How to Audit Your Support and Streaming Toolstack in 90 Minutes

Cut costs, reduce complexity, and free your team—fast. A 90-minute ops playbook to audit your support and streaming toolstack monthly.

If your support channels feel slow, your headcount keeps creeping up, and invoices arrive with dozens of line items you don’t recognize—this checklist is for you. In 2026, teams are still paying for the promise of efficiency while dealing with the reality of SaaS sprawl. This fast, repeatable 90-minute audit pinpoints underused tools, duplicates, and immediate savings opportunities so you can act before the next billing cycle.

Why a 90-minute monthly sprint works in 2026

Technology continues to shift quickly. Late 2025 and early 2026 saw two clear trends that make short, repeatable audits essential:

• Adoption of LLM-driven automation has accelerated experimentation—and accidental sprawl—across support and streaming tools.
• Vendor consolidation and composable architectures mean you can often replace several point tools with a single integrated platform, but only if you know where overlap exists.

Monthly 90-minute checkpoints give operations teams the cadence of a sprint with the discipline to avoid the long, expensive marathons of tool migration that never finish.

The 90-minute audit: Overview and outputs

Do this audit on the first business day of every month. Invite 3–5 stakeholders: Ops lead (owner), Support manager, Dev/Integrations lead, Finance rep (optional), and a rotating seat from Product or CS. End goal: a one-page Tool Rationalization Sheet and an action list broken into Keep, Consolidate, Retire, and Negotiate.

What you’ll produce in 90 minutes

• Inventory snapshot: 8–12 key fields per tool (owner, monthly cost, seats, last used metric, primary integrations, core capability)
• Quick health metrics: cost per active user, cost per ticket, overlap score
• Action list: 4–8 ranked actions with owners and deadlines (pilot consolidation, seat reclaim, renegotiate contract, build integration)
• Estimated monthly savings (conservative and stretch)

Before you start: prep (10 minutes)

Prep time gets the meeting focused. Do this the business day before or have one person prep in 10 minutes.

1. Open your last month’s invoicing (finance or procurement tool). Filter SaaS/Payments for support, streaming, comms and observability line items.
2. Pull last 30-day usage snapshots for major systems: chat, co-browsing/remote support, video streaming, voice, IVR, and CRM connectors. (If you have a SaaS Management Platform—bring its dashboard.)
3. Prepare a shared doc with columns: Tool, Owner, Monthly Cost, Seats/Seats Used, Key Integrations, Primary Use Case, Last Active Date, Overlap Candidates, Immediate Action.

The 90-minute timeline and checklist

Run the audit like a sprint: timebox every segment and capture outputs directly into the shared doc. Below is a minute-by-minute playbook.

Minute 0–10: Quick context and goals (10 minutes)

• Owner states the objective: reduce cost leakage, simplify support routing, or consolidate duplicate streaming licenses—pick the primary goal for this month.
• Agree outcomes: by end of 90 minutes we must have a prioritized action list and estimated savings.
• Review one-sentence summary of current top pain: long wait times, inconsistent experiences, mismatched SLAs, or excessive vendor spend.

Minute 10–35: Inventory and rapid scoring (25 minutes)

Go tool-by-tool. Assign a fast “health” score (1–5) and an overlap tag (A, B, C). Use this quick rubric:

• Health score: 1 = unused/expiring, 3 = active but redundant, 5 = core and integrated
• Overlap tag: A = high overlap (duplicate capability with a core tool), B = moderate, C = unique

For each tool capture three quick metrics (30–60 seconds per tool):

• Monthly cost (licenses + ancillaries)
• Usage: monthly active seats/users or API calls
• Primary integrations (CRM, helpdesk, analytics)

Minute 35–55: Cost & usage calculations (20 minutes)

Now calculate simple decision metrics. Use these formulas and fill them into the sheet:

• Cost per active seat = Monthly cost / Active seats (use your invoice data to verify)
• Cost per ticket = Monthly cost / Tickets routed (if the tool is ticket-facing)
• Overlap score = Number of overlapping capabilities with core tool / Total capabilities (quick heuristic) — see integrator patterns in real-time collaboration APIs.

