The £30k Software Problem Nobody Owns
The £30k Software Problem Nobody Owns
How SaaS subscriptions, duplicate tools and unused licences quietly turn into a sizeable annual cost
SaaS sprawl is the accumulation of software subscriptions across a business without a complete view of what is owned, who uses it, what it costs, when it renews or whether another tool already does the same job. The fix starts with visibility, ownership and a repeatable review process rather than a one-off cost-cutting exercise.
Nobody ever has sat in a meeting and said, “Let’s spend thirty grand this year on licences people don’t use, for overlapping platforms and subscriptions we’ll have probably forgotten about by the time Christmas rolls around.”
Instead, it always seems to just… sort of happen £12, £20 or £40 at a time. A team needed a tool here. A new starter needed access there. Somebody ran a trial, put a company card down and meant to review it later. A department bought something that looked different from the system another department already had… And so on and so forth.
Every individual decision was also probably entirely reasonable and justified, too. But when you total it all up? Well, that’s where things get uncomfortable.
Take a 100-person business, carrying an average of £25 per employee per month in inactive licences, oversized plans or duplicated capability. That’s £30,000 a year, which is a little under the UK’s average wage at the time of writing. The thing about that figure, and indeed why we’ve chosen it, isn’t to be dramatic, but it’s because of how deliberately ordinary it is: 100 people × £25 a month × 12 months.
And because that same spend is usually split across departmental budgets, credit cards, supplier invoices, and the main IT stack, it rarely lands on one person’s desk as a £30,000 problem.
It just snowballs quietly in the background, making very little noise.
What is SaaS sprawl?
SaaS sprawl is the accumulation of software subscriptions across a business without a complete view of what is owned, who uses it, what it costs, when it renews or whether another tool already does the same job.
It commonly shows up as unused software licences, duplicate SaaS tools, premium plans with features nobody needs, forgotten trials, accounts belonging to former employees and contracts that renew before anyone has properly challenged them.
The subscription model makes it easy to start software, which, while useful, also makes cost and risk remarkably easy to inherit.
How a sensible software stack becomes an expensive one
SaaS sprawl rarely comes from recklessness. More often, it grows out of speed.
Marketing needs a design or scheduling tool today to meet a deadline. Sales wants a proposal platform before the next campaign launches. Operations needs a way to manage a process that still lives across three spreadsheets. A manager approves a small monthly fee because waiting four weeks for a procurement exercise would be faintly ridiculous. Someone else has heard that this new AI tool is ‘revolutionary’ and wants to get on it immediately. I could keep going, but I think you get the picture.
The difficulty appears later, when temporary choices become permanent overhead.
- A pilot becomes a rolling subscription, but nobody records a decision date
- A new platform is introduced, while the old one remains in place “for now”
- A user leaves, and their access is removed from the core systems, but not from every separately purchased app
- Two teams buy different tools for project management, e-signatures, reporting, AI, file sharing or customer communications
- A licence is upgraded to solve one specific issue, then stays on the higher tier long after the requirement changes
- An annual renewal arrives and is approved because cancelling feels riskier than investigating
None of those line items is anything dramatic by any means, and that’s rather the point. Software waste often survives because each amount is too small to become a priority on its own.
Why does nobody own SaaS spend?
In many businesses, ownership is divided by perspective.
Finance can see that money is leaving the business, but an invoice doesn’t show whether 73 of 100 licences are active. Just in the same way that IT can see users and applications, but may not know about a tool bought directly by a department, or procurement understands contract terms, but may only become involved once a larger renewal is already nearing completion. The department using the software understands its value, but not necessarily what similar capabilities exist elsewhere.
Everyone owns a piece, but nobody owns the whole pie.
The lifecycle of these decisions should run from request and approval through provisioning, adoption, review, renewal and eventual removal. If no named person or process connects those stages, the default outcome is accumulation.
This’s also why a one-off cost-cutting exercise only goes so far. You might cancel several subscriptions in October and find the same problem rebuilding by the following summer. Saving matters, but operating habits matter more.
The cost is not limited to the subscription
There’s no two ways about it; licence cost is the easiest part to count, and that’s because when it comes to SaaS sprawl, you’ve also got to factor in the work and risk around the edges.
More tools mean more supplier relationships, invoices, renewals, integrations and support routes. Employees have more places to search, more notifications to manage and more ways to complete the same task. Equally, data becomes scattered and uploaded in places that it maybe shouldn’t be, and joiner and leaver processes become harder to complete reliably. What that ultimately means is that you’re left with a plethora of applications that nobody really remembers, but all of which can hold company information or retain access to another system.
So, is every duplicate-looking tool a waste? Is that what you’re saying? No, we’re not, at all. Two teams may have genuinely different needs, and the cheapest option isn’t always automatically the right one. Removing a well-used £20 licence and creating two hours of manual work each month would be an impressively efficient way to save the wrong thing.
The useful question to ask isn’t simply, “Can we cancel this?” It’s more, “Are we receiving enough business value for the cost, effort and risk we are carrying?”
What does FinOps mean for SaaS and software licensing?
FinOps is a collaborative way of managing technology spend so that financial, technical and business decisions are made with the same information. Although it grew around cloud costs, the practice now increasingly includes SaaS subscriptions and software licensing.
