Most finance leaders don't lose a deal because of one bad decision. They lose value at the table because of software costs nobody ever properly reviewed.

Licenses that should have been cancelled. Renewals that went through without a second look. Spend that happened outside any formal process. None of it feels urgent until someone else is looking at it during due diligence.

Will Harman spent 11 years at Apax Partners finding exactly this in businesses like yours. In this session, he and a panel of CFOs who've been through it and came out ahead will show you what to fix and how to fix it before it becomes someone else's leverage.

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.

What you'll walk away with

  • How to get a clean picture of your software costs from inside your existing setup, so you know exactly what you're carrying before anyone else looks at it
  • The specific points in a carve-out, acquisition, and exit where unreviewed software costs come off your valuation, and what to have fixed before you get there
  • How to get your vendor contracts and licenses into a shape that holds up under due diligence, based on what CFOs who've already been through it 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 thing to fix in your software costs first if you want to protect your valuation, based on what finance leaders who came out ahead actually did

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

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.

Sudeepa Ghosh Global Business Finance Head (SG&A), Thoughtworks - Sudeepa is a global finance leader with more than 20 years of experience leading world-class FP&A and controllership functions for complex, global enterprises. Sudeepa specializes in the intersection of finance and technology, partnering closely with corporate leadership to architect large-scale G&A transformations. Her initiatives rigorously focus on ROI optimization, sustainable scalability, and driving measurable EBITDA improvement.

Dan Boni Procurement Director (Client Engagement), Vertice - Dan is a commercial and procurement leader, leading part of the Procurement team at Vertice and helping customers optimize their tech spend faster, more effectively, and more securely.