Cost savings

How to cut IT costs: 12 places businesses overspend on technology

Whether you're a ten-person firm or a multi-site group, technology costs creep. Here are the twelve places we most often find money leaking — and what to do about each.

By Ryan RussellUpdated 14 October 20269 min read

Why IT costs creep

Nobody sets out to overspend. Costs creep because technology is bought in small pieces by different people at different times, contracts auto-renew, and nobody owns the whole picture. The fix isn't a one-off cull — it's a proper review followed by a few simple habits.

Licences and subscriptions

  1. Leavers still licensed. Accounts for people who left months ago, still billed every month. Make licence removal part of every leaver process.
  2. Everyone on the top tier. Not every user needs the most expensive plan. Match each person's licence to what they actually use.
  3. Monthly vs annual commitments. Monthly flexibility usually costs more. Move stable headcount to annual terms and keep monthly only for genuinely variable roles.
  4. Forgotten subscriptions. Tools signed up for on a card for one project and never cancelled. Search 12 months of card and bank statements.

Duplicate tools

  1. Overlapping apps. Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive; Zoom and Teams; three project tools. If you pay for Microsoft 365, much of this may already be included.
  2. Shadow IT. Departments buying their own software. An approved software list and a simple request process stop the sprawl.

Contracts and suppliers

  1. Rolled-over telecoms. Phone lines, broadband and mobiles on out-of-contract pricing. The 2027 landline switch-off is a natural moment to review everything.
  2. Printing. Leased printers with high click charges for volumes you no longer print.
  3. Support contracts. Paying for support on systems you've retired, or overlapping cover from two providers.

Keep a renewal calendar with notice periods. Most savings are lost by missing the window to renegotiate.

Cloud and infrastructure

  1. Servers that should have been retired. On-premises or cloud servers kept running "just in case" — with power, backup and licence costs attached.
  2. Over-sized cloud resources. Virtual machines and storage sized for peak and never revisited, plus forgotten test environments.

The biggest hidden cost: people's time

  1. Manual admin. Re-typing invoices, building the same weekly report, chasing approvals by email. Automation and AI can take a large share of this work away — and unlike a one-off licence saving, it pays back every single week. See 12 AI automations that save hours.

Small business or larger organisation?

The list is the same; the scale changes. A small business might find a handful of unused licences and an expensive phone contract. A multi-site organisation is more likely to find inconsistent site setups, dozens of overlapping suppliers and significant cloud sprawl — where a structured programme pays back fastest. See IT for larger organisations.

Where to start

Pick the three items above that sound most familiar and check them this month. Or let us do the digging: our fixed-price IT systems & cost audit goes through all twelve and gives you an itemised list of savings with the payback for each.

FAQ

Quick answers

What's the quickest IT cost saving?

Removing licences for leavers and cancelling unused subscriptions. Both can usually be done in days, with savings from the next billing cycle.

Should we cut IT spending on security?

Rarely. Security and backups are usually where under-spending creates the biggest costs later. Cut waste, not protection.

Want us to find the savings?

Our fixed-price IT audit checks all twelve areas and gives you an itemised list of savings, with the payback for each.

See the IT audit Take the AI quiz