Home / Services / Renewal Advisory

Renewal advisory,
started twelve months
early.

A renewal that arrives unprepared is a renewal that costs more than it should. We bring benchmarked pricing, competitive leverage, optimisation findings and a sequenced plan to every renewal — whether it is a $250K SaaS subscription or a $40M enterprise agreement.

12 mo
Recommended lead time
20–40%
Typical renewal savings
500+
Comparable benchmarks
15
Vendors covered
Overview

A renewal is always a negotiation.

Vendors prefer renewals because they know what most buyers will accept by default: a polite uplift, a renewed term, and an unexamined pricing structure. The renewal is the cheapest, easiest, most profitable deal of the vendor's year.

Our renewal advisory turns that asymmetry around. We start twelve months early. By the time the renewal proposal arrives, we already have the benchmark, the optimised footprint, the alternative options and the negotiation strategy. The vendor walks into a renewal you have prepared for — not the other way round.

Where this service applies

  • Major enterprise renewals: Microsoft EA, Oracle support, SAP Enterprise Support, IBM ELA.
  • SaaS renewals at any scale: Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, Adobe, Snowflake, Atlassian.
  • Cloud commit renewals: AWS EDP, Azure MCA-E, Google Cloud commitments.
  • Multi-year ULA, ELA and EA cycles — whether you intend to renew, exit, or restructure.
  • Mid-term renegotiations triggered by M&A, divestiture or material change in usage.

What we don't do

We do not "submit the renewal" on your behalf the week before expiry. That is not advisory — that is rubber-stamping. Renewal advisory is a planned, sequenced project that starts with enough runway to build leverage.

When to engage us

9 to 12 months before expiry

The optimum window is 12 months out. With 9 months we can still build full leverage. Inside 6 months, options narrow and the vendor's playbook strengthens.

Typical duration

4 to 9 months end-to-end

Most renewal advisory engagements run 4 to 6 months for a single renewal. Major ELA or ULA renewals run 6 to 9. The engagement closes at signature, not at renewal date.

Engagement model

Fixed-fee or success-based

Renewal advisory is typically delivered on fixed-fee, with success-based options where the baseline is verifiable. See engagement models →

How we work

The renewal, twelve months out.

01

Month 12 — baseline

Full inventory of entitlements, usage, support, deployment and historical pricing. Benchmark against comparable accounts and against the vendor's typical year-end behaviour for your size segment.

02

Month 10 — optimisation

Identify and execute pre-renewal cleanup: shelfware harvest, edition rationalisation, indirect-access fixes. The renewal requirement is sized down before the vendor sees it.

03

Month 8 — leverage build

Set up the leverage: alternative options, competitive RFP if appropriate, fiscal-year timing, support unbundling, public-cloud overlap, executive-sponsor alignment internally.

04

Month 5 — strategy & ask

Design the negotiation: target outcome, fallback positions, walk-away conditions, sequencing of demands, and the timeline that puts vendor pressure where it belongs.

05

Month 3 — counter-proposal

The vendor's renewal proposal lands. We benchmark every line, redline the paper, and lead the counter-proposal. Most savings are won in the next eight weeks.

06

Month 0 — sign and document

Final paper, signature, and a clean handover. The renewal calendar for the next cycle starts the moment the ink dries.

Where renewals leak money

The default outcomes we routinely overturn.

Leak 01
Automatic uplift accepted
A 7 to 10 percent annual price uplift baked into the standard renewal quote. Benchmark data almost always supports a flat or near-flat renewal.
Leak 02
Shelfware renewed at full price
Licences that are not deployed renewed at 100 percent. We harvest before the renewal lands, not after.
Leak 03
Bundles that lock you in
Bundles that bury individually negotiable products inside a single SKU. We unbundle, price each component, and re-bundle on your terms.
Leak 04
Support uplift left untouched
Annual support uplifts that compound silently for a decade. We benchmark and challenge them, and where appropriate, restructure.
Leak 05
Multi-year locked at peak
Multi-year commitments priced at peak usage rather than realistic forward demand. We model forward demand against vendor product roadmap.
Leak 06
Renewal as the only option
Renewal framed as the only path forward. We benchmark, model alternatives, and surface them at the moment of leverage.

"Their renewal benchmark told us, with line-item precision, what every part of the deal should cost. The vendor's quote turned out to be 31 percent above market."

VP, Strategic Sourcing
North American Financial Services Group
Outcomes

Recent renewals.

All case studies

Renewal due this year?

Tell us the vendor and the expiry date. We will tell you within one business day whether the timing still allows full advisory or only tactical support.