Cutting software costs through smarter procurement

The starting point

Most growing companies buy software direct at list price, or through a large reseller whose discounts barely move. One VC-backed client came to us after its reseller had stopped responding. Invoices still arrived, but support had dried up, renewals rolled through unchecked, and nobody was checking whether the licences matched what the company needed.

What was happening

Contracts renewed at or near list price because nobody negotiated them. Volume discounts were not applied, and partner programme tiers that unlock better pricing went unused. The client could not tell whether it was on the right SKUs, or whether the same product was cheaper through another channel.

What we did

We buy through the same partner programmes and distributors the large resellers use, and pass the margin through to the client. For this client we replaced the reseller mid-contract, moved the subscriptions onto our partner accounts and renegotiated where pricing was stale. Billing moved to one monthly invoice on net-30 terms, in place of annual prepayments spread across vendors.

When a client buys SentinelOne, 1Password or Cloudflare through us, we deploy it too. The software arrives configured, pushed to devices and documented, as part of the procurement relationship.

The result

These clients pay 15 to 30% below list price, with one contact for procurement and support. The VC-backed client now has its whole software estate billed, managed and supported through one relationship. Three vendor transitions happened with no break in service.