Summary
You’re three months into the CFO role. Quarterly risk review with IT and Procurement. You run through the standard questions about vendor exposure and audit risks.
Your IT director mentions Oracle, AWS, Salesforce. Gets to Microsoft: “We’re covered. Got a tool that tracks it. We check it regularly. Everything’s green.”
You ask what that actually means. He shows you the dashboard. Traffic lights. Green across the board. Numbers that mean nothing to you but look official enough. You move on. You’ve got 50 other risks to review.
Six months later, the audit letter arrives.
Three months after that, you’re sitting in a conference room with Microsoft’s auditor. They’ve produced a report showing $4.2M in non-compliance. Your IT director keeps saying “but the tool shows we’re compliant.” The auditor doesn’t care what your tool shows.
Green dashboards don’t defend you: auditors use their own data, rules, and calculations.
They have their own data, their own discovery methods, their own calculations. None of it matches yours. You pull out your compliance reports, the ones from the tool, the green dashboard screenshots you thought would protect you.
The auditor questions the numbers.
“Your tool calculated 64 SQL Server core licences needed. Our calculation shows 256”.
“Your tool tracked your cloud licences. But they don’t have active Software Assurance. They’re invalid”.
Every defensive position you prepared from the tool data crumbles. The auditor isn’t accepting it. Your numbers don’t match theirs. You can’t explain why. You spent $180K on protection that isn’t protecting you.
This isn’t only your company. This is dozens of companies we’ve seen in recent years. Different industries, different sizes, different tools. Same story. They bought audit defence. They got a compliance calculator. They didn’t know there was a difference until Microsoft audited them.
The Pitch Was Compelling
You made a reasonable decision based on persuasive information.
The features list was impressive: “Automated compliance monitoring across your entire Microsoft estate. Real-time visibility into licence deployment. Audit-ready reports at the click of a button. Protection from non-compliance risk”. The dashboard looked professional, with its traffic light reporting system where green means compliant and red means buy licences. Clear, simple, actionable.
The ROI calculations showed savings. Avoid over-licensing, prevent audit penalties, optimise spend. The business case wrote itself. When vendor risks came up in board discussions, you pointed to the tool. Microsoft compliance was covered. One less thing to worry about.
But was it? One in three organisations now question whether their SAM tool was worth it. That’s from Gartner research. 36% of stakeholders in sourcing, procurement and vendor management question the success of their SAM tool.
I’ve worked with almost all major SAM tools for over 15 years. I have never seen a single implementation where Microsoft compliance was calculated correctly by the tool. Not once. It’s always workarounds. “Good enough for now”. “We download the data and analyse it in Excel”. “We have people who can interpret it”. Never the tool actually calculating Microsoft compliance the way it was supposed to. Only service-provider tools can calculate Microsoft positions accurately, but those are built for SPLA licensing and aren’t for regular enterprises.
So when Gartner says one in three question whether the tool was worth it, I suspect that’s conservative. The other 64% either haven’t been audited yet, or they’re not comfortable admitting publicly that their expensive tool doesn’t do what they bought it for.
But you didn’t know that when you made the purchase. You knew Microsoft licensing was complex, and complexity requires tools. You’re running a $2B business. You can’t personally track 4,000 SQL Server instances across 200 virtualised hosts in three data centres plus AWS. Of course you need technology to do this.
And Microsoft licensing genuinely is as complex as everyone says. Directions on Microsoft documents it clearly: “Microsoft has a reputation for complex rules that make licensing its products unreasonably difficult. One of the most challenging aspects is the lack of consistency across Microsoft’s products”.
Your procurement team handles contracts. Your IT team handles deployments. Nobody has the full picture. A tool that connects everything makes sense. Audits are scary, you’ve heard the stories about companies paying millions in penalties after months of disruption. The tool promised to prevent this. That’s worth $180K from an established vendor with a proven track record.
The promise was automation. The reality was false confidence.
You started sleeping better after the implementation. That risk was covered. You knew where you stood. When people asked about Microsoft, you showed them the dashboard. Protected. Safe. You stopped worrying about audits. Why would you worry? You had continuous monitoring. You had reports, you had evidence, you were ready.
Then the audit letter arrived.
What Actually Happens in Audits
Week 1: The Kickoff
The auditor introduces themselves. Professional, friendly even. They explain the process calmly. They’ll need deployment data, entitlement records, architecture diagrams, licence assignments. Standard stuff.
