Here's the reality: within 90 days of closing an acquisition, most roll-ups are paying for three separate CRM licences, two accounting platforms, five overlapping SaaS tools, and software nobody remembers buying. It's not unusual to find a roll-up paying for 14 separate Zoom accounts across four companies, or duplicate Microsoft 365 tenants costing £18,000 annually — for the same users.
This isn't a technology problem. It's a procurement blindspot that compounds with every deal you close. While leadership focuses on revenue synergies and operational integration, software spend quietly balloons. The math is sobering: mid-market roll-ups typically overspend 20-35% on redundant or underutilised software in the first year post-acquisition, . For a £10M platform, that's £50K-£100K leaking annually-before you've touched ERP or CRM unification.
The good news? A systematic software licence audit is one of the fastest, lowest-risk wins in post-merger integration. It requires no system downtime, minimal change management , and delivers measurable savings within 60 days. This article walks you through exactly how to run that audit: what to inventory, when to act, how to decide what stays and what goes, and who needs to own the process so it doesn't become another "we'll get to it later" project that never happens.
Why Most Acquirers Overpay for Software They Already Own Software spend is invisible until you go looking for it. Unlike physical assets or headcount, licences don't show up on a plant tour or org chart review. They're scattered across credit cards, departmental budgets, auto-renewing subscriptions, and that one admin login nobody documented during due diligence.
When you acquire a company, you inherit not just their systems but their procurement habits-or lack thereof. Small service businesses rarely have centralised IT procurement. Marketing buys HubSpot. Operations signs up for ServiceTitan or Jobber. The office manager adds Dropbox because "email attachments weren't working." Finance uses QuickBooks while the platform runs Sage or Xero. Every tool made sense in isolation. Together, they're expensive chaos.
Multiply that across three, five, or ten acquisitions, and you've built a SaaS sprawl that no single person can see in full. The CFO sees invoices. IT sees logins. Department heads see tools their teams use. But there's no unified view, no ownership, and-critically-no process to shut things down when they're redundant.
The Hidden Cost of Duplicate Licences Duplicate licences aren't just about paying twice for the same functionality. They fragment workflows, complicate reporting, and create compliance risk. Consider these common patterns:
Overlapping communication tools: Acquired company uses Slack: platform uses Microsoft Teams. You're now paying for both, and splitting internal communication across two platforms.CRM duplication: Platform runs Salesforce: acquisition uses HubSpot or Pipedrive. Sales data sits in silos. Leadership can't see pipeline across the group.Accounting software proliferation: Each entity stayed on its legacy GL. Consolidating financials becomes a monthly nightmare of CSV exports and manual reconciliation.Forgotten enterprise agreements: It's surprisingly common to find a company still paying for an Oracle licence tied to a server decommissioned 18 months earlier. Annual cost: £22,000.Beyond direct licence costs, duplication creates hidden drag: training overhead (staff need to learn multiple tools), integration complexity (connecting disparate systems), and security gaps (IT can't monitor what they don't know exists). A software audit after acquisition surfaces all of it-quickly.
When to Run Your SaaS Audit M&A Timing matters. Run the audit too early-before you understand workflows-and you'll make decisions that break critical processes. Wait too long, and you've already bled six months of duplicate costs while acquired teams entrench themselves in legacy tools.
The ideal window: start the audit within the first 30 days post-close, but don't action everything immediately. The audit itself is discovery. Decisions and execution follow in phases, aligned to your integration approach (High-Touch , Medium-Touch, or Low-Touch).
Why 30 days? Because that's when you have:
Access to financial records and invoices from the acquired entity Admin credentials to software platforms (if documented during transition) Enough operational continuity that department heads aren't in firefighting mode Time to capture savings before annual renewals auto-process Delaying the audit past 90 days means you've likely missed renewal windows, paid for another quarter of redundant SaaS, and lost negotiating power with vendors. Early action doesn't mean ripping out tools on day one-it means creating visibility so you can act strategically.
