Your Microsoft renewal starts six months before the quote arrives

A company that quietly shed a fifth of its staff in a reorganisation, but never adjusted its licenses, will see every one of those seats again in the renewal. Sign it, and you have bought the slack for three more years.

What to do, in order

1. Get the real usage picture. Not how many licenses are assigned, but how many are actually used. Those are different numbers, and the gap between them is where the money sits.
2. Clean up before the quote, not after. Remove leavers, downgrade over-licensed users, drop duplicate add-ons. Every seat you remove before the renewal is a seat you don't have to negotiate about.
3. Model the scenarios. What does the renewal cost as proposed? What does it cost restructured? Put the yearly totals side by side, so you walk in with your numbers, not just theirs.
4. Then negotiate. The first quote is an opening position. Treat it as one.

Why this is hard to do in-house

Not because it is difficult. Because it is nobody's job. IT owns the tenant, finance owns the invoice, and the renewal lands in the gap between them once every three years. That gap, once every three years, is exactly where a specialist earns their keep.

Related: Where unused Microsoft licenses hide · EA or CSP in 2026? Microsoft may decide before you do