How many software vendors does a typical dealership use?

Build the inventory from the invoices

Start from accounts payable rather than from memory or the IT list. Every recurring payment becomes a row: product, provider, owner, renewal date, notice window, annual cost, systems it connects to.

Look for overlap, not just cost

Overlap is the expensive problem. Two products doing the same job produce duplicate data entry, an unclear source of truth and staff who trust neither. Consolidation decisions should start from workflow, not from price.

Name an owner for each row

A contract with no internal owner does not get reviewed, does not get renegotiated and renews automatically. Assigning an owner is the cheapest control available.

Then rank by switching cost

Sort the inventory by how hard each system would be to replace. That ranking tells you where to invest diligence and where a change is low risk.

What to record for each product

For every row in the inventory, note the product and provider, its purpose, the department that uses it, the internal owner, the contract start and renewal dates, the notice window, annual cost, the systems it connects to and whether it holds customer data. That last column matters for privacy and security reviews. A complete inventory can be built in a few hours from accounts payable and is useful for years.

Acting on the findings

Sort the inventory by renewal date and start with the next six months. For each, decide to renew, renegotiate, replace or retire, and record why.

Where two tools overlap, choose the one that fits the workflow and is easier to integrate, and set a date to retire the other. Small, dated decisions avoid the paralysis that a large consolidation plan can cause.

Common mistakes with the inventory

Building it from memory, leaving out small subscriptions, not recording notice windows and treating it as a one-off are the usual problems. Another is forgetting products bought by individual departments on a card. Update the list when a new tool is bought, and review it every quarter with department heads so ownership stays current.

Questions to ask department heads

Which tools do you log into each week? Which ones do you avoid and why?

What do you do outside the system because it does not fit? Which tools could you not work without?

What did you buy last year on your own? The answers often reveal tools missing from accounts payable and workarounds worth fixing.