Kleos makes payroll disappear — Subscope made their unused software disappear
Challenge
Kleos is a global teams management platform: companies hire and pay contractors in 242 locations through one B2B invoice, with compliant contracts and IP assignment built in. Their pitch to customers is simple — “we make payroll disappear.” The entire back office, without the back office.
Internally, though, Kleos had the same invisible back-office problem every scaling company gets — just with software instead of payroll. Fifty people across engineering, compliance, support, and sales, each team picking its own tools. Seats were added for new hires and projects, but almost never removed.
Nobody knew which of those licenses were actually being used. Paying for a seat is visible in the books; the fact that nobody has opened the app in two months is not.
Approach
Kleos connected Subscope and turned on the one feature that mattered most for a team this size: Software usage tracking.
Instead of guessing from invoices, Subscope showed actual activity — which apps each team member opens, how often, and which seats had been idle for weeks. Data came from direct API connections to their software and the Subscope Chrome extension, with no manual surveys and no spreadsheets.
The first usage report was uncomfortable in the best way:
- 60+ apps in use across the company — about a third more than anyone expected
- 14 paid seats with zero activity in the previous 45 days
- 3 pairs of tools doing the same job in different teams
- Several annual renewals approaching for software with single-digit usage
Solution
With activity data in front of them, decisions that used to take a meeting now took a minute:
- Idle seats were reclaimed or downgraded before the next billing cycle
- Duplicate tools were consolidated to one vendor per job
- Renewal alerts now arrive weeks ahead, with usage numbers attached — so every renewal is a decision, not a default
- Offboarding mirrors what Kleos preaches in payroll: when someone rolls off the team, their licenses are revoked the same day
The result: monthly SaaS spend down 23% in the first month, with no debates about “who needs what” — the usage data answers that question by itself.
Kleos simplifies how companies work with people. Subscope did the same for how Kleos works with software.
Results
What’s next
Next on Kleos's list:
- department-level spend views for finance,
- employee self-onboarding to speed up onboarding process,
- using per-vendor usage history to negotiate upcoming annual renewals.
