Cost discipline isn't a spreadsheet exercise — it's an operating-model question. You can't cut what you don't understand, and most firms don't actually know how they leverage their vendors versus their own systems. This one didn't either. So we found out.

01The challenge: a high cost basis nobody could fully explain

A global firm spanning investment banking, wealth management, and prime brokerage ran on a disparate operating platform that drove a high cost basis. They didn't fully understand how they were really leveraging external vendors versus internal systems. There was no formal vendor-management process, contracts were outdated, and the firm had no reference point for how its costs compared to the market. Cost was leaking in places no one could see.

02What we did: map it, benchmark it, reset it

We ran a high-level strategic assessment built on subject-matter experts, market knowledge, a strategic peer comparison, and over 50 interviews and work sessions:

• Built a detailed view of the operating and technology platform — architecture, workflow, processes, and vendor relationships.
• Delineated what was performed internally versus externally, and reconciled functions leveraged against amounts actually invoiced.
• Ran a vendor assessment — contract, SLA, and market-pricing benchmarking — to expose where the firm sat against the market.
• Optimized transaction-submission processes to cut billable vendor transaction counts.
• Delivered a vendor-management framework — governance, contract, pricing, and performance — and a reconciliation tool for actual versus invoiced counts.
• Handed back an opportunity menu of optimization and savings moves, with the benchmark to defend each renegotiation.

The savings weren't hiding in one big line. They were spread across manual workflows, over-counted vendor transactions, and contracts that had drifted years past market.

03The outcome: $77M in annual savings

Implementing the recommended solutions delivered over $77 million in annual savings. The firm came away with a unified vendor-management strategy, tools to reconcile what it was actually billed, and a market benchmark that turned every contract renewal into a negotiation it could win.

Why this matters today

The pressure that drove this engagement is now structural. Vendor and SaaS sprawl has multiplied, transaction-based billing models reward firms that actually meter their usage, and — with capital easing but discipline sticking — boards expect cost to be managed as rigorously in good markets as in bad. Returns are realized in the business, not in memos — and the fastest ones are still sitting in a vendor stack no one has mapped.