You provide everything. Your tool exports it all into CSV files, reports, dashboards. You’ve been preparing for this. The auditor thanks you politely, says they’ll review the data and get back to you. Schedules the next meeting for three weeks out.
You think this is going well.
Week 4: The Coverage Problem
The auditor has reviewed your tool data. They’re professional about it, but there’s a problem.
“Your discovery data shows 73% coverage of your environment. We need 95% or better to accept tool data. We’ll need to run our own scripts to get complete discovery.”
Discovery below ~95% coverage isn’t accepted, unseen assets become exposure.
The IT director checks the tool. The coverage was sitting at 73%. It had been for months. The SAM team saw it but couldn’t get the discovery agents deployed everywhere, not enough resources, not enough authority to chase IT teams. So they focused on what they could see. The compliance dashboards looked reasonable. But the auditor’s standards are different. 73% coverage isn’t acceptable. They need 95% or better. The tool has gaps that couldn’t be fixed.
“We’ll send you the scripts. Your team will need to run them across your environment. Should take about two weeks to collect everything.”
Your IT director looks uncomfortable. He knows it won’t be two weeks. It never is. Running audit scripts means servers to access, permissions to arrange, security reviews, change controls, testing, troubleshooting. More work, more disruption. The auditor’s “two weeks” will be six. Or more.
Week 6: The Discovery Gaps
The auditor presents their initial findings. Amongst them, 89 SQL Server Standard instances running on-premises. Your IT director looks at the report, then checks the tool. The tool only reported 58 instances.
He goes through the list. 31 instances the tool missed. Some servers the discovery agents never reached. Some where permissions weren’t configured right. Some where the agents were deployed but not collecting data properly. Coverage gaps nobody caught until now.
Gap: 124 core licences needed. Value: approx. $245K.
The tool discovered what it could reach. It counted what it saw.
Week 8: The Cloud Migration Oversight
Six months ago you migrated 187 SQL Server instances to AWS. You brought your existing licences. Microsoft allows it, but there are conditions. Your tool tracked the licences, moved them from on-premises to cloud in its database, reported everything compliant.
The auditor’s report flags them. The 187 SQL Server licences on AWS aren’t eligible for BYOL. Software Assurance expired on them sixteen months ago. Without active SA, they’re not valid for cloud use.
Your procurement team checks. The auditor’s right. Nobody caught the SA expiry. You need to switch to license-included instances from AWS, or buy entirely new licences with active SA. Value: approx. $395K.
Your tool tracked the licences perfectly. It knew they were assigned to AWS instances. What it didn’t track was Software Assurance expiry. SA tracking requires accurate data entry per licence and understanding complex dependencies.
Week 10: The Architecture Nobody Mapped
The auditor asks about your Citrix environment. Your IT director pulls up the data. The SAM team has been tracking 850 concurrent users based on Citrix metrics. That’s what they’ve been licensing for.
The auditor explains the problem. “Microsoft doesn’t license based on concurrent sessions. They require CALs for all users with access, whether they’re using it right now or not.”
Your IT director checks Active Directory. Over 4,000 users have Citrix access provisioned. Gap: 3,150 CALs. Value: approx. $119K.
The tool wasn’t configured to track Microsoft’s metric. The SAM team used Citrix’s concurrent session data instead. Some tools are capable of tracking this but it requires not just correct configuration, but even basic awareness of the issue, which comes down to knowledge gaps and over-reliance on the “out of the box” functionality of the tool, often oversold.
Week 14: The Report
Total findings: $4.2M in licensing gaps. You’re more than 5% non-compliant, which triggers Microsoft’s penalty clause. Initial calculation with 25% uplift: $5.25M. Add auditor fees of $45K. Total claim: $5.3M.
Your board asks the inevitable question: “What happened? Didn’t we have a SAM tool?”
You did. You still do. The tool measured something. The auditor measured something different. The tool was never built for audit defence. You just didn’t know there was a difference.
🖐 Prepare for real audits, not dashboards. Learn more: Microsoft Audit Defense.
Why This Happens to Everyone
You’re not the first company to discover this gap. We’ve seen this repeatedly in recent years with this exact story.
The Healthcare Organisation
A $3B healthcare provider with 15,000 employees. They’d implemented an enterprise SAM platform from a major vendor four years earlier, with a dedicated SAM team. They ran monthly compliance reports showing green dashboards. IT leadership believed they were protected.
