A free buyer side health check across your enterprise software estate. 18 questions covering Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, IBM, Broadcom, AWS, Google Cloud, ServiceNow, Workday, Cisco, and the GenAI vendors. Returns a Health Score from 0 to 100, a banded risk level, an estimated optimization opportunity in US dollars, and a prioritized list of the next moves to make. Built on Redress Compliance benchmarks across more than 500 enterprise engagements since 2018.
Enterprise software spend in 2026 sits between three and seven percent of total operating expense at most large organizations. For a Fortune 1000 enterprise, that is between forty and three hundred million dollars per year flowing into eleven vendor relationships, each negotiated under different commercial mechanics, each governed by a different license metric, each carrying its own audit risk profile, and each operating on a different renewal cycle. Very few organizations have an integrated view across all eleven. Procurement owns parts of it. IT owns parts of it. Finance owns parts of it. The CIO sees the headline. The board sees a single line item.
The Software Spend Health Check on this page exists to compress the diagnostic exercise that our advisors run in the first two weeks of an integrated portfolio engagement into an 18 question form and an immediate score. It is not a substitute for a full software asset management baseline, a contract by contract review, or a vendor by vendor optimization assessment. It is a triage tool. It identifies which of your eleven vendor relationships warrant immediate attention, where the largest dollar opportunity sits, what the audit exposure looks like across the portfolio, and which renewal windows you need to start preparing for now rather than next quarter.
The score is calibrated against five hundred plus advisory engagements completed since 2018 across Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, IBM, Broadcom and VMware, AWS, Google Cloud, ServiceNow, Workday, Cisco, and the emerging GenAI vendor cluster. The benchmark is updated quarterly. The output is a Health Score from 0 to 100, a green, amber, or red band, a modeled optimization opportunity expressed in US dollars across a three year horizon, and a prioritized list of next moves with vendor specific links to deeper material. Use this tool as the entry point to a structured commercial preparation, not as the conclusion.
Most enterprise software optimization initiatives are organized vendor by vendor. The Oracle review runs in Q1, the Microsoft renewal sits in Q3, the SAP RISE conversation happens whenever SAP escalates the timeline, and Salesforce renewals get handled by the marketing operations team. This pattern is intuitive because each vendor relationship has its own contract, its own commercial team on the vendor side, and its own internal owner. It is also expensive. The single biggest cost driver in modern enterprise software is the absence of a portfolio view that allows the buyer to time renewal windows, sequence negotiations, and route discretionary spend across vendors that compete for the same wallet share.
The portfolio view answers questions that no vendor review can answer in isolation. Where is the largest dollar opportunity inside the next 12 months? Which renewal sits inside which competitive window? Where is the audit exposure highest, and what is the estimated cost of that exposure landing? Which vendor has the largest unutilized license position and what is that worth at renewal? Which two vendors compete for the same workload and what is the negotiating leverage that creates? Where is GenAI spend growing fastest, what is the contract structure protecting that spend, and is the license metric defensible at five times current consumption?
The buyer side benchmark for an integrated portfolio review identifies between eight and twelve percent of total enterprise software spend as recoverable inside the first 24 months. Some of that recovery is removing unused licenses. Some is repositioning a renewal against a credible competitive alternative. Some is restructuring a contract metric that has drifted away from how the workload actually runs. Some is settling an audit at a fraction of the headline number. The eight to twelve percent benchmark is consistent across vendors, geographies, and industry sectors. The variance is in which lever delivers the recovery, not whether the recovery is available.
For a deeper read on the portfolio view, the software spend assessment service page describes how our advisors run a full integrated review. The benchmarking service page sets out the comparator dataset we use to size optimization opportunities and the methodology for converting a benchmark into a target. The Vendor Shield program is the ongoing version of the same exercise for organizations that want a year round portfolio function rather than a one off engagement.
The questions are intentionally short. We are not asking for a full software asset management inventory. We are asking for the seven to nine inputs that disproportionately drive the buyer side score. Total annual spend, the vendor portfolio you actually carry, the date of your next material renewal, your audit history, the maturity of your software asset management function, the existence of a competitive position in each vendor relationship, the unutilized license position at the largest vendors, the integration of GenAI spend into the existing contract structure, and the alignment of your renewal calendar with your fiscal year. These nine inputs explain the majority of the variance in the Health Score across the engagements we have completed.
The score returned is a benchmark, not a forecast. The recommendations returned are diagnostic, not prescriptive. The optimization opportunity expressed in US dollars is a budget level estimate, not a guaranteed savings. The accuracy of the output is a function of the accuracy of the input. If you do not know your unutilized license position at Oracle, the score will reflect the assumption that the position is large, because that is the buyer side base rate across organizations that do not measure it. If you have a credible Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud commit conversation in flight against your AWS renewal, that competitive position changes the score because it changes the negotiating leverage available to you.
The Health Score is the weighted sum of nine sub scores. Each sub score corresponds to one of the nine input dimensions. The weights are calibrated against the dollar impact of each dimension across the comparator dataset. Total annual spend is the largest single weight because the dollar opportunity scales with the spend base. Audit history is the second largest weight because audit exposure is the line item that most often produces an unbudgeted material write down. Renewal calendar alignment is the third because a misaligned calendar removes the buyer's ability to time competitive windows.
The vendor portfolio composition matters because vendors are not equivalent in their commercial mechanics. An Oracle and IBM heavy portfolio is structurally more audit exposed than a Salesforce and Workday heavy portfolio. An AWS and Google Cloud heavy portfolio is structurally more variable in spend than a Microsoft and SAP heavy portfolio. The score reflects the structural differences. Two organizations with the same total spend can sit in different bands depending on which vendors carry the weight of that spend.
