Renewals arrive monthly across the company or portfolio, each one currently handled from scratch.
Software Insourcing
STANDING OPERATOR
A standing operator for the decisions that never stop arriving
A Fractional Insourcing Partner is a monthly engagement that owns the software-spend discipline continuously: the renewal calendar, the negotiation cases, the build/no-build calls, and oversight of any transitions in flight - for one company or across a portfolio.
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.
Build-vs-buy proposals keep surfacing and each one is decided by whoever argues loudest.
Software spend is a standing board topic and needs a standing owner.
You want the discipline without hiring for it - or before you know the role is permanent.
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
- The renewal calendar owned: every material contract mapped, with evidence built before each notice window.
- Standing five-option triage for new proposals, renewals, and vendor changes as they arrive.
- Negotiation briefs and coaching for each material renewal, with cap and term targets.
- Oversight of any sprints or transitions in flight, keeping delivery honest against the original math.
- Quarterly spend review with leadership or the portfolio operating team.
- A running scorecard: spend trajectory, decisions made, savings banked, and builds avoided or shipped.
Where we hold the line
- The retainer is advisory and oversight - execution work is scoped separately, so the standing fee never depends on recommending builds.
- No savings-share pricing: percentage-of-savings fees reward aggressive projections, and aggressive projections are how insourcing decisions go wrong.
- Portfolio engagements keep each company's data separate; shared leverage comes from patterns, never from disclosed terms.
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 renewal calendar
- Before
- Auto-renewals trigger unnoticed and every negotiation starts three weeks too late.
- After
- Notice windows are mapped a year ahead and evidence-building starts 90 days before each one.
The recurring build debate
- Before
- Every quarter someone proposes building something, and the debate restarts from zero.
- After
- Proposals run through the same ownership screen and cost model, and the decisions accumulate into policy.
The portfolio pattern
- Before
- Five companies negotiate the same vendor separately and none knows what the others pay.
- After
- Uplift patterns, term wins, and negotiation evidence transfer across the portfolio within the rules.
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
Month one: the spend map and renewal calendar built, the triage discipline installed.
- 02
Monthly: renewal cases prepared ahead of notice windows; new proposals triaged as they arrive.
- 03
Quarterly: spend review with leadership - trajectory, decisions, and the next quarter's calendar.
- 04
Always: flat monthly fee, decisions documented, and the discipline designed to survive our departure.
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 hiring a fractional CTO?
A fractional CTO owns technology leadership broadly - architecture, team, roadmap. This retainer owns one discipline deeply: the software-spend and ownership decisions, with the triage instruments and negotiation casework that a general technology leader rarely has time to run properly. Many clients have both.
Why do you refuse savings-share pricing?
Because percentage-of-savings fees pay the advisor most when projections are most aggressive, and inflated projections are precisely the failure mode this lane exists to prevent. A flat fee keeps the recommendation clean. We would rather earn less than bend the math.
Can one retainer cover several portfolio companies?
Yes - that is the highest-leverage configuration. The calendar, triage, and scorecard run per company; the patterns and negotiation evidence compound across them. Pricing scales with company count and spend complexity within the published range.
What if we eventually want this in-house?
Good - that is the designed exit. The calendar, the screens, the cost models, and the decision log are built in your systems from month one, so handing the discipline to an internal owner is a transition, not a loss.