Wasted software spend is still a real issue despite optimisation efforts. The thing is, it's not really the fault of your SAM or procurement teams. It's complicated. This blog explores the challenge and what organisations can do about it.
Software waste gets written about a lot, but too often it’s framed as if someone simply isn’t paying attention. The idea goes that if teams were more disciplined or more organised, unused licences wouldn’t stack up, costly renewals wouldn’t be signed on impulse, and expensive tools that nobody uses would be cut.
That’s a nice story, but it’s not what most SAM professionals and procurement teams actually experience in real life. In fact, some of the most persistent waste we see exists in organisations with capable SAM teams and experienced procurement professionals. Smart people doing their best with imperfect information still end up leaving millions on the table.
The real reason isn’t effort or intent. It’s fragmentation.
Modern software estates aren’t built; they grow organically. Organisations now combine traditional on-premise enterprise platforms with cloud services, dozens of SaaS subscriptions acquired by different business units, and a host of specialist tools filling niche needs.
Each of these comes with its own data sources — usage metrics in one place, entitlements in another, contracts tucked away in inboxes or shared drives, and renewal dates spread across procurement calendars and SAM dashboards. The result is a fractured picture that no one team can easily reconcile.
This challenge shows up clearly in industry data. Zylo’s 2024 SaaS Management Index found that organisations waste an average of around $18 million a year on unused SaaS licences, with large enterprises often losing far more.
Flexera’s2025 State of ITAM Report, showed that only 43% of organisations reported having complete visibility across their entire technology estate, a drop from 47% the previous year. This means more than half of organisations lack full confidence in their view of what they own and use, which makes optimisation and cost control much harder.
These aren’t abstract numbers. They’re the very real challenges SAM and procurement teams face every quarter.
For SAM professionals, this fragmentation means your recommendations can feel provisional at best. You work hard to produce accurate usage analysis and entitlements, but when procurement is staring at a renewal deadline with partial data, risk aversion often wins.
The natural response then becomes to preserve access, extend contracts and retain a safety margin rather than negotiate hard or rationalise aggressively. Procurement owns the signature but relies on the SAM data you provide. When that data is incomplete or inconsistent, procurement’s only prudent option is caution.
Similarly, procurement teams tasked with signing contracts feel under pressure to avoid disruption, even if that means renewing agreements that no longer reflect current use patterns.
Auto-renewal clauses, varying notice periods, and complex commercial terms can lock organisations into unfavourable positions months before anyone realises there’s a problem. Even well-intentioned teams end up buying “just in case” licences, often because they lack the cross-functional insight needed to challenge or change the status quo confidently.
This dynamic is why better tools alone don’t fix the problem. Dashboards and reports are helpful, but if they’re sourced from fragmented systems or produced in isolation, they can create multiple versions of the truth rather than a single, actionable one.
What you need is a unified picture that procurement and SAM can trust and act upon together. Without that, organisations become better at generating data, but not better at making decisions.
The good news is there are practical steps that SAM and procurement teams can take right now to start reducing waste.
This is precisely the mindset at the heart of Livingstone’s Software Investment Managed Service. Rather than leaving SAM and procurement to react cycle after cycle, the service brings together reliable data, commercial expertise and operational cadence so decisions are both confident and timely. It’s designed to close the gaps between platforms, teams and workflows, turning fragmented information into shared insight that drives better outcomes.
If your software spending feels harder to control than it should, you’re not alone. You’re working in a world where complexity has outpaced traditional approaches.
The path back to control isn’t about working harder or longer or buying more tools; it’s about creating the visibility, governance and partnership between SAM and procurement that makes better decisions possible.
Explore our Software Investment Managed Service or get in touch to learn how we can help your organisation get more out of its software investments.
Livingstone Content Team