The 30-60-90 Day Audit Framework Here's how a software audit typically phases across the first quarter post-acquisition:
Days 1-30: Inventory and discovery
Collect all software invoices, subscription receipts, and licence agreements from acquired company Interview department heads to understand what tools their teams actually use daily (not just what's paid for) Export user lists from key platforms: email, CRM, project management, communication tools Identify any enterprise agreements or multi-year commitments that create exit friction Flag compliance risks: unlicensed software, over-deployed licences, or tools with data residency requirements Days 31-60: Categorisation and decision-making
Map duplicate functionality across platform and acquired entities Run a keep/consolidate/sunset analysis for each tool (see decision matrix below) Quantify savings opportunity: what does full consolidation save annually? Identify quick wins: low-risk cancellations or consolidations that can happen within 30 days Build a prioritised action plan with timeline, ownership, and migration requirements Days 61-90: Execute quick wins and plan deeper integrations
Cancel or downgrade obvious duplicates (unused seats, redundant admin licences) Migrate low-complexity tools first: communication platforms, file storage, lightweight SaaS Negotiate with vendors for volume discounts or contract adjustments based on combined user base Document any tools deferred for later integration (e.g., ERP, operational systems) and set review dates This phased approach balances speed and risk. You capture fast savings without destabilising operations, and you build the foundation for more complex software consolidation after merger as integration deepens.
What to Audit: The Five-Category Inventory Not all software is equal in integration complexity or business criticality. A complete software audit following an acquisition should cover five distinct categories, each with different timelines and risk profiles.
SaaS Subscriptions and Cloud Tools This is where the low-hanging fruit lives. SaaS tools are typically easy to audit (usage data is online), quick to migrate (cloud-based, no hardware dependencies), and high-impact for cost reduction (monthly or annual subscriptions add up fast).
Common culprits:
Communication and collaboration: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365Project management and productivity: Asana, Monday.com, Trello, Notion, ClickUpMarketing and sales: HubSpot, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, LinkedIn Sales NavigatorFile storage and sharing: Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Google DriveNiche operational tools: Scheduling software, survey platforms, design tools (Canva, Figma), password managersAudit steps:
Pull credit card and invoice records for all recurring SaaS charges Log into each platform's admin console and export active user lists Cross-reference: are you paying for 50 seats but only 30 are active? Ask department heads: "If this tool disappeared tomorrow, what breaks?" Identify overlaps: do you have three tools doing the same job? Quick win example: A common scenario: a facilities management roll-up paying for Zoom, Microsoft Teams (via M365), and Google Meet (via Workspace) across three acquired companies. Consolidating to Teams saved £8,400 annually and simplified IT support.
On-Premise and Legacy Licences These are harder to see and costlier to unwind, but they often represent the biggest compliance and security risks.
Common on-premise licences:
Enterprise resource planning (ERP): Sage, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle NetSuite (can be cloud or on-prem)Customer relationship management (CRM): Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, legacy CRMs running on local serversAccounting and finance: QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, FreshBooks, legacy GL systemsIndustry-specific operational software: Field service management, job scheduling, inventory systemsServer and infrastructure licences: Windows Server, SQL Server, VMware, backup solutionsAudit steps:
Walk the server rooms and IT closets of acquired sites (yes, physically-shadow IT hides in cupboards) Request software asset inventories from IT or the acquired company's IT provider Review any enterprise licence agreements (ELAs) or volume licensing contracts Check compliance: are you licensed for the number of users or devices actually deployed? Identify any "closet servers" running critical applications that nobody documented Warning: On-premise ERP and operational systems can't be rushed. These require data migration, user training, and often custom integrations. Include them in your audit for visibility, but plan consolidation over 6-12 months, not 60 days.
How to Conduct a Software Consolidation After Merger Once you've inventoried everything, the hard part begins: deciding what to keep, what to consolidate, and what to sunset. This is where integration strategy meets operational reality. The wrong decision here can trigger talent attrition, break customer-facing workflows, or lock you into expensive migrations you don't need.
A three-bucket framework helps that balances cost, risk, and strategic value:
Keep (Platform Wins): Replace the acquired company's tool with your platform standard. Use this when your tool is clearly superior, widely adopted across the group, and the migration is low-risk.
Consolidate (Best of Both): Sometimes the acquired company's tool is better, cheaper, or more fit-for-purpose. If their solution serves the need better-and migrating the platform to their tool makes sense-do it. Ego has no place in software decisions.
Sunset (Controlled Retirement): Set a clear timeline to phase out the tool, migrate users, and cancel the licence. This requires a migration plan, user training, and a hard cutoff date. Delayed sunsets become "integration debt"-tools that linger for years, compounding cost and complexity.
