Software costs are one of the most controllable line items in a scaling business - yet they are also among the least reviewed. A 2023 Productiv benchmark report found that the average company uses only 43% of its licensed SaaS features. For teams between 15 and 75 people, that translates to thousands of zlotys wasted monthly.
The most common overspending patterns
Duplicate tools are the biggest issue. Project management, communication, and file storage categories routinely have two or three overlapping subscriptions running simultaneously because different departments adopted tools independently. Consolidating to one platform per category typically cuts software costs by 18-26% without reducing capability.
Per-seat pricing and inactive users
Licenses assigned to former employees or rarely-active accounts accumulate silently. Running a monthly active-user audit and downgrading unused seats is one of the fastest ways to reduce recurring costs - it requires no vendor negotiation and can be done in under two hours.
Annual vs. monthly billing decisions
Paying monthly for tools used consistently costs 15-20% more per year than annual billing. Many teams default to monthly out of habit or uncertainty, even for tools they have used for two or more years. Reviewing billing frequency annually on stable tools recovers that margin without changing anything about how the software is used.
The pattern worth noting: most of these savings come from reviewing what already exists, not from switching to cheaper alternatives.