Discovery is the first four weeks and the most important. Before anyone talks to Microsoft, we rebuild the factual baseline, what you are entitled to, what you actually consume, and what comparable enterprises signed. The gap between those three numbers is the leverage. Everything the negotiation later spends is built here. No baseline, no position.
Discovery exists to establish three facts with precision and then expose the distance between them. That distance is where the savings live. The work is unglamorous and it is the single highest leverage phase of the engagement.
What your current contracts actually grant, untangled from the way Microsoft presents them. Often larger and more expensive than the estate you are using.
What you genuinely use, by product and by user. The number Microsoft already holds and the one that should anchor the negotiation, not the quote.
What comparable enterprises paid for the same footprint, drawn from signed contracts. The reference that tells you whether a concession is real.
Discovery is collaborative but light on your team's time. We do the analysis. We need access to the contract documents, billing data, and usage telemetry, plus a few hours from procurement and IT to validate what we find.
Current agreements, amendments, true up history, and the latest Microsoft quote. We reconstruct the real entitlement picture.
Usage telemetry by product and user. We identify shelfware, overlap, and the licenses you are paying for and not touching.
We position your footprint against signed comparable contracts and locate where your pricing sits in the concession band.
A defined, defensible target and the list of contestable line items. The output that governs the negotiation phase.
On a Fortune 100 renewal, discovery found fourteen months of unconsumed entitlements behind the quote. That finding became a 37 percent reduction.Microsoft Licensing Experts · Discovery phase
Discovery hands a defined target to the negotiation phase. From there the leverage built here is spent against Microsoft's deal desk. See how the phases connect, or read the flagship service where discovery does the heaviest lifting.
Two analyst calls. We scope a discovery phase against your renewal or audit timeline and tell you what we expect to find.