Growing businesses typically don’t overspend on software because they’re careless. They overspend because tools get bought incrementally, department by department, without anyone stepping back to look at the total picture. By the time someone does look, it’s common to find €15,000 to €20,000 a year in overlapping or underused subscriptions.

Cutting that spend without breaking anything your team actually relies on takes a specific process, not just a spreadsheet review.

Step 1: Catalogue everything, including what nobody remembers signing up for

Start with every active subscription across every department, not just the tools finance recognizes. Shadow IT is common. A team signs up for a free trial, starts relying on it, and it quietly becomes a paid tool nobody officially approved. You can’t optimize spend you don’t know about.

Step 2: Map function, not just cost

For each tool, note what it’s actually used for, not what it was bought for. It’s common to find two or three tools doing versions of the same job (one for project tracking, one for reporting, one for file storage) bought by different teams who didn’t know the others existed.

Step 3: Score usage, not just seats

A tool with 40 paid seats and 12 active users isn’t a functionality question, it’s a housekeeping one. Before evaluating whether to replace a tool, check whether you’re actually using what you’re paying for. This step alone often recovers meaningful savings with zero disruption.

Step 4: Consolidate around actual workflows, not vendor promises

Once you know what’s overlapping and what’s underused, the consolidation decision should be driven by how your team actually works, not by which platform’s sales team makes the best pitch. The tools that survive should be the ones your team will genuinely use, not the ones with the longest feature list.

Step 5: Phase the rollout

Cutting three tools down to one in a single week is how you get pushback and workarounds. Sequence the consolidation so each team has time to migrate, and keep a fallback period before fully decommissioning the old tool.

The result, done properly

Done well, this process typically finds €15,000 to €20,000 a year in cuttable spend for a growing business, without anyone losing a workflow they depend on. The goal isn’t the smallest possible software bill. It’s making sure every euro spent is on a tool your team actually uses. Want a full stack audit instead of doing this yourself? See how our IT Stack Audit works.