Is your technology spend paying for itself?
An independent review of what a small or mid-sized business spends on software, IT providers, agencies and ad platforms: what to cut, renegotiate, consolidate or keep. Fixed fee, no commission on anything cut or bought.
Technology spend rarely jumps. It creeps: a few more seats every quarter, a renewal that went up on auto-pay, an IT provider whose monthly fee covers you know not what, an agency retainer from two strategies ago. Nobody in the company owns the total, so nobody can say whether it pays.
A spend review answers that from the receipts: card statements, invoices and contracts.
What I look at
- Every recurring charge, taken from the card statements and accounts payable. The statement is the only list that includes what everyone forgot.
- Who actually uses each tool. Seats paid against seats active, and the three products that do the same job in different departments.
- Contracts and renewal dates. Auto-renew clauses, notice periods, price escalators, and what you lose or keep if you leave: your data, your logins, your history.
- Your IT provider and agencies. What the contract says they do, what the tickets and reports show they did, and who holds the admin credentials.
- Ad platforms and paid tools that claim a return. The return the platform reports, checked against your bank and your margin.
That last one is where the gap is usually widest. An online coffee retailer I worked with had ad dashboards showing roughly three times its money back, until the card statement arrived and the profit margins did not show it. Over one five-week holiday season we measured each channel on its own: Google returned 2.3 times its spend, the Facebook offer ads 0.84, and the Facebook awareness ads about 0.04. Measured that way, it was clear which channel had earned the next dollar.
What you get
A short list of what to cut, renegotiate, consolidate and keep, with the evidence for each line and the date by which you have to act before the next renewal locks in. Where something should be replaced, the requirements a replacement has to meet, never a product I am paid to place.
I do not take a percentage of savings, and I do not resell software. A fee tied to cuts rewards cutting tools you need, and a reseller's review tends to end in a new subscription.
How to start
A spend review is usually one engagement: fixed fee, agreed before any work starts, with access to me for about three months while you act on it (how it works). If you want to see how I think first, bring your statement to a Working Session, 90 minutes for $750.
Tell me roughly what you spend on technology a year and what worries you about it. I reply within a day.
Frequently asked questions
- What does a technology spend review cover?
- Software subscriptions, IT provider and MSP contracts, agency retainers, telecom and cloud bills, and ad platforms, taken from card statements and accounts payable rather than vendor dashboards.
- Do you take a percentage of the savings?
- No. The fee is fixed and agreed before the work starts. Giacomo Balli takes no commission on anything cut, renegotiated or bought.
- What access do you need?
- Exports of the card statements and payables for the last twelve months, and the contracts. Read-only access to admin consoles helps for seat counts but is not required.
- Will you tell us which software to buy instead?
- Where a replacement is needed, the review sets out what it must do and how to compare candidates. Giacomo does not resell or receive referral fees for any product.