Tips to Optimize Technology Expenses

The #1 mistake companies make with IT budgets? Ignoring these hidden costs. Have you ever looked at your IT budget and wondered, "Where is all this money going?" You’re not alone. IT budgets are leaking money—silently, predictably, and worst of all, avoidably. I helped a medical device manufacturing company cut IT costs by 22%—without layoffs, without cutting corners, and without slowing innovation. Here’s how we did it: Step 1: Removing IT Waste 💸 We dug into the numbers and found shocking inefficiencies: 🚀 Eliminated redundant systems (why pay for two tools that do the same thing?) 🚀 Consolidated overlapping applications (less complexity, lower costs) 🚀 Reduced licensing & maintenance fees (goodbye, overpriced contracts) ✅ Result: 22% lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Step 2: Improving Efficiency Once we stopped the money leaks, we focused on making IT work smarter, not harder: 📌 Automated tedious, manual tasks (so teams could focus on real innovation) 📌 Identified bottlenecks & streamlined workflows (less friction, faster execution) 📌 Boosted operational efficiency by 30% 🚀 💡 Faster execution. Lower costs. Better resource allocation. Step 3: Smart Cloud Migration Instead of just "lifting and shifting" to the cloud, we optimized first: 🔹 Right-sized IT infrastructure (no more overpaying for unused capacity) 🔹 Cut legacy maintenance costs (old tech shouldn’t drain new budgets) 🔹 Aligned resources to real business needs (spend smarter, not just more) How You Can Apply This Today ✔ Take a hard look at IT spending—find hidden costs ✔ Automate routine tasks—eliminate unnecessary manual work ✔ Renegotiate vendor contracts—secure better deals 💡 IT should drive growth, not just cost. What’s one way you’ve optimized IT spending? Let’s discuss. P.S. Cutting costs doesn’t mean cutting innovation. If you’re rethinking your IT strategy, I’d love to hear your approach. #DigitalTransformation #CIO #Technology #Innovation

Cost-cutting has a bad reputation. Most leaders think layoffs are the answer. But $100K+ in savings is hiding in plain sight. I’ve led dozens of cost-reduction projects and saved companies millions. Here’s what I’ve learned: You don’t need layoffs to cut costs. The proof? Companies waste 30% of their budget long before even looking at headcount. Here’s the cost-cutting framework that saves big—without layoffs: The 4Cs of Strategic Cost Reduction: 1/ Cancel: ↳ Audit unused tools, licenses, and low-ROI expenses. ↳ Cut what doesn't deliver 2/ Consolidate: ↳ Merge overlapping tools, processes, or contracts. ↳ One tool, one vendor, one contract 3/ Control: ↳ Create spending guardrails: limits, approvals, and audits. ↳ Track expenses over $500 to stop leaks early. 4/ Collaborate: ↳ Use fractional experts or outsourcing for specialized work. ↳ Pay for outcomes, not hours. 10 Proven Tactics to Cut Costs and Save Big: 1/ Audit Quarterly Subscriptions 2/ Renegotiate Vendor Contracts 3/ Reimagine Office Space 4/ Simplify Tech Stack 5/ Audit Marketing Spend 6/ Extend Payment Terms 7/ Automate Manual Tasks 8/ Use Fractional Experts 9/ Tighten Expense Policies 10/ Focus on High-Impact Areas The truth about strategic cost-cutting? You can save more by optimizing systems than By cutting your greatest asset—your people. What’s your favorite tactic—or what would you add? ♻️Share to help other leaders And follow Mariya Valeva for more

Sharing some key learnings from my efforts to reduce cloud consumption costs for us and our customers using AI. Although AI helped speed up research, it did little in helping us in directly addressing the issue. We managed to find 40% savings in parts of our cloud infrastructure, leading to savings of >$10,000 per month without losing functionality by just spending 2 days on analysis. Here are my key takeaways: 1. Every expense should have an owner. If the CEO is the owner for many of these expenses, you are not delegating enough and can expect surprises. 2. Never lose track of expenses. 3. Know your workloads. Consolidating databases, changing lower environment clusters to zonal clusters, moving unused data to archival storage, stopping services we no longer use, and better understanding how we were getting charged for services were key drivers of costs. AI alone wouldn't be able to make these recommendations because it doesn't know the logical structure of your data, instances, databases, etc. 4. Review your processes to track and review expenses at least once a quarter. This is especially important for companies without a full-time CFO. Optimization is a continuous activity, and data is its backbone. Investing time and effort in consolidation, reporting, reviewing, and anomaly detection is critical to ensure you are running a tight ship. It's no longer just about top-line. The overall savings may not seem like a huge number, but it has a meaningful impact on our gross margins and that matters, a lot! Where do you start? - Go and ask that one question to your analyst you've been wanting to ask, but you have been putting it off. You never know what ROI you can get. #cloudcomputing #datawarehouse #dataanalysis #askingtherightquestions