Flag tools with:

• Cost per active seat significantly above mean
• Low or zero activity for >30 days
• High overlap score (>=0.6)

Minute 55–75: Rapid decisions and actions (20 minutes)

For each flagged tool, choose one of four actions and assign an owner + due date:

1. Keep: Tool is core, integrated, and cost-effective. Document retention rationale.
2. Consolidate: Duplicate feature—pilot merging into primary platform with a 30–60 day test. (See consolidation patterns and regional hosting trade-offs in hybrid edge strategies.)
3. Retire: Low usage and non-critical—schedule deprovisioning and license cancellation this billing cycle.
4. Negotiate or Re-scope: High cost but strategically used—assign procurement to renegotiate or reduce seats.

Estimate immediate monthly savings for each Retire/Negotiate/Consolidate item.

Minute 75–85: SLA, automation, and staffing checks (10 minutes)

This section focuses on operational impact—not just dollars.

• Map each tool to SLA impact: does retiring it increase response times or lower FCR? If yes, add mitigation (automation or rerouting).
• Identify automation candidates: high-volume manual tasks, repeated escalations, and agent workflows that could be automated with LLM-safe automations or rules. Tag as low/medium/high risk.
• Staffing impact: will consolidation reduce headcount needs, change skill profiles, or require retraining?

Minute 85–90: Summarize and distribute (5 minutes)

• Create the one-page Tool Rationalization Sheet: list top 3 retirements, top 2 consolidations to pilot, and 1 negotiation priority with estimated monthly savings.
• Set next check-in: who does what by when. Send the doc and calendar invite within 10 minutes of the meeting ending.

Decision framework: Keep, Consolidate, Retire, Negotiate

Use the matrix below as your rubric. Score each tool on 0–10 for four axes: Usage, Strategic Value, Integration Depth, and Cost Efficiency. A simple weighted score tells you the direction.

• Weight examples: Usage 35%, Integration Depth 30%, Strategic 20%, Cost 15%.
• Score < 4: Strong retire candidate. Score 4–6: Consolidate/Rescope. Score > 6: Keep or negotiate for better terms.

Sample outputs and templates

Tool Rationalization Sheet (one-line per tool)

Columns to include in your shared doc/template:

• Tool name | Owner | Monthly cost | Active seats | Primary Use Case | Integrations | Health score | Overlap tag | Decision | Immediate savings

Example calculation (fictional)

Tool: LiveAssist Pro — Monthly cost: $2,400 — Active seats: 12 — Tickets routed: 3,600

• Cost per seat = $200
• Cost per ticket = $0.67
• Overlap: core chat platform also supports co-browsing—overlap score = 0.7
• Decision: Consolidate. Estimated immediate savings: reclaim 6 seats = $1,200/mo; reduce streaming license = additional $400/mo.

Operational priorities: staffing, SLAs, and automation

An audit that only looks at invoices misses the operational impact. Use this quick checklist to cross-check any consolidation or decommission decision.

• Staffing: Will retiring a tool increase handling time? If so, quantify delta in handle time and needed headcount. Use your cost per ticket to estimate headcount impact.
• SLAs: Map every decision to SLA impact—AHT, first contact resolution (FCR), response time. If a retirement could worsen an SLA, add automation or routing changes to preserve performance.
• Automation: Identify the top 3 agent tasks by volume and time. Evaluate if they’re safe for LLM-assist or rule-based automation. For any LLM automation, require a 2-week human-in-the-loop pilot and log error rate.

Negotiation and vendor playbook (quick wins)

When you identify consolidation or high-cost items, these fast tactics often yield savings:

• Reclaim unused seats immediately—billing teams can often credit the next invoice for canceled seats within 7–15 days.
• Bundle discounts: propose moving feature-set X from vendor A into vendor B for an incremental fee—vendors often match to avoid churn.
• Proof-of-value pilots: offer a 30–60 day paid pilot to test feature consolidation; use measurable KPIs (tickets deflected, AHT reduction) as negotiation levers. See checklist-style pilots in the cloud migration checklist.

How to catch hidden SaaS sprawl (and recurring traps)

Most teams miss these common sources of waste:

• Duplicate features purchased by different teams (e.g., CS bought a co-browsing tool while Product bought one for demos)
• Low-use dev/test licenses that auto-renew annually
• Third-party integrations that create hidden API charges or per-seat fees
• LLM/AI add-ons priced per token or API call—small tests can become big bills quickly

Pro tip: add a column to your inventory for auto-renew date and mandate a 30-day cancellation or negotiation window ahead of renewal.