For an SME or mid-market organisation, this doesn’t need to be panic stations, and questions of: do we need a new department, a grand transformation programme or, with delightful irony, another platform bought before the problem is understood?
It just means creating a repeatable conversation between Finance, IT, procurement and the people using the software. What do we have? What does it cost? Is it being used? Who is accountable for the outcome? What changes before the next renewal?
The FinOps Foundation’s current guidance treats licensing and SaaS as a defined technology-spend discipline and recommends bringing usage analysis into renewal decisions well in advance. It should be working so that by the time a renewal notice reaches the top of somebody’s inbox, much of the negotiating room may already have been lost.
A practical SaaS and licence review
Unlike some other aspects, you don’t need perfect data to begin. A useful first review can be built around six steps.
Build one inventory
Bring together supplier invoices, expense-card transactions, Microsoft 365 and identity records, app stores, departmental lists and known contracts. Capture the product, cost, number of licences, renewal date, contract term, payment owner and business owner.
Compare provisioned licences with active use
A licence being assigned isn’t the same as a licence being used. Look at recent sign-ins, active users, feature adoption and whether the plan level matches the person’s actual needs.
Find overlap, but check the workflow
Map tools by capability. Duplication is a prompt for investigation, not an automatic cancellation. Migration effort, integrations and specialist needs still count.
Review joiners, movers and leavers
Make sure software access follows the employee lifecycle. A leaver process should cover independently purchased SaaS as well as the main Microsoft 365 or identity account.
Work backwards from renewals
Record notice periods and review dates, then start with the largest, least flexible or nearest renewals. Give the business time to right-size, consolidate or negotiate from evidence rather than urgency.
Make a decision and record it
Cancel, downgrade, consolidate, retain or invest further. “Keep” is a perfectly valid outcome when the tool is useful. The important thing is that somebody has made the decision consciously and knows when it will be reviewed again.
Who should be responsible for software licence management?
One person should be accountable for the process, but they shouldn’t make every decision alone.
In a smaller business, accountability may sit with the operations director, finance lead or IT manager. In a larger mid-market organisation, it may be shared through an IT governance, procurement or FinOps forum, although the job title matters less than the clarity.
A workable split often looks like this:
- The business owner explains the purpose, value and operational impact of the tool
- IT validates access, security, integrations, technical overlap and usage evidence
- Finance or procurement validates cost, contract terms, renewal dates and payment routes
- A named accountable owner brings the evidence together and ensures a decision happens on time
We’re then left with a familiar renewal ritual, in which everybody is consulted, and nobody quite decides.
What should you measure?
A useful SaaS dashboard doesn’t need 40 metrics to be beneficial. Start with the figures that support a decision:
- Total monthly and annual SaaS spend
- Spend by department, supplier and capability
- Provisioned licences versus active users
- Premium licences using premium features
- Contracts renewing in the next 90 and 180 days
- Applications with no confirmed business owner
- Subscriptions paid through expenses or company cards
- Savings realised and costs avoided, kept separate
You don’t need to produce yet another handsome dashboard that everybody admires once and never opens again. You just need something that makes the next software decision better.
Start with visibility, then make the commercial decision
The £30,000 software problem we spoke about at the start of this piece isn’t really about £30,000. It’s an arbitrary figure meant to make you stop and say ‘huh?’. Your number may be much lower, or maybe much higher, that’s your business. The point is that the cost can exist without ever being approved as a whole.
A sensible review may find licences to remove, but it may also find a tool that deserves wider adoption, a contract worth renegotiating, a security gap that needs closing or a process that would benefit from consolidation. Good software management isn’t a race to the cheapest possible stack that cuts as many corners as operationally possible; it’s more a way to make spending intentional.
For many organisations, the first useful step is simply to put Finance, IT and operational owners around the same view of subscriptions, usage and renewals.
That’s the conversation Fifosys can help open: what you are paying for, what people actually use, where licensing can be simplified and how to build a more deliberate approach to technology spend over time.
Because “nobody owns it” describes how the problem starts, but it doesn’t have to be the way it continues.
Frequently asked questions
What is SaaS sprawl?
SaaS sprawl is the accumulation of software subscriptions without a complete view of ownership, usage, cost, renewal dates or overlapping capability. It can include unused licences, forgotten trials, duplicate tools and accounts that are no longer needed.
How can a business reduce unused software licences?
Start by building a single inventory, compare assigned licences with actual usage, identify stale accounts and oversized plans, and review the largest or nearest renewals before notice periods close.
Who should own SaaS and software licence management?
One person should be accountable for making sure decisions happen, but Finance, IT, procurement and the business owner should contribute evidence on cost, usage, security, contracts and operational value.
What does FinOps mean for SaaS?
FinOps applies a collaborative approach to technology spend, bringing financial, technical and business information together so organisations can make better decisions about usage, renewals, licensing and value.
Does duplicate software always mean wasted spend?
No. Different teams can have genuinely different requirements. Overlap should trigger a review of usage, integrations, migration effort and business value rather than an automatic cancellation.
Make software spend intentional
We can help you understand what you’re paying for, where licensing can be simplified and how technology spend fits into a wider IT strategy.
Talk to our team
Bring us your licensing, renewal or software-sprawl questions and we’ll help you work through the bigger picture.
Strategy and compliance
Align technology decisions, investment and risk with what the business actually needs.