Licence sprawl builds quietly. Someone is provisioned a top-tier plan for one feature they used once, a leaver's account stays enabled at full cost for months, and nobody revisits the original assignment because it was never wrong enough to trigger a review.
The useful audit window is 60 to 90 days before renewal, so findings can actually change what gets committed rather than arriving too late to matter. Start with seats nobody holds — accounts provisioned for a role that no longer exists, or a project that finished. That category typically accounts for a small but real slice of a licence bill, often in the low single-digit percentage of total seats, which sounds minor until it is multiplied by every renewal you have not checked.
Next, check for licensed users with no sign-in activity in 90-plus days who are still fully enabled — a common gap when offboarding removes access but leaves the licence assignment untouched. Then look for duplicate or overlapping SKUs: users holding a bundle that already contains a feature they are separately licensed for on its own.
The audit is also the moment to check licence tier against actual usage, not assumed need. A user provisioned for a premium tier at onboarding two years ago may only be using the features in the base tier today — or the reverse, someone on a base licence has been requesting workarounds for functionality a higher tier already includes.
None of this is a one-off project. Usage drifts continuously as roles change, so the audit is only valuable if it becomes a recurring check rather than a pre-renewal scramble — which is why it sits inside North Ark's Managed IT service as part of the monthly review, not as a standalone engagement.
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