Software costs are one of the easiest lines on the P&L to lose control of. Most finance leaders find that out too late.

Every finance leader is carrying software costs they haven't fully reviewed. Licenses that should have been cancelled. Renewals that went through without a second look. Spend that happened outside any formal process. The question isn't whether those problems exist. It's whether you find them first.

In this session, we'll show you exactly where finance leaders get caught out on software costs, and how to make sure you're not one of them.

What you'll walk away with

  • How to audit your software costs from inside your existing setup, without switching vendors or starting from scratch, so you know exactly what you're carrying and what it's costing you
  • The specific points in a carve-out, acquisition, and exit where ungoverned SaaS spend becomes an EBITDA problem
  • How to get your vendor contracts, licenses, and processes under control without slowing the business or exit process down, based on what CFOs who've already faced this scrutiny actually did
  • Exactly what investors look for when they go through your software costs, so you know where you stand before anyone starts asking
  • The single area in your software costs to fix first if a transaction is 12 to 18 months away, based on what finance leaders who came out ahead actually did

Who you'll hear from

Will Harman and a panel of CFOs who've been through carve-outs, acquisitions, and exits, and came out ahead, will share what they wish they'd known earlier. What investors are now explicitly looking for in operational due diligence. And what the finance leaders who came out ahead had in common.

If a transaction is on your horizon, or should be, this is the conversation to have before you're sitting across the table from someone who's already found the problem.

Sound familiar?

"Software gets bought across the business, and I find out when the invoice arrives." Ungoverned purchasing is how costs build up without anyone signing them off. We'll show you what procurement control looks like at high-growth businesses and how to put it in place without slowing things down.

"We're probably paying for software nobody's using, but I don't know where to look." Unused licenses, duplicate tools, and uncancelled subscriptions are sitting in most businesses right now. This session gives you a clear process to find them and cut what the business has no real use for.

"We're heading toward a transaction, and I'm not confident our contracts are in good shape." This session is built for that situation. You'll hear directly from someone who spent 11 years on the other side of that table, looking at exactly what you're worried about.

"I don't have a clean picture of what we're spending on software." In normal operations, that's manageable. When a transaction arrives, it hands the other side something to use against you. This session shows you what a defensible cost base looks like and how quickly you can build one.

"We've just acquired a business, and inheriting their tech stack is a mess." Duplicate tools, shadow IT, and non-compliant vendors. Acquisition integration is where software costs compound fastest. We'll cover how CFOs are cutting through it quickly and where the savings show up first.

Meet the speakers

Michael Keller Director of Procurement, Vertice - Michael has spent his career building procurement strategies for global businesses, joining Vertice to lead their US procurement team. He works directly with finance leaders to help them get control of what their business is spending on software and structure it in a way that holds up under scrutiny.

Will Harman CEO, Trusted Value Creation · former Principal and Global Margin Expansion Lead, Apax Partners - Will spent 11 years at Apax Partners as Principal and Global Margin Expansion Lead, sitting on the other side of the table during due diligence and executing value creation plans during ownership. He now runs Trusted Value Creation, helping finance leaders fix the problems that show up before and during a transaction.