Practical starting points for conversations about your costs, operations, data-licensing opportunities, and service providers.
IT spending checklist
Before your next software renewal.
Use this checklist to prepare a focused conversation with your IT team, current provider, or an independent specialist.
What are we paying for?
Create a simple inventory of subscriptions, license counts, renewal dates, and service owners. Include software paid for outside the central IT budget.
What is actually being used?
Compare purchased seats with current users and available usage reports. Ask the service owner to confirm business needs before removing access or canceling anything.
Where do services overlap?
Identify tools that appear to solve the same problem. Understand why each team uses them and what a change would affect.
What would changing the service cost?
Ask about migration work, training, integrations, contract terms, and potential disruption. Compare the total effort, not just the subscription price.
What outcome are we looking for?
Agree on the goal: lower spend, more reliable support, simpler processes, or a combination. Decide how you would measure improvement.
Bring a spending summary and your questions to the conversation. Do not share passwords, account credentials, or confidential system details in an initial inquiry.
What makes business data valuable to a potential licensee?
Begin with the question the information could help answer. Use these five prompts to prepare for an opportunity assessment.
What useful question could it answer?
Describe a possible business use, such as understanding demand, improving a workflow, or evaluating a market. Be specific about who might use the information and why.
What makes the information distinctive?
Identify the industry, geography, detail, or history it covers. Explain how it is collected and what would be difficult to reproduce from other sources.
How complete and consistent is it?
Record the time period, update frequency, available fields, and known gaps. A clear description of limitations helps a potential licensee assess fit.
How could it be made usable?
Describe the current format and the work needed to prepare it for a defined purpose. Consider whether the opportunity involves a one-time dataset or regularly updated information.
What needs review before any external use?
Identify who will review ownership, relevant contracts, permissions, privacy requirements, and use restrictions. Establish what can be discussed or shared before engaging potential licensees.
Start with a short description of the information and your objectives. An initial CSUITE inquiry needs no raw records, personal details about individuals in the data, or confidential files. Potential value and buyer interest must be assessed for the particular opportunity.
Prepare a shared agenda for finance, HR, and your benefits advisers. Start with the business question and the employee experience.
Define what needs to improve.
Is the concern total spending, employee contributions, administration, service quality, or access to care? Separate the issues so each can be evaluated.
Start with a consistent baseline.
Use aggregate enrollment, plan information, and spending summaries for the same period. Ask your existing advisers to explain what each figure includes.
Understand the people affected.
Discuss how any option could affect employees, dependents, and the HR team. Identify communication and support needs early.
Ask how a proposal will be measured.
Clarify the assumptions, included fees, expected implementation effort, and the way actual results would be compared with the baseline.
Identify who needs to review it.
Bring finance, HR, existing advisers, and relevant specialists into the decision. Establish the necessary reviews and approvals before changing a program.
This guide prepares a discussion; it does not recommend a plan change or replace professional benefits, legal, or tax advice. Individual medical records are not needed for an initial CSUITE inquiry.
A useful first meeting should make it easier to understand both the provider’s capabilities and your next decision.
Have they solved a similar problem?
Ask about relevant industries, company sizes, and comparable work. Look for examples that explain the starting problem and the provider’s actual role.
Who will do the work?
Understand the delivery team, the main point of contact, and whether subcontractors will be involved.
What is included?
Ask for clear deliverables, responsibilities, timing, fees, and exclusions. Agree on how additional work or changes would be handled.
How will we know it is working?
Define a realistic outcome and the evidence needed to assess it. Distinguish deliverables the provider controls from results that depend on other factors.
What happens after the project?
Discuss support, handover, ownership of work, access to your information, renewal terms, and how the relationship can end.
You choose whether to hire a provider. Agree service terms directly and take the time you need to assess the fit.