models, and different operational needs, avoiding the proliferation of independent applications whenever a new requirement arose.
This ability to continuously evolve naturally reduces the need for parallel solutions and allows teams to respond quickly to change without losing consistency or control.
Innovation no longer happens on the fringes of the organization—it happens within it.
Shadow IT will continue to exist; what matters is how the organization responds
It’s unrealistic to believe that organizations will be able to completely eliminate shadow IT. Technology will keep evolving, new tools will keep emerging, and business areas will keep looking for faster ways to work.
The real question is no longer how to prevent this phenomenon, but how to build an organization flexible enough that people don’t need to look for solutions outside the existing ecosystem.
When technology keeps pace with the business, shadow IT stops being a necessity.
Innovation shouldn’t happen on the fringes of the organization.
Discover how the Masterlink Platform helps companies and public entities create more flexible processes, integrate systems, and respond quickly to business needs without compromising information governance.
