A 150-person SaaS company had grown its headcount from 40 to 150 over 18 months through a combination of organic hiring and two small acquisitions. The growth had been rapid enough that software procurement had not kept pace operationally — tools were purchased at the department level as needs arose, licenses were provisioned at hire and rarely revisited, and the two acquisitions had each brought their own software portfolios that were integrated into operations without a consolidation review.
The company’s VP of Finance flagged SaaS spend as a concern during annual budget planning. Total SaaS spend had grown from roughly $280,000 annually at 40 employees to over $1.1 million at 150 employees — a 4x increase against a 3.75x increase in headcount. The math suggested the growth was roughly proportional, but the CFO suspected that the portfolio had accumulated significant overlap and waste that wasn’t visible in the top-line number.
A structured review was commissioned with two goals: identify savings, and produce a defensible view of the software portfolio that could inform budget planning going forward.
The data collection phase required pulling software spend from three sources: the primary finance system (which captured the largest contracts as vendor payments), company credit card records (which captured smaller and departmental tools), and the two acquisition entities’ financial records (which had not been fully reconciled into the main finance system).
The combined portfolio that emerged included 94 distinct SaaS tools across the organization. Many were widely used; some were duplicated across teams; others had usage data that indicated minimal or no active adoption.
For each tool, the team collected: license count, active user count, annual cost, renewal date, contract terms, and functional category. For the 23 tools with the highest annual cost, vendor contracts were reviewed in full.
Technology
SMB ($5M–$100M)
150
Cloud + Software Cost Optimization
8 weeks
24% reduction in SaaS spend, all critical capabilities maintained
Of the 94 tools in the portfolio, 31 had a gap between license count and active user count of more than 20%. Combined, these represented approximately $190,000 in annual spend on licenses exceeding active user demand. The most significant single-tool gap was a project management platform with 150 licenses and 67 active users — provisioned at headcount rather than actual adoption.
Seven tools with combined annual value of $380,000 were within 60 days of auto-renewal with no internal review underway. Two of these were in the duplication list above.
Both acquisitions had brought tools that had not been adopted by the combined organization. Seven tools — primarily vertical SaaS tools specific to each acquisition’s prior business model — were paying license fees with no active users in the combined entity.
The portfolio contained meaningful duplication in five categories:
Project management: Three tools actively used across different teams — one legacy, one from an acquisition, one purchased by engineering independently.
Document storage and collaboration: Two primary platforms with overlapping usage, plus two team-level tools that could be consolidated.
Video conferencing: Two full licenses for different platforms, with no organization-level decision having been made about which to standardize.
Analytics/BI: Three tools with significant capability overlap; two were from the acquisitions.
Internal communication: Primary Slack deployment plus a legacy tool from one acquisition still being actively used by a 12-person team.
For the 31 tools with license-to-user gaps, rightsizing recommendations were developed: reduce to current active user count for most, with a buffer of 10–15% for near-term hiring in tools with user-level provisioning time. Rightsizing was implemented through vendor conversations for tools in active contracts and through non-renewal of surplus licenses at renewal for others.
A consolidation roadmap was developed for the five duplication categories. The most straightforward consolidations — duplicate analytics tools and acquisition shelfware — were executed immediately. The more complex consolidations — project management, document storage, communication — were scoped as migration projects and phased into the following quarter.
The seven at-risk renewals were flagged and reviewed before renewal dates. Two were consolidated (part of the duplication work above). Two were rightsized. Two were renegotiated at improved terms using consolidation as leverage. One was renewed as-is after review confirmed it was appropriately sized and competitively priced.
The engagement produced a complete SaaS inventory: every tool, owner, user count, annual cost, renewal date, and functional category. This became the organization’s first single source of truth for software spend.
The portfolio went from 94 tools to 71 tools, with a clearer functional map and no loss of capabilities critical to any team.
Operationally, the organization implemented a quarterly software review process and a procurement approval workflow for new tools — addressing the decentralized purchasing dynamic that had created the sprawl.
SaaS sprawl is structurally predictable at growth-stage companies. The combination of rapid hiring, decentralized purchasing, and acquisition activity creates the conditions for duplication and shelfware without any single bad decision being made. The problem isn’t that anyone made the wrong call — it’s that no one had the visibility to see the portfolio as a whole.
The savings from a structured review at this stage tend to be larger than expected, because the portfolio has been accumulating waste for the entire growth period. For most growth-stage companies, the right time to do this work is earlier than they think.
