Your Tool Sprawl Assessment Results: Over-Provisioned Stack

Congratulations on completing the Tool Sprawl Assessment!

Based on your responses, your organization is currently in the 61–80 band, placing you in the Over-Provisioned Stack stage.

What this score means: You are carrying more software weight than you need. The good news is your operational execution is exceptionally strong—work is largely organized in core platforms.

But along the way, your company has accumulated "SaaS bloat." And that has a cost. Research shows that companies lose an estimated $2.5 million every year due to inefficiency, miscommunication, and the hidden tax of sprawl.

What this looks like in your day-to-day:

• The ghost seats: You are paying for 50 software licenses, but only 30 employees actively log in each month
• Dusty premium tiers: You are shelling out for expensive enterprise features that no one on the floor actually uses
• Departmental stubbornness: Marketing uses Asana, but Product insists on Jira, so the company ends up paying for both instead of agreeing on one

You are currently carrying an expensive surplus of software. While your day-to-day work flows smoothly, you are significantly overpaying to get it done.

The important part? This is the part and parcel of growth. As your company grew, teams bought new apps to solve immediate problems. But in the rush to scale, no one went back to turn off the old ones.

It’s a classic case of adding without ever subtracting.

Businesses that successfully scale past this point recognize this specific phase of maturity and ruthlessly prune their tech stack:

• Monitor your active users: Don't wait for annual renewals to figure out what you own. Make it a regular habit to check who is actually logging in, and cancel the seats that are sitting empty
• Cancel the safety nets: Stop paying for extra user licenses just because someone might need them eventually
• Maximize what you have: Before looking outward for a new solution, challenge your teams to solve the problem using the core platforms you already pay for

The hardest part of fixing an over-provisioned stack is probably not going to be the tool audit. It’s the internal politics of taking apps away from teams who are used to them.

So, have that tough conversation with your operations and finance, so that once you cut the bloat, it doesn't just grow right back.

Here are some recommendations to help you get started:

• Move away from decentralized purchasing: Stop allowing individual teams to expense their own tools, and require all software requests to clear a single approval desk
• Pick the winners: When two departments are using competing tools for the exact same function, leadership must step in, choose the official company platform, and enforce the migration
• Consolidate your contracts: Stop buying licenses piecemeal across different teams. Once you narrow down your core tools, pool your entire headcount together to negotiate much better bulk rates with those vendors

Fixing an overprovisioned stack won't happen overnight, but you can start laying the groundwork today. Here is how to keep moving forward:

• Get leadership on the same page: Share these insights with your leadership team. Agree on the hidden costs of your current setup and decide together on a game plan
• Talk to the people doing the work: Ask your teams where the worst manual bottlenecks are, which tools they can easily live without, and what would actually make their day-to-day smoother
• Set a few simple goals: Pick clear ways to measure success. Instead of vague metrics, track how many unused licenses you cancel, how much money you save, and whether people are actually adopting your core tools

The 10–40 band is the ideal operational baseline. In this range, you’ll have exactly enough technology to give your team the leverage and speed they need, but your systems will be consolidated enough to stay out of their way.

This assessment is designed to spark meaningful conversations and guide your next steps toward a streamlined tool stack. When you’re ready to go deeper, our team is here to help.