SaaS procurement has never been easier, which is precisely the problem. When any team member with a credit card and a business need can spin up a new subscription in minutes, the organisational technology estate grows faster than anyone can track it. The result is sprawl: dozens or hundreds of tools, most of them underused, many of them duplicating each other, and collectively representing a material line item that no one has full visibility of.
How It Happens
SaaS sprawl isn't the result of reckless spending. It's the predictable outcome of decentralised procurement, rapid team growth, and the genuine short-term usefulness of specialised tools. The problem compounds when:
- Teams change and institutional knowledge of what tools exist and why is lost
- Contracts auto-renew without anyone reviewing whether the tool is still being used
- New tools are purchased to solve problems that existing tools already address
- No one has a centralised view of what's in the stack, what it costs, or what it does
How to Fix It
Regaining control starts with visibility. A comprehensive technology audit maps your full SaaS estate — what you have, what you're paying for it, who's using it, and what it's supposed to do. From there, a Stop Keep Switch review identifies where consolidation creates savings and where rationalisation creates capability.
In most organisations we work with, this process surfaces meaningful savings — but more importantly, it produces a clearer picture of the technology foundations the organisation actually wants to build on. That clarity is often worth as much as the recovered budget.