Keep, Consolidate, or Sunset: The Decision Matrix Here's a practical way to work through the decision:
Factor Keep (Platform Standard) Consolidate (Migrate to Acquired Tool) Sunset (Retire Completely) User adoption Platform tool is widely used across 3+ entities Acquired tool is superior and platform users would benefit Tool has <30% active usage or duplicates another system Cost Similar or lower cost at scale Acquired tool significantly cheaper or better value Paying for duplicate functionality or unused seats Integration complexity Minimal migration effort: integrations already built Platform tool is harder to integrate or lacks key features Tool is standalone: no integration required Business criticality Core workflow: downtime = revenue impact Core workflow: acquired tool is mission-critical Nice-to-have: workarounds exist Compliance/Security Platform tool meets security and compliance standards Both tools compliant: acquired tool preferred by users Tool creates compliance risk or unsupported by IT
Real Talk: If the acquired company's CRM is better than yours, and your sales team would be happier using it, consolidate to theirs . It's common to see acquirers force inferior platform tools onto acquired teams out of pride, not logic. Result: sales leave, pipeline data gets corrupted, and you've spent six months migrating to a worse system.
Consider a pest control roll-up that acquires a competitor using PestPac (industry-specific field service software). The platform was on Salesforce. After auditing workflows, the pragmatic call is to keep PestPac for field ops and used Salesforce only for corporate reporting. Saved a painful migration, kept field staff productive, and met the PE sponsor's visibility requirements. Not every acquisition needs full standardisation.
Licence Management Acquisition Handoff and Governance A software audit is pointless if the findings sit in a spreadsheet and nothing changes. The deliverable isn't the audit-it's the decision log, the handoff plan, and the governance structure that prevents the same mess from recurring after your next acquisition.
Who owns software licence management post-acquisition? In most mid-market roll-ups, the answer is "nobody, really." Finance pays the invoices. IT provisions the access. Department heads make the requests. This diffusion of responsibility is why duplicate licences survive for years.
Best practice: assign a Software Asset Owner -someone with authority to approve, consolidate, or cancel licences across the group. In smaller roll-ups (2-10 acquisitions), this is often the CFO or COO. In larger platforms, it's the IT Director or Integration Manager.
Who Owns What: Aligning Finance, IT, and Operations Clear ownership prevents software sprawl from creeping back in. Here's an accountability model that works well:
Finance:
Owns the software spend budget and tracks all subscription invoices Flags renewals 60 days in advance for review Challenges any new SaaS purchase requests: "Do we already have a tool for this?" Reports software spend as a line item in board materials IT:
Maintains the master software inventory (what's deployed, who has access) Conducts quarterly usage audits: are we paying for seats that aren't being used? Enforces procurement policy: no SaaS purchases without IT approval Manages security and compliance for all software (SSO, MFA, data residency) Operations / Department Heads:
Document workflows that depend on specific tools Participate in consolidation decisions: "Can your team work with Tool A instead of Tool B?" Champion adoption when tools are migrated or consolidated Escalate when a tool isn't meeting needs (before shadow IT happens) Integration Manager / PMI Lead:
Runs the software audit for each new acquisition within 30 days of close Coordinates Keep/Consolidate/Sunset decisions with Finance, IT, and Ops Tracks integration milestones including software migration timelinesEnsures handoff to steady-state governance once integration is complete The handoff moment is critical. Once the audit and quick wins are complete (typically by day 90), responsibility shifts from "integration project" to "ongoing governance." That means:
A single source of truth for all licences (a software asset register, not a spreadsheet someone updates sometimes) A procurement approval process for new tools (even free trials) Quarterly reviews: are we still using this? Can we downgrade or cancel? Pre-acquisition checklists: every new deal includes a software audit as standard Without governance, you'll be back here in 18 months running the same audit. With governance, software consolidation after merger becomes a repeatable, low-drama capability-one of the quiet advantages that lets disciplined roll-ups move faster than their peers.
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them Even with a clear framework, software audits can go sideways. Here are the mistakes that come up most often — and how to sidestep them.
Pitfall 1: Auditing without involving end users
You can't audit software from the finance department. If you don't talk to the people who actually use the tools, you'll cancel something critical and discover it three weeks later when a workflow breaks.
