Tech Stack Audit: How to Find $30k+ in Annual Savings

If you can't list every SaaS tool your business pays for, what each one costs, and how many people actually use it, you need a tech stack audit. This isn't optional housekeeping. It's a financial exercise, and it pays.

Step 1: Build a complete inventory. Pull subscription data from your accounting system, credit card statements, and IT admin consoles. Include everything: project management, communication, CRM, analytics, design, HR, finance. Most businesses discover 20–40% more tools than they expected.

Step 2: Map utilisation. For each tool, document: how many licenses are paid for, how many people actively use it, which features are actually used, and whether the tool has overlap with another. Ask team leads directly. Dashboard login data tells part of the story, but actual usage patterns tell the rest.

Step 3: Map integrations and data flows. Draw how data moves between systems. Where are the manual steps? Where do people export from one tool and import to another? These manual bridges are both cost centres and error sources.

Step 4: Score and prioritise. For each tool, assign a keep/merge/replace/kill recommendation. The quick wins are tools that duplicate functionality (kill the more expensive one), tools with <30% utilisation (downgrade or replace), and integrations that require manual intervention (automate or consolidate).

Add an AI and automation layer to the audit in 2026. Count how many tools sold an AI add-on you never turned on, how many Zapier or Make scenarios duplicate each other, and how many AI features are wrappers around the same model with no evaluation. That inventory often funds the first real AI engineering sprint.

Kill candidates that are common: unused AI seats, overlapping enrichment tools, and chatbots with no CRM write-back. Keep candidates that expose clean APIs, because API access is the prerequisite for MCP servers and reliable agent tooling later.

When the audit is done, Marshall Tech can help sequence consolidation, workflow automation, and AI systems so you do not buy another overlapping subscription. Start via the contact page or the tech consultancy service pages.