Last Friday, I gave a talk at Foundations about LLM cost optimization for startups. These insights come from my experience building Breadcrumb.ai so far. Here’s a quick summary of the talk: 1️⃣ Leverage cloud credits: Most major LLMs are available through AWS, Azure, and GCP. Take advantage of their startup credits to get started at no cost. 2️⃣ Pick the right model for the task: You don’t need o1 or o3 models for simple text generation tasks. Choosing the right model goes a long way. 3️⃣ Optimize your prompts: Shorter prompts save tokens and perform just as well as detailed ones on newer models. 4️⃣ Divide and conquer: Splitting a big agent into smaller, specialized agents can reduce token costs by up to 50% for agentic workflows. 5️⃣ Adopt optimization techniques: Further optimize cost by using techniques like prompt caching, batch APIs, and predicted outputs. Startups operate on tight budgets. Until LLMs become more affordable, builders need to be strategic with our resources. Would love to hear from others—how are you optimizing LLM costs in your projects?

In my 20+ years in tech, I've seen too many companies drain their budgets on overcomplicated solutions. It's time we talk about the elephant in the room: Bloated tech stacks are killing your bottom line. Last month, we audited a fintech's infrastructure. The verdict? 40% of their tech spend was pure waste. Unused features, integration headaches, and maintenance nightmares were eating their resources alive. We streamlined their stack. The result? - Development cycles cut in half - User satisfaction up by 35% - Leaner, meaner tech budget Here's the truth: The most powerful solution isn't the most complex. It's the one that solves your problem without creating ten more. What's eating your tech budget? Share your challenges. Let's cut through the complexity together! #CapitalEfficiency #TechROI #SmartTech #RightTheFuture TribalScale

I was recently working with a client. What I uncovered was unreal. SaaS stack is bleeding cash...... Why? They were paying for unused software licenses. This is what I call "zombie spend." It’s a true paradox. Many VC-backed and pre-IPO companies face low cash runways. Yet, they're unknowingly bleeding money. Your company pays for unused services. Expired software licenses often go unnoticed. Duplicate subscriptions drain resources silently. This "zombie spend" has a profound impact on VC-backed and pre-IPO companies. It erodes your financial health. It can significantly reduce valuation. Especially when looking for an M&A exit. Imagine missing your target valuation by millions. You might wonder about the CALCULATION. For every $100K in savings and applying a multiple of 10X, you get a valuation impact of $1,000,000. If it is 20X, multiply it by $2,000,000! All loss in valuation is because of avoidable, forgotten costs. The good news? You can fight back against this silent killer. Here are THREE actions you can take right now: 1. Conduct a full SaaS subscription audit. Identify every single tool and license. Creating a simple list of all the software you are paying for in Google Sheets also works. This exercise should take approximately two hours to complete. 2. Centralize your software procurement. No more rogue departmental purchases. Review the software you need on an annual basis. 3. Evaluate ownership for each license. I have seen situations companies paying for premium subscription without making use of the premium features. What do you think? Do you have a zombie spending problem? ---------------------------- Hi, I'm Sunil. I partner with PE-backed and pre-IPO biotech, healthcare, and tech companies to streamline their financial operations, cutting close timelines by up to 76% and ensuring they're audit-ready, M&A-optimized, and IPO-prepared, without the high price tag of a big firm. #CFO #FinanceLeadership #PreIPO #SaaS #CostOptimization #M&AExit

If you work on a data engineering or data science team, then cost reduction is likely a major point of discussion. Especially this time of year. As a data consultant, I have managed to save millions of dollars over the past few years. The surprising thing is much of those expenses come from the same usual suspects(perhaps it's not that surprising). 1. Make sure you set up partitions or clusters where needed 2. Don't build a view, on view, on view mess that takes 10 minutes to run and is used for a heavily used dashboard 3. Check to ensure you've set Snowflake idle time to 1 minute(when it makes sense) 4. Make sure you've optimized your data ingestion solution(if you're paying 100k a year for ingestion, we should talk!) 5. Have some level of governance on who can build in production 6. Create a process to review costs every month or so. New projects and workflows can suddenly increase costs and if you're not constantly ensuring your costs are managed, they will explode I'd love to hear your tips as well!