Governance: make the 90-minute audit stick

To avoid reverting to sprawl, enforce light governance:

• Monthly gate: Any new purchase >$500/mo requires a 30-day trial and a 90-minute post-trial audit.
• Ownership: Every tool must have a named owner and an “approved uses” field.
• Quarterly deep dive: Every 3 months, run a 2-hour marathon audit for architecture-level consolidation planning. Use migration and deep-audit checklists like the cloud migration checklist when planning larger shifts.

Case study: Small ops team, big wins (real-world style)

Riverline Digital (fictional composite of common patterns) used this framework monthly for 6 months in 2025–26. Outcomes after 6 months:

• Consolidated three streaming and co-browsing tools into one primary platform—saved $3,200/mo.
• Reclaimed 24 inactive seats across support tools—saved $2,250/mo.
• Introduced two LLM-assisted macros that deflected 18% of tickets—reduced AHT by 22% and avoided hiring one new agent.

They achieved these gains by keeping the audit monthly, prioritizing high-overlap tools first, and requiring pilots for any automation that touched customer messages.

KPIs to track after the audit

Measure these to show real impact and justify future changes:

• Monthly SaaS spend (support & streaming)
• Estimated monthly savings from retirements/negotiations
• Cost per ticket and cost per active seat
• CSAT and NPS (watch for negative trends after changes)
• Automation deflection rate and human-in-the-loop error rate (monitor with reliability tooling like monitoring platforms)
• SLA adherence: average response time, resolution time, FCR

Advanced strategies for 2026 and beyond

As platforms add LLM features and composable APIs, you should:

• Prioritize tools that support open, standardized integrations (webhooks, SCIM, event streams). Vendor-locked SDKs increase integration cost.
• Build a small internal marketplace or “catalog” for approved tools—this prevents shadow procurement. See how component marketplaces simplify approvals: component marketplace launch.
• Automate your audit where possible: use a SaaS Management Platform to pull invoices and usage; script cost-per-ticket calculations into Google Sheets or BI to save 10–15 minutes of manual work each month.

"Every new tool increases connections to manage, logins to remember, and decisions about which platform to use." — MarTech, Jan 2026

Avoid mistakes that wipe out your gains

Common errors teams make after a rationalization sprint:

• Retiring a tool without migration support—causes high friction and SLA slips.
• Ignoring seat reclamation policies—finance fails to cancel seats on time.
• Pushing LLM automations to production without adequate monitoring—produces bad responses and damages CSAT.

Mitigate these by requiring a deployment checklist and a 2-week rollback window for any automation or routing change.

Monthly agenda template (10 minutes)

1. 0–2 min: Goal for this month
2. 2–12 min: Quick inventory review of any new tools
3. 12–30 min: Score and flag items
4. 30–50 min: Compute costs and overlaps
5. 50–75 min: Decide actions and owners
6. 75–85 min: SLA & staffing impact review
7. 85–90 min: Send summary and calendar follow-ups

Final checklist (one-line at the end of the meeting)

• Shared doc updated with decisions and owners
• Top 3 financial actions assigned
• Top 2 operational mitigations assigned (automation or routing changes)
• Follow-up meeting scheduled

Closing: run the sprint, but plan the marathon

Use this 90-minute audit as a recurring sprint that keeps SaaS sprawl in check and creates short feedback loops for operational decisions. For strategic architectural changes—platform migrations, major integrations, or reorganizations—schedule a quarterly marathon with broader stakeholders.

Actionable takeaways:

• Run the 90-minute audit monthly with a 3–5 person cross-functional team.
• Produce a one-page Tool Rationalization Sheet and an actionable savings plan in every session.
• Track cost-per-ticket, overlap, and SLA impact—don’t optimize cost at the expense of experience.

Ready to slash SaaS sprawl and improve your support economics? Download the 90-minute audit template and the one-page Tool Rationalization Sheet to run your first sprint this week, or schedule a consult with our operations team to run your first audit together.

CTA

Start your 90-minute audit now: grab the template, invite your 3–5 stakeholders, and run the sprint on the first business day of the month. If you’d like help, contact us for a guided audit and an implementation plan tailored to your stack.

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