What this costs, before you ask.
Most firms in this market will not give you a number until you have sat through a call. That is a choice about their sales process, not about the complexity of the work.
You should be able to work out on a Tuesday afternoon whether this is affordable, without booking anything. So here are the numbers.
The four engagements
Fixed fee, agreed before we start, invoiced on completion.
Cloud Cost Baseline →
Full inventory of your cloud estate, allocation by team and product, and savings ranked by annual value against days of effort.
AI Spend Review →
Every AI cost line across ten classes, from model tokens to document processing to idle GPU, attributed to a team and a product.
Software and Subscription Audit →
Every subscription including the ones nobody logged, licences paid against licences used, and a renewal calendar with dated actions.
All three, sequenced
One number across the whole estate. This is what a board actually asks for.
Scope and fee are set by the size of your estate. Smaller organisations pay less.
What sets the number
Four things move the fee, and all four are visible before we quote.
Tell us those four things and you get a fixed number, not a range.
What is in the fee, and what is not
Included in every engagement
- Every cost line reconciled against your actual invoices
- Spend attributed to teams and products, with confidence labelled where tagging is incomplete
- Savings identified, valued in pounds a year, and ranked against days of effort
- A 90-day plan with dated actions and named owners
- A 90-minute readout with finance and technology in the same room
- The underlying workings, so your team can check any figure
Never added afterwards
- Day rates on top
- Expenses
- Software, licences or tooling to buy
- A phase two
- A retainer, unless you ask for one later and separately
There is no version of this engagement where the invoice is larger than the number we agreed at the start.
What it costs you in time
Four conversations of an hour each, one data request, and the readout. That is the whole imposition.
Questions
"Why is this more than a two week AWS audit?"+
Because it is not a two week AWS audit. Cheaper fixed-price audits exist and some of them are good. They are typically single-provider, tool-driven, and they hand you a list of recommendations. This engagement covers every provider, attributes spend to the teams and products actually causing it, and ends with a plan rather than a list. If your estate is one AWS account and you want a technical sweep, buy the cheaper thing. It is the right purchase.
"Can we not do this ourselves for free?"+
Often, yes. The native tools are free and at most organisations at your scale they are sufficient. The report will say so if that is true. What the free tools do not do is allocate spend to teams when tagging is patchy, reconcile against your invoices, or resolve the argument between finance and engineering about whose number is right. The gap is rarely visibility. It is the process between detection and someone doing something.
"What if you find nothing?"+
Then the report says so, and you have an evidenced answer to a question you could not previously answer. That is a real outcome and we are paid the same for it. Be wary of anyone who promises savings before seeing your data.
"Can you guarantee a return?"+
No. Every figure in the report traces to a resource, a utilisation profile or a commitment record your own team can open and check. That is the assurance on offer, and it is a better one than a percentage promised in advance by someone who has not seen your bill.
"Is there a smaller version?"+
Talk to us. The fees above are floors for organisations of a certain size, and the scope is set by the estate, not by a package tier. If you are materially smaller than the organisations these numbers assume, say so on the call.
More at the questions page.
Independent means independent. Nivaan sells no cloud, no tooling, no licences and no managed services, and takes no commission from any vendor. What that means. A recommendation to keep doing exactly what you are doing is an outcome we are paid the same for.
Start with a question, not a contract.
Twenty minutes, no deck. Bring your last cloud invoice if you have it to hand.
Book a 20-minute call