Fix: Interview department heads and power users during discovery. Ask: "What tools do you use daily? What would break if we removed them?" Listen for workarounds and shadow IT.
Pitfall 2: Assuming licensing terms transfer automatically
When you acquire a company, their software licences don't always transfer to you. Some vendors treat a change of control as a trigger to renegotiate. Others have clauses that terminate licences on acquisition.
Fix: During due diligence or immediately post-close, review all software contracts for change-of-control clauses. Notify vendors of the acquisition and confirm licence continuity. This is especially important for enterprise agreements and multi-year commitments.
Pitfall 3: Cancelling too quickly without migration plans
Finding duplicate licences feels like a quick win. But if you cancel a tool before users are trained on the replacement, you've just created a productivity crisis.
Fix: Every sunset decision needs a migration plan: data export, user training, cutover date, and hypercare support. Don't cancel until the replacement is live and adopted.
Pitfall 4: Ignoring compliance and security risks during transition
While you're deciding what to consolidate, acquired companies may still be running outdated software, unlicensed tools, or systems with security gaps. That's your risk now.
Fix: As part of the audit, flag any compliance or security issues immediately-expired licences, unsupported software versions, tools storing customer data without encryption. Prioritise fixing these even if full consolidation is months away.
Pitfall 5: Letting "temporary" become permanent
You decide to keep the acquired company on their legacy CRM "for now" while you focus on other priorities. Eighteen months later, they're still on it, data is siloed, and migrating is now a bigger project than if you'd acted early.
Fix: If you defer a consolidation decision, set a review date and document why you're waiting. Temporary should have an expiry date. Otherwise it's just integration debt with a polite name.
The Audit That Pays for Itself A software licence audit after acquisition is one of the highest-ROI activities in post-merger integration. It's fast, low-risk, and delivers measurable savings within 60-90 days-often covering the cost of the audit many times over.
But the real value isn't just cost reduction. It's visibility. When you know what software you own, who's using it, and what it costs, you can make strategic decisions instead of reactive ones. You can negotiate better with vendors. You can standardise workflows. You can spot compliance risks before they become audit findings. And-critically-you can do it again with confidence when you close your next deal.
If you're sitting on two, five, or ten acquisitions and you've never run a consolidated software audit, you're almost certainly overpaying. The question isn't whether there's waste-it's how much, and how long you're willing to let it continue.
We help roll-ups run these audits, make the tough Keep/Consolidate/Sunset calls, and execute migrations without breaking the business. If you're ready to turn the lights on and see what you're actually paying for, let's talk. No pressure, no pitch-just a conversation about what you're dealing with and whether we can help.
Frequently Asked Questions When should you conduct a software licence audit after acquisition? Start the audit within the first 30 days post-close. This timing ensures you have access to financial records and admin credentials whilst capturing savings before annual renewals auto-process. Delaying past 90 days means you'll likely miss renewal windows and pay for additional quarters of redundant software.
How much do roll-ups typically overspend on redundant software after acquisition? Mid-market roll-ups typically overspend 20–35% on redundant or underutilised software in the first year post-acquisition, based on common industry patterns. For a £10M platform, this represents £50,000–£100,000 in annual waste before touching ERP or CRM unification.
What are the most common duplicate licences found in software audits? The most common duplicates include overlapping communication tools (Slack versus Teams), multiple CRM systems (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive), disparate accounting platforms, and forgotten enterprise agreements. One typical example includes paying for 14 separate Zoom accounts across acquired companies.
Who should own software licence management after an acquisition? Assign a Software Asset Owner with authority to approve, consolidate, or cancel licences across the group. In smaller roll-ups, this is typically the CFO or COO. Finance tracks spend, IT maintains inventory and security, whilst operations document workflows and champion adoption.
Can you cancel software licences immediately after discovering duplicates? No, you shouldn't cancel immediately without a migration plan. Every sunset decision requires data export, user training, a cutover date, and support. Cancelling before users are trained on replacements creates productivity crises and can break critical workflows.
What is a software asset register and why is it important? A software asset register is a centralised, authoritative record of all software licences, users, costs, and renewal dates across your organisation. It prevents duplicate purchases, enables proactive renewal management, supports compliance, and ensures software governance doesn't rely on outdated spreadsheets.