The maturity of the software asset management function is a multiplier that runs through the entire score. A strong SAM function reduces the audit exposure sub score, increases the unutilized license recoverability sub score, and improves the renewal preparation sub score. A weak or absent SAM function does the opposite. The buyer side benchmark for SAM maturity is one full time equivalent per fifty million dollars of software spend, not including outsourced or shared service contributions. Most organizations sit below this benchmark.
The optimization opportunity expressed in US dollars uses the eight to twelve percent benchmark as the central case, scaled up or down by the Health Score. A Health Score of 90 reflects a portfolio that is already well managed and the modeled opportunity falls toward the lower end of the benchmark. A Health Score of 40 reflects a portfolio with substantial unrealized opportunity and the model returns a number toward the upper end. A Health Score below 30 reflects a portfolio with material structural issues, in which case the modeled opportunity often exceeds the published benchmark because the organization has not addressed the basic levers.
Oracle. The largest single audit risk in most enterprise software portfolios. Java licensing, Database options, Engineered Systems, ULA mechanics, support reinstatement clauses, and the cloud transition. Read the Oracle licensing guide for the full picture and the Oracle ULA decision framework for the most expensive contract structure inside the Oracle portfolio.
Microsoft. The largest single line item in most enterprise software portfolios. Enterprise Agreement renewals, Microsoft 365 E3 to E5 step ups, Azure commit consumption, Power Platform licensing, Copilot per user economics, and the entanglement of the EA across multiple cost centers. Read the Microsoft licensing guide and the Microsoft EA renewal playbook.
SAP. The vendor with the most aggressive multi year migration pressure in 2026. RISE for SAP, S/4HANA cutover, ECC end of mainstream support, indirect access exposure, and the contract metrics shift from named users to digital access. Read the SAP licensing guide and the SAP RISE negotiation guide.
Salesforce. The vendor with the most consistent annual price escalation and the deepest user count drift problem. Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, MuleSoft, Tableau, and the steady consolidation across the platform. Read the Salesforce licensing guide and the Salesforce renewal playbook.
IBM. The vendor with the most complex sub capacity licensing and the most opaque audit posture. Passport Advantage, ILMT compliance, Cognos, DataPower, MQ, WebSphere, Db2, and the OpenShift entanglement. Read the IBM licensing guide and the IBM audit defense guide.
Broadcom and VMware. The fastest moving commercial picture in 2026. The post acquisition portfolio rationalization, the VMware Cloud Foundation bundle compression, the per core pricing shift, and the migration alternatives. Read the Broadcom and VMware licensing guide and the VMware negotiation playbook.
AWS, Google Cloud, ServiceNow, Workday, Cisco, and the GenAI vendor cluster round out the eleven practices. Each carries its own commercial mechanics and each is in scope of the health check. Use the Oracle hub, Microsoft hub, SAP hub, and GenAI hub for the deepest reading lists by vendor.
CIOs use the Health Check as a board level diagnostic before commissioning a full portfolio review. CFOs use it to validate the multi year operational expense profile against the alternative of a structured optimization program. Heads of IT procurement use it to size the negotiation pipeline for the next 18 months and to prioritize which vendor to attack first. Heads of SAM use it to position the case for additional investment in the SAM function against the modeled portfolio opportunity. Internal audit functions use it to identify where the largest software contract risks sit. Private equity portfolio operations teams use it to baseline the software estate of a newly acquired or carve out portfolio company. Outgoing CIOs use it as the handover document for the incoming CIO.
The Health Check is most useful when paired with a credible internal spend baseline. If your finance team can provide a vendor by vendor annual run rate across the eleven practices in scope, the output sharpens. If you do not have that baseline, the score still works, but the optimization opportunity is expressed against the spend bucket you select, which carries a wider band. The ideal preparation for the Health Check is a single page that lists the eleven vendors, the trailing 12 month spend at each, the next material renewal date at each, and the audit history at each across the last 36 months. With that one page in hand, the Health Check takes 10 minutes and the output is materially more accurate than the typical first pass.
For organizations preparing a strategic plan, a budget cycle, or a board level technology review, the Health Check is the entry point to a structured commercial preparation. The combination of this tool, the software spend assessment service, and a 30 minute buyer side advisor consultation should produce a board ready position within four weeks. For organizations with a renewal date inside the next 12 months on Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, IBM, or Broadcom, the window to act is narrower than it appears. Read the Renewal Program service page for the timeline considerations on a single vendor renewal, or the Vendor Shield program page for the year round version that covers the full portfolio.
Complete the 18 questions below. The calculation runs in your browser and the result is shown immediately. Your inputs are submitted to Redress Compliance for the optional 30 minute consultation. We do not share your inputs with any vendor. We do not market the data. The score and the recommendations are yours to use however you choose internally.
All fields required. Calculation is instant. Estimate is in US dollars across a 3 year horizon.
Each of the eleven vendor practices has a dedicated 40 to 60 page playbook. Pick the two or three that map to your largest exposure and use them as the structured preparation document for the next renewal cycle.
Oracle ULA Framework Microsoft EA Playbook SAP RISE Guide IBM Audit DefenseBring your Health Score. We will walk through the top three vendor exposures, pressure test the modeled opportunity, and outline a sequenced 90 day plan. No sales pitch. No vendor in the room.
