Most businesses believe they manage around 40 software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. The reality is closer to 110. And a startling 53% of those paid-for licenses are completely dormant. This is the silent budget killer nobody is talking about.

Your Finance Director has just signed off on another monthly subscription.

Marketing insists it’s vital. Sales is already using something similar. And the IT team doesn’t yet know the new tool exists.

The outcome? It will probably be forgotten by month three. Yet, your company will keep paying for it, year after year.

Welcome to the SaaS waste crisis, where an estimated £21 million vanishes annually from the average large enterprise’s budget. This money isn’t misspent or stolen; it is simply paid out for resources that deliver zero value.

The Shocking Economics of Software Sprawl

Only 47% of SaaS licenses see actual use. This means that for every pound sterling spent on software, more than half of it is effectively incinerated.

• The Usage Gap: 73% of employees admit they don’t use some or all of the applications provided to them. This isn’t laziness; it’s often because they have found a better alternative, the tool wasn’t properly rolled out, or they simply forgot the login details.
• The Visibility Gap: The average company now manages 106 SaaS applications. When asked, most senior executives dramatically underestimate this figure, often guessing around 40. Larger firms are dealing with well over 275 different tools, many of which are completely unaccounted for.
• The Duplication Trap: Here is the most expensive inefficiency: the average company has 7.6 duplicate subscriptions — meaning different teams are paying separately for two or three tools that perform the exact same function.

How the Bleeding Starts

The root cause isn’t incompetence; it’s the structural autonomy that drives modern business.

1. The Silo Effect: The Marketing team buys an analytics platform. Six months later, the Sales team buys a completely different one. Because departments operate in silos, neither knows what the other is using. Both platforms then sit at a usage rate of 30%.
2. The Leaver Loop: An employee resigns. Their Zoom license, their Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, and their three niche project management tools all remain active and auto-renew. Nobody flags the off-boarding process for software, and the cost continues to roll over unnoticed for months.
3. The Project Hangover: A department trials new software for a specific, temporary project. The project concludes and is forgotten, but the subscription quietly rolls over every month. Indefinitely.

Alarmingly, 85% of SaaS expenditure is allocated to renewals, not new purchases. Most companies are operating on expensive autopilot, paying for yesterday’s decisions without ever questioning their current relevance.

The Cost is Worse Than the Money

While £21 million in waste is a horrific figure, the ancillary damage is often more severe:

• Security Risks: Every forgotten, unused login is a potential security vulnerability. With accounts not being disabled, 31% of companies have experienced former employees accessing company systems after their departure.
• Data Fragmentation: Duplicate tools scatter your critical business data. Customer insights reside in Marketing’s platform, while sales activity lives in another. The business lacks a single, reliable source of truth.
• Budget Paralysis: The perception of high costs restricts growth. Your Chief Financial Officer (CFO) sees a monthly software bill of £275K. The reality is that value is only derived from £130K of that spend. The CFO is then unable to approve truly useful new technology because “we’re already overspending on software.”

Why Manual Tracking Fails

Attempting to manage this chaos with spreadsheets is fundamentally hopeless.

The average organisation takes on six new applications every single month. By the time the person responsible has updated their spreadsheet, it’s already three apps out of date. And that’s assuming they were even notified of the new purchases.

Companies handle approximately 247 SaaS renewals every year — roughly one critical decision point every business day. Your spreadsheet cannot keep up, and neither can the overworked finance or IT professional tasked with maintaining it.

Here’s How to Stop the Bleeding

If you’re a CFO or finance leader reading this and thinking ‘this is us,’ here’s where to start:

1. Run a 30-day usage audit
Pull every SaaS subscription from your accounting system. For each one, identify who owns it and whether it’s been used in the last 90 days. You’ll find 10–15 tools nobody remembers buying.

2. Create a renewal calendar
Those 247 annual renewals? Put them all in one place. Set a 60-day alert before each one. Force the team to justify renewal or cancel.

3. Consolidate duplicates
Marketing’s analytics tool and Sales’ analytics tool are probably doing the same thing. Pick one. Kill the other. That’s £50K saved right there.

4. Mandate a software approval process
No new tool gets purchased without Finance + IT sign-off. Sounds bureaucratic, but it stops the silo effect.

The goal isn’t to ban useful software. It’s to stop paying for licenses that deliver zero value.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Here is the reality no organisation wants to face: we are no longer proactively managing software; we are passively collecting it.

Like the magazine subscriptions you forgot you started five years ago, the invoices keep arriving. The core difference? A few magazines cost £30 annually. Unmanaged SaaS licenses cost millions.

The solution is not about buying “smarter” new tools. It is about forgetting less. Every single subscription must be forced to justify its existence at every renewal window. If nobody can credibly explain why the business still needs it, you don’t.

But achieving that requires something most UK enterprises are missing: genuine visibility. A clear, real-time picture of exactly what is being paid for, and whether it’s actually being used.

Without that insight, you are not budgeting for software; you’re just paying for the privilege of hoping the bleeding eventually stops.