Ask most IT or procurement leaders whether their software estate carries waste and the answer is yes. Ask how much, and the room will likely go quiet.
The numbers suggest the honest answer is more than you think. Gartner's cloud optimisation research puts average cloud waste at around 35% of spend. In a well-optimised estate it falls to roughly 15%. Where nothing is actively managed, it can reach 55%. On the software side, the unused share is often comparable, and it sits unnoticed because no single owner is accountable for it.
Estates drift. That is the mechanism.
Waste rarely arrives as one catastrophic contract. It accumulates quietly: licences renewed by default, products replaced but never formally retired, entitlements acquired through mergers and never reconciled. Procurement decisions are made at different times, by different people, against different requirements. Without a consistent framework for tracking entitlements and usage, the estate drifts, and the commercial cost of that drift compounds.
The bill arrives at renewal.
This is where the gap gets expensive. An organisation without a clear entitlement picture cannot identify shelfware to trade away, cannot challenge claims with confidence, and cannot show the vendor it understands its own position. Vendors know this, and they price accordingly. In Livingstone's experience across larger estates, a typical 10,000-seat organisation can carry more than £1m in contract value overspend simply by arriving at renewal unprepared.
The fix is not a tool. It is a baseline.
The organisations that consistently pay less are not the largest. They keep a live, reconciled view of what they own, what they use and what they are entitled to, then use that knowledge as a commercial instrument at renewal. The opportunity is not only in fixing what is broken. It is in building the clarity that makes every future renewal more effective.
Where does your estate sit between 15% and 55%? If you cannot answer with evidence, that is the finding.
The Enterprise Software Reckoning s Livingstone’s 2026 insight brief for procurement, IT and finance leaders on software waste, cloud overspend and the commercial blind spots that weaken renewal outcomes. It explains where control is slipping, why entitlement visibility matters, and what organisations that consistently pay less do differently.
Download the 2026 insight brief →
Livingstone helps organisations make every software licence count through better visibility, stronger entitlement control and more effective vendor negotiations. Recognised in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and having delivered $3bn in client savings at an average of 38%, Livingstone supports enterprises looking to quantify and reduce their efficiency gap. Explore our licence optimisation and negotiation services.
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