Technology spend leaks in a handful of predictable places. Each audit takes two weeks, needs read-only access, and ends with a written report and a fixed quote to fix what it found. Take one, or run them in sequence.
Cost optimisation
Ordered by how much they typically return. Cloud is nearly always first; observability is nearly always the biggest surprise.
Two weeks · read-only access
Commitment coverage, idle resources, storage lifecycle and network patterns. The largest single line on most technology budgets.
What's included LicensingTwo weeks · usage data
Inactive seats, duplicate tools, over-provisioned tiers and auto-renewals nobody diarised. Proven from your own login data.
What's includedTwo weeks · query telemetry
Snowflake, Databricks and BigQuery bills that grew faster than the data did. Almost always a query and warehouse problem.
What's included MonitoringTwo weeks · usage review
Datadog, New Relic and Splunk bills that quietly multiplied. Usually custom metric cardinality and log retention.
What's includedTwo to three weeks · contracts & usage
Renewal exposure, licensing position and the usage evidence your team takes into a vendor conversation.
What's includedThe commercial one. Renewal exposure, licensing position and the usage evidence that makes a vendor conversation land. Read the limits on that page carefully — it does not include rate benchmarking, and it says so plainly.
Compliance
Two weeks · assessment & roadmap
A scored assessment against all eight controls and a costed roadmap, before your insurer or your next tender asks.
What's includedDifferent trigger, same engineer. Cost work is elective — you do it when someone notices the bill. Compliance work has a date attached: an insurance renewal, a tender, a client security questionnaire.
Running a cost audit first usually frees enough budget to cover the compliance uplift, out of money you were already spending. That's the reason both sit under one roof.
Sequencing
First
Biggest line, fastest findings, and it establishes whether the rest is worth doing.
Second
Usually the highest percentage reduction, because nobody has ever looked at it.
Third
Slower to act on, because cancelling seats and rewriting queries needs other people.
Then
Funded by the above, and ideally finished before your policy renews.
Common to all five
Next step
Describe the bill that's bothering you. Fifteen minutes is usually enough to work out where the money actually is.
Start a conversation