Microsoft 365 licence review for UK SMBs
A free 90-minute Microsoft 365 licence review by a Microsoft Direct CSP partner. Identify over-licensing, right-size your tenant, and walk away with a one-page summary you can take to your board.
Book your free Microsoft 365 licence review
Or call 020 7123 4910 and ask for the licensing team.
Microsoft Direct CSP · Microsoft Support Service Designation · Free licence review
What a Microsoft 365 licence review actually does
A Microsoft 365 licence review is a structured audit of every Microsoft 365 subscription on your tenant against what your staff actually use. It compares your current SKU mix (E3, E5, Business Premium, Business Standard, F3, and the family of add-ons such as Defender for Office 365 Plan 2, Entra ID P1 or P2, Intune, and Purview) to the activity logs and the work patterns of the people sitting at those licences. The output is a short, written verdict on three things: where you are over-licensed and can save money straight away, where you are under-licensed and exposing the business to a control or productivity gap, and where the SKU mix is right but the assignment is wrong.
Most SMBs we review are paying for at least one of three patterns: legacy licences attached to leavers, premium SKUs assigned by job title rather than by use, and add-ons that duplicate features already in the base licence. The savings are rarely dramatic on a per-user basis, but at 50 to 250 users the annual figure is usually material.
A Microsoft 365 licence review is also the moment to surface security and governance issues that licensing alone cannot fix. We include a free read on Microsoft Defender, Purview, Conditional Access, and Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness as part of the review, so the verdict you receive is not just a cost-reduction note.
How much could you save?
We will not put a fixed percentage in writing because the answer depends entirely on what you have today. What we can say from running these reviews is that most of the tenants we look at are over-licensed somewhere, and where that is the case the saving is usually material rather than marginal.
Two patterns drive most of the saving. First, the silent drift of E5 and Business Premium licences allocated to people who do not use the features (no advanced threat protection telemetry, no Power BI usage, no Defender for Identity events). Second, add-on licences purchased to fix a problem that was later solved by a base SKU upgrade, then never removed. Both are genuinely common and both are easy to fix once they are visible.
If your annual Microsoft 365 spend is over £100,000, the review almost always pays for itself many times over. Because it is free of charge, the financial logic is asymmetric: at worst we confirm you are correctly licensed and you can take that confirmation to your board.
What we look at in your Microsoft 365 tenant
We examine the following, in this order, during the review.
Subscription and SKU inventory. Every active Microsoft 365 subscription on your tenant, by SKU, by quantity, by renewal date, and by current licensed user. Cross-checked against the Microsoft 365 admin center and against your CSP or Enterprise Agreement billing data.
Assignment hygiene. Licences attached to disabled or leaver accounts. Service accounts on full SKUs that should be on F1, F3, or unlicensed. Shared mailboxes with paid licences that no longer need them. Group-based licensing rules that have drifted from the original intent.
Feature usage. Activity data from the Microsoft 365 admin center on Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Exchange, and Power Platform. Defender for Office 365 telemetry. Defender for Endpoint and Defender for Identity coverage versus paid SKU. Power BI usage versus assigned Pro or Premium per User SKU.
Security and governance baseline. Conditional Access policy coverage. MFA enforcement. Self-service password reset. Sign-in risk. Privileged role assignment. Purview retention and DLP policy presence. Where these gaps exist, we will flag them and recommend whether the fix is included in your existing licence or requires a step up.
Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness. Copilot is a high-cost-per-user add-on (currently £24.70 per user per month for Copilot for Microsoft 365 in the UK). We assess whether your tenant meets the prerequisites and whether your data sharing model is ready, so you do not buy Copilot only to discover that SharePoint oversharing makes a deployment unsafe. This is part of the free review and links directly into our AI consultancy work for clients who want to take Copilot further.
Renewal and commercial structure. Whether your renewal cadence is annual, monthly