Cutting your SaaS licence costs: method and tools
A concrete method for identifying unused SaaS licences, rationalising subscriptions and renegotiating contracts.
In a company of 50 to 200 employees, total SaaS (software as a service) subscriptions often amount to between 1,000 and 3,000 euros per employee per year. And in most cases, 20 to 30% of those licences are under-used or not used at all.
Step 1: build a complete inventory
Start by listing every SaaS application in use. Sources to cross-check:
- Bank statements and supplier invoices
- Administrator accounts on the platforms themselves (Google Workspace, collaboration suites, etc.)
- Declarations from department heads
- SSO (single sign-on) or directory tools (Okta, cloud directories) that log sign-ins
The aim is a single spreadsheet showing: tool name, vendor, number of licences, unit cost, total annual cost, and the internal owner.
Step 2: measure actual usage
For each tool, establish:
- The adoption rate: how many users actually sign in?
- How often it is used: daily, weekly, or once a quarter?
- Functional duplicates: two tools doing the same job (e.g. Trello and Asana, or two cloud storage services)
Most SaaS admin consoles provide activity reports. Use them before taking any decision.
Step 3: rationalise and renegotiate
Once you have the full picture, there are three levers:
- Remove orphaned licences: accounts belonging to former employees, trial licences never cancelled, forgotten subscriptions.
- Consolidate redundant tools: pick one tool per function and migrate the users. Fewer tools also means less training and less support.
- Renegotiate contracts: switch from monthly to annual billing (often 15 to 20% cheaper), reduce the licence count, negotiate volume tiers.
Useful tools
- A shared spreadsheet: for the initial tracking, a Google Sheet or Excel online is enough.
- Specialist platforms: services such as Beamy, Zluri or Torii automate SaaS discovery and usage tracking.
- A quarterly review: put a regular checkpoint in the calendar. Without follow-up, ghost licences reappear within months.
The expected gain
On a SaaS estate that has never been audited, the reduction typically observed is between 15 and 30% of the licence budget, with no impact on productivity. It is often the first “quick win” of an IT stewardship engagement.