Software spend - subscriptions, cloud, or outsourced development - has crossed a threshold leadership can no longer ignore.
Software Insourcing
FULL-STACK TRIAGE
Every software line item, put through the same five-option test
An Insourcing Decision Blueprint is a two-to-three-week review of your software spend - SaaS contracts, cloud costs, or an outsourced development relationship - that scores each material item against five options: renew, renegotiate, switch, consolidate, or take ownership, sequenced into a twelve-month plan.
USE THIS WHEN
When this service is the right fit.
Use this service when these conditions are present. If the first move is still unclear, start with the Insourcing Readiness Score.
Renewals keep arriving with uplifts and nobody owns the calendar or the evidence.
Someone has proposed building or bringing something in-house, and the decision needs real math before money moves.
You want every option evaluated by an advisor whose fee does not change with the answer.
WHAT YOU GET
What your team can use immediately.
Each engagement leaves evidence, a decision, and a plan owners can execute — with the independence that flat-fee pricing protects.
Deliverables
- Complete software spend map: contracts, cloud commitments, seats, usage, overlap, and renewal calendar.
- Five-option scoring for every material line item, with the ownership screen applied to build candidates.
- Full-ownership cost model for any build or bring-in-house candidate: build, run, maintain, staff, and risk - over five years, not one.
- Renegotiation targets ranked by leverage and dollar impact, with cap and term recommendations.
- A sequenced twelve-month plan: what happens in which quarter, owned by whom.
- Executive readout and a board-ready summary of the whole triage.
Where we hold the line
- Flat-fee diagnostics: the recommendation mix carries no build upside and no vendor commission.
- Build recommendations require passing an ownership screen - stable workload, weak vendor moat, material spend, a named internal owner, and no single-person dependency.
- Savings projections are presented as scenarios with their assumptions shown, never as promises. The published record on insourcing cost savings is mixed, and we say so.
SAMPLE SITUATIONS
The decision belongs in a workflow, not a pitch.
These examples show the before and after state. The actual engagement is scoped around your contracts, systems, spend, and team.
The board question
- Before
- "Why are we paying for 140 tools?" has no answer anyone can defend.
- After
- A scored map shows what each tool costs, what it overlaps, and which of five moves it gets.
The build proposal
- Before
- A team wants to replace a $200K/year subscription with an internal build, priced by subtraction.
- After
- The proposal carries a five-year ownership cost model including maintenance and staffing - and a recommendation either way.
The portfolio review
- Before
- Each portfolio company negotiates alone and repeats the same mistakes.
- After
- One triage discipline runs across companies, with shared leverage and a comparable scorecard.
HOW WE WORK
Evidence first. Decision second. Independence always.
The cadence is deliberately practical: scope, gather the evidence, run the math, and hand back a decision your team can defend.
- 01
Kickoff with finance and technology leadership to bound the surface: SaaS, cloud, outsourced development, or all three.
- 02
Evidence sprint: invoices, contracts, admin-console usage, cloud bills, and stakeholder interviews.
- 03
Scoring workshop: the five-option test and the ownership screen applied line by line, with your team in the room.
- 04
Readout: the sequenced plan, the negotiation targets, and the build/no-build calls with the math shown.
RELATED SERVICES
Choose the next relevant step.
Use these services to move from one decision to the next: audit a contract, triage the stack, execute a build, or install a standing discipline.
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FAQ
Questions leaders usually ask.
How is this different from a spend-management platform?
Platforms monitor spend and negotiate inside the assumption that every tool renews. The Blueprint asks the prior question: should this be a subscription at all? It evaluates switch, consolidate, and ownership alongside renegotiation - and it ends, instead of renewing.
Do you push companies toward building their own software?
No - most line items should not be built, and the Blueprint says so explicitly. Build candidates must pass an ownership screen, and the cost model prices years two through five, where most build decisions actually fail. Our fee is identical whatever we recommend.
What does the ownership screen test?
Five things: the workload is stable and well understood, the vendor's moat is weak where it matters, the spend is material enough to justify ownership, a named internal owner exists or will be hired, and no single person becomes a point of failure.
Can this run across a private equity portfolio?
Yes. The same triage runs per company with a shared scorecard, which is where the leverage compounds: common vendors, common uplift patterns, and negotiation evidence that transfers between companies.
What happens after the Blueprint?
Most companies execute the renegotiation targets themselves with our brief. Where the plan includes a build, a migration off a vendor, or bringing development in-house, those move into a scoped 90-Day Insourcing Sprint or an In-Housing Transition Program.