Microsoft audited them. Initial findings: $9M in non-compliance. They argued for six months, repeatedly saying “our tool says we’re compliant”. The auditors didn’t accept the tool’s calculations. Different methodology, different data sources, different interpretation of licensing rules.
They eventually settled for $500K. Still half a million dollars despite having a tool that cost them $200K plus four years of operational investment.
The Transport Company
A global transport business with 50,000 employees had implemented a market-leading SAM tool. During their EA renewal, Microsoft’s account team reviewed their true-up report and calculated $5M in needed licences. A massive gap that nobody expected.
They brought in independent experts to analyse their actual deployment using the same data their tool had collected. The real gap turned out to be $0. Zero. The tool data was correct. But the way Microsoft’s team interpreted that data was wrong. They had smart people reviewing the reports. What they didn’t realize was that the tool’s default logic doesn’t match Microsoft’s actual licensing rules. That gap requires constant expert validation. Microsoft’s account team didn’t care about accuracy. They saw a sales opportunity worth $5M.
🖐 Enter EA talks with a defensible position. Learn more: Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Negotiation.
The Financial Services Firm
They did everything by the book. Bought one of the most respected SAM platforms in the market, hired certified consultants to implement it, invested 18 months in configuration, training, and process design. They generated audit-ready reports, filed them properly, followed every best practice their consultants recommended.
Microsoft audited them anyway. Initial findings: $6.8M in non-compliance.
Here’s what happened. The consultants who implemented the platform did everything according to the vendor’s methodology. They configured workflows correctly. They built comprehensive dashboards. They followed every implementation best practice. But perfect tool implementation doesn’t guarantee Microsoft licensing accuracy.
The tool’s licensing rules lag behind Microsoft’s constant changes. Default logic assumes standard configurations, but doesn’t account for your specific architecture or agreement terms. Discovery coverage was 94%, not 100%, which means compliance calculations were based on incomplete data. And data entry, purchase records, agreement terms, all needed to be perfect. You can’t be half-pregnant in licensing. One wrong SKU entered, one missed SQL instance, one expired Software Assurance date nobody noticed, the compliance position is wrong. The consultants did their job well. But their job was implementing a platform, not validating Microsoft licensing compliance.
Why This Happens to Everyone
Every single one of these companies had invested in tools. Every single one believed they were protected. Every single one discovered during audits that tools don’t equal defence. The tools aren’t broken or badly designed. Audit defence simply isn’t a technology problem.
Tools discover software. They count installations. They attempt to calculate licensing. They generate reports.
Here’s what they don’t do. They don’t understand Microsoft’s actual licensing rules in their full complexity. They can’t model virtualisation scenarios with all the special cases and conditions. They can’t check if your Software Assurance is actually active on specific licences (it’s your team’s job). They can’t verify employment status for products with employee-only restrictions. They can’t read the specific conditions written into your individual agreements. They can’t interpret telemetry data the way Microsoft’s auditors do. They can’t defend your positions when auditors question them.
Tools answer one question. Auditors ask a different one. The tool says: “Based on discovered data and standard licensing logic, here’s what we calculate.” The auditor says: “Based on Microsoft’s actual agreements, telemetry data, and specific licensing rules for your situation, here’s what you owe.”
Why Vendors Don’t Tell You
Look at what happened to the SAM tool industry between 2020 and 2025. Every major vendor transformed their business model. They now employ consultants. They offer managed services. They sell implementation packages alongside the tool. They provide advisory services.
Certero published an article in 2023 with a revealing title: “A Consultant’s Story: No Tool Can Do It All”. Read that again. A tool vendor publishing an article admitting their tool can’t do it all. The article states clearly: “When it comes to Software Asset Management, no tool can do it all and there is always a need for some licensing expertise”.
Snow Software now offers “business consulting services” alongside their platform. Their marketing copy admits you need “more than just the right platform”. Flexera operates a “global consulting services organisation” delivering managed services alongside their tool.
They’re admitting it through their actions. Their business models prove it. Tools alone don’t work. They know it. They just don’t lead with it when selling you the tool, because if they said upfront “our tool needs continuous human expertise to work correctly”, you’d reasonably ask “then why am I paying for the tool?”
The Proof Is in the Statistics
This isn’t just our experience. Independent research proves tools don’t deliver audit defence.
Gartner research found that 36% of stakeholders in sourcing, procurement and vendor management question the success of their SAM tool. One in three buyers regret the purchase. Not because they chose the wrong vendor or bought the wrong product. Because no vendor can deliver what you actually need for audits with tools alone.
Gartner also predicted that by 2026, only 20% of organisations will use a single tool to support their SAM practice. Why? Because “traditional SAM tools can only go so far in providing trustworthy, actionable data”. The rest must be supplemented with what Gartner calls “well-resourced and knowledgeable Software Asset Management teams”. That’s analyst-speak for “you need human expertise, not just technology”.
Forrester’s 2023 survey found that only 37% of IT professionals agreed that their organisation’s software is well controlled and managed by a SAM team. You bought the tool to get control. Two-thirds of you still don’t feel in control. The tool didn’t solve it.
The same research shows that 45% of organisations paid over $1M in audit costs in the last three years. You had tools. You had processes. You had those green dashboards. You still paid millions. The tools didn’t protect you when it actually mattered.
Analysts, vendors, and users all agree: SAM tools don’t deliver audit defence without expert oversight.
Forrester explains why this is so difficult: “The seemingly simple matter of whether a given software title is installed on a device is full of complexities and pitfalls. Reconciling this hard-to-establish technical fact with the contractual entitlement to use the software is difficult”. Even establishing what’s installed is complex. Matching it to what your contracts actually allow is harder. No tool automates this completely.
ServiceNow’s community forums document systematic configuration problems. The vendor themselves published guidance on “Common Configuration Issues on ServiceNow SAM Pro”. Real SAM administrators struggle with problems like “SAM Teams sometimes perform wrong configuration on SAM Pro on some of the data objects like Software Models, entitlements which lead to incorrect licence compliance”.
One ServiceNow administrator wrote candidly: “Many of our customers don’t have a mature SAM organisation at the time of purchasing a SAM Pro subscription and in my view, this is the hardest part of any implementation”. Another questioned whether to keep using the tool at all: “I’m finding that most of SAM Pro are configurations rather than actual functionality”.
This isn’t unique to your tool. ServiceNow’s own community forums show SAM administrators struggling with exactly these problems. Users report that SAM Pro requires extensive manual configuration rather than providing working functionality out of the box. Others question whether the cost is justified when basic asset management covers most of their needs.
These are people using enterprise-grade tools properly. The tools still can’t calculate compliance correctly.
The ITAM Review analysed ITIL 4’s approach to asset management and stated bluntly: “There is no SAM solution that can be effectively implemented without effort from the customer”. The effort required isn’t trivial. It’s continuous. It’s expert-level. It’s far beyond what vendors promised when they sold you the tool.
After 20 years working with every major SAM tool in the market, here’s what we can state definitively: we have worked with Snow, Flexera, ServiceNow, and Certero, and none of them do Microsoft correctly out of the box. It always requires a knowledgeable person to interpret the data from the tool reports, to put the correct licences in the tool’s database, and to assign them to the right servers in the right way according to Microsoft’s actual rules.
What “Audit-Ready” Actually Means
According to Flexera’s 2025 research, 45% of organisations paid over $1M in audit costs in the last three years. Most had SAM tools. Most generated compliance reports. The tools weren’t the problem. The gap was understanding what audit readiness actually requires.
It’s not a point-in-time achievement. It’s eight continuously maintained components that must work together when the audit letter arrives. Each requires ongoing attention, expert validation, and cross-functional coordination. Miss one component or let it drift, and the auditor will find the gap.
1. Complete Contract Database with Term Analysis
Every Microsoft agreement you’ve signed, amendments included, with the specific terms that apply to your organisation documented and understood.
The EA from three years ago. Last year’s amendments. CSP subscriptions. Any active legacy agreements. Not just filed, analysed. Someone needs to have identified what your specific contracts permit: employee definitions, geographic limitations, affiliate coverage, reassignment rules, Software Assurance expiry dates.
When auditors ask whether your agreements permit specific use cases, the answer needs to be immediate and documented. That level of understanding requires legal review of contract language combined with Microsoft licensing knowledge. Neither procurement nor IT can do this alone.
The risk: Auditors apply standard rules. Your contracts might permit exceptions. Without documented analysis, you can’t defend legitimate variations from standard terms.
2. Complete Licensing Estate Understanding
A central record of every licence you’ve purchased, EA allocations, retail purchases, OEM licences, subscriptions, everything, organised as your compliance baseline.
Your licensing records typically exist in fragments: some in procurement, some in finance, some in Microsoft’s licensing portal, some with resellers. It needs to exist in one accessible repository where proof of purchase can be produced quickly for any product you claim to own.
Without it: Auditors question entitlements you can’t prove. If you can’t produce purchase documentation, you can’t claim the licences exist.
3. Infrastructure and Architecture Documentation
Current documentation showing how Microsoft products are deployed: virtualisation architecture, cloud configurations, remote access setup, database deployments.
Discovery tools provide data. Architecture documentation provides context. Auditors need both to calculate compliance using Microsoft’s actual rules. The diagrams, the dependencies, the configurations that affect licensing calculations.
The consequence: Auditors recalculate your licensing requirements using architectural details your tool doesn’t capture. The difference becomes your exposure.
4. Corporate Structure and Affiliate Understanding
Clear documentation of which legal entities are covered under which agreements, especially following M&A activity.
Microsoft calculates compliance at the corporate family level. Acquisitions bring licensing obligations. Divestitures complicate entitlements. Someone needs to track how licensing obligations flow through your corporate structure.
If this isn’t maintained: You acquire a company, integrate their IT, and discover months later that their licensing obligations are now your compliance problem.
5. Organised Purchase Records
Component 2, but structured so anyone authorised can find proof of purchase for any claimed entitlement within minutes during an audit.
Not scattered across systems and emails. One governed repository with clear organisation and access controls.
Why this matters: You own the licences but can’t prove it fast enough. Audit timelines don’t accommodate weeks of searching for documentation.
6. Deployment Evidence and Change Logs
Audit trails showing what was deployed, when, and under what authority. Change management records. Business justifications. The documentation that proves deployments were controlled and intentional.
The danger: Auditors find deployments you can’t explain. Without documentation, you can’t distinguish between legitimate installations and compliance gaps.
7. Regular Internal Compliance Validation
Twice-yearly internal audits using the same methodology auditors would use. Finding gaps before Microsoft does. Fixing them proactively.
Automated reports aren’t enough. People must validate the tool’s output against reality, test assumptions, and challenge calculations.
Forrester found that only 37% of organisations feel their software is well controlled by their SAM team. Internal validation converts hope into confidence.
Without regular validation: You believe your tool’s calculations until an auditor questions them. Then you discover the tool’s assumptions don’t match Microsoft’s requirements.
8. Tools Plus Expertise
A SAM tool is essential. Everyone needs one. But the tool provides data. Expertise provides defence.
Someone who understands Microsoft licensing rules deeply. Who knows your specific agreements. Who can validate tool outputs, correct tool errors, and defend positions when questioned. Who tracks when Microsoft changes rules and understands the implications.
Tools provide data. Expertise provides defence.
Gartner’s research confirms: traditional SAM tools “can only go so far in providing trustworthy, actionable data.” They require “well-resourced and knowledgeable Software Asset Management teams” to be effective.
You need dedicated specialists, not borrowed resources. Time to competency: 18-24 months. For a 10,000-employee organisation: 2-3 full-time people minimum.
Without them, the tool shows green, the auditor shows red, and nobody on your team can explain why the calculations differ or defend your position with evidence.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Operating Costs
The tool costs $150K-$250K. The dedicated expertise costs $150K-$300K annually. The cross-functional coordination consumes hundreds of internal hours. The twice-yearly internal audits take weeks. The maintained documentation requires ongoing discipline across procurement, IT, legal, and finance.
Total annual operating cost: $300K-$500K for mid-sized enterprises. More for complex, global, or M&A-active organisations.
Most organisations don’t maintain this because it’s expensive, permanent, and hard to justify until you need it.
The choice isn’t between investing in readiness or not investing. The choice is between $300K-$500K annually in continuous readiness, or $1M-$5M periodically in audit settlements.
What Happens When Components Drift
Organisations don’t fail catastrophically. They drift.
Discovery coverage drops because nobody chases gaps. Contract analysis becomes stale. Documentation falls behind. Internal audit schedules slip. Each gap alone seems manageable. Combined, they mean you’re not ready.
Then the audit letter arrives. Six months of scrambling to rebuild what should have been maintained continuously. Auditors finding exposure you didn’t know existed. Settlement costs that could have funded years of proper readiness.
The gap isn’t technology. It’s understanding that audit readiness is continuous discipline, not a product you buy.
The companies who handle Microsoft audits successfully use the same tools everyone else does: Snow, Flexera, ServiceNow, Certero. Same dashboards, same reports, same technology. What they also maintain is the other components that make those tools defensible. That maintenance either exists in your organisation, or you bring it in. There’s no technology shortcut.
The Part You Don’t Want to Hear
There is no “set it and forget it” solution for Microsoft audit defence. We understand why you wanted one. You’re running a business with a hundred priorities. Microsoft licensing shouldn’t have to be one of them. You wanted to solve it once and move on with your life.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Microsoft licensing changes constantly with new products and rule updates. Your infrastructure changes constantly with migrations, acquisitions, and deployments. Your agreements expire and renew with different terms. Your audit risk shifts based on triggers you might not even know exist. Your compliance position drifts.
A tool you implemented three years ago isn’t protecting you today. The licensing rules have changed since then. Your deployments have changed. Tool vendors release updates, but they lag behind Microsoft’s changes by months. And even when updates arrive, have you deployed them? Have you verified they haven’t broken the workarounds you spent years building? That requires continuous human expertise. Software updates can’t handle it alone.
But is it all lost? No, you actually have three ways to solve it.
Build it internally. Hire full-time SAM specialists, not part-time resources borrowed from existing teams. Actual specialists who know Microsoft licensing deeply and can dedicate their time to it. Give them tools to work with, but accept that tools are starting points. Train them continuously as rules change. Accept this is a permanent function, not a project that ends. Time to competency for this role: 18 to 24 months minimum. Cost: $150K or more per person per year plus tool costs. Risk: the knowledge walks out the door when they leave, and you start again.
Work with independent experts. People who’ve seen hundreds of audits and know what auditors actually look for. Who can validate what your tools tell you and spot the errors before Microsoft does. Who can build defensible positions and handle the negotiations when findings come. Not your Microsoft partner, who has contractual obligations to report non-compliance and financial incentives to sell licences. Not your tool vendor’s consultants, who want you to keep using and buying more of their tool. Independent experts who owe nothing to anyone except you.
Keep doing what you’re doing. Trust the tool, hope for the best, discover in the next audit that hope isn’t a strategy. The average audit settlement we see ranges from $500K to $5M. Your tool cost $180K. The maths doesn’t work in your favour. Well, that’s not really an option compared to the first two, is it?
What we’re not saying: throw away your tool. Don’t do that. Keep it, use it, and fine-tune it. Tools are good at what they do. We’re saying something different: stop thinking the tool alone makes you audit-ready. It doesn’t. It never did.
The Choice in Front of You
You bought audit defence. You got a compliance calculator. Now you know the difference.
Dozens of companies discovered this gap during actual audits over recent years. That’s an expensive way to learn a lesson. You can learn it now, before the letter arrives.
The tool isn’t the problem. Thinking your tool protects you in audits is the problem.
Microsoft audits are commercial negotiations about technical non-compliance. You need technical data, and your tool provides that. But you also need understanding of Microsoft’s actual licensing rules, not simplified versions. You need knowledge of how auditors interpret those rules in practice. You need ability to defend positions when challenged with evidence and precedent. You need strategic thinking about what to provide, when to provide it, and how to position it. You need experience with how these negotiations actually work.
Your tool can’t provide any of this. This isn’t a technology problem that technology solves.
The companies who get through Microsoft audits successfully don’t have better technology than you do. What they have is expertise that knows what the tools can’t tell them. That expertise either exists in your team already, or you need to bring it in. No technology solves this. No product delivers it. No vendor can promise it.
You can keep believing the tool protects you. Many organisations do, until Microsoft audits them and they discover it doesn’t. Or you can accept that audit defence isn’t something you buy once and forget about.
Your choice. But you’re making it now with better information than you had when you bought the tool.
That’s what we owe you. The truth about what actually works. Not what you wanted to hear, but what you need to know.
The $200K surprise isn’t that tools don’t work. It’s that tools alone aren’t enough. They’re not. They never were. Every vendor who transformed their business model to include consulting services knows this. They employ the experts now because tools need experts.
You didn’t buy the wrong thing. You bought a foundation and were told it was complete. Now you know the difference.