Years ago, before I started CREAVO, I learnt the trade froma business owner I really looked up to. She’s since sold up and sailed off into early retirement, the lucky so and so.
One thing she drummed into me has stuck ever since. “Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.”
It came to mind again recently, thanks to one of our clients.
A London accountancy firm we work with had one person signup to Dropbox on the company card. Nothing dramatic. They needed to share files with clients, so they cracked on.
The trouble was, nobody in charge had ever actually chosen it. There was no oversight, no owner and no IT anywhere near it. Then it spread. More users, more data and a bigger bill every month.
By the time they came on board with us, they had 48 licences and were spending £11,514.24 a year.
Now for the good bit. They were already paying for Microsoft365, which does exactly the same job through SharePoint. In other words, they’d been paying twice for the same thing.
So we moved everything across in an afternoon, briefed the team, and that £11.5k dropped straight to the bottom line.
The saving was the headline, but it wasn’t the only win. Before, sensitive client data was sitting in a platform the business had never approved and couldn’t manage. Nobody knew for certain who could see it, what had been shared outside the firm, or what would happen if the person who set it up left.
For an accountancy firm looking after clients’ financial information, that’s not a comfortable place to be. Now it all sits under their own roof, properly controlled.
Eleven and a half grand back and a safer business, all in one afternoon. A proper win win. My old mentor would have been delighted.
It happens in almost every business
This isn’t a story about one careless firm. Someone grabs a tool to solve a problem, it works, others pile in, and before long it’s woven into how you operate without anyone ever deciding to adopt it.
It’s a bit like a gym membership you forgot to cancel. Except it’s multiplied across your team, and it’s holding your client data.
Here’s where it tends to hide.
· File sharing tools like Dropbox and WeTransfer, which often duplicate what Microsoft 365 already gives you.
· ChatGPT and other AI tools, where staff may be feeding in company information with nobody keeping an eye on it.
· Adobe and specialist software, where licences outlive the people who used them.
· Anything on a personal login or the company card that never crossed your desk.
Three questions that sort most of it out
· Do we actually need it? If nobody would miss it tomorrow, cancel it.
· Are we already paying for something that does the same job? Microsoft 365 in particular includes far more than most businesses realise, from file sharing to video calls and online forms.
· Who owns it? Every tool should have someone responsible for who has access, what it costs and what happens to the data when people leave.
You’d be amazed what it turns up, on both cost and risk. Even if you just run through those three questions yourself, it’s time well spent.
If you’d like an independent look at what’s running in the background of your business, that’s exactly what we do. No pressure, no hard sell, just a clear picture of where your money and your data are going.
Call us on 0330 002 2466 or get in touch at creavo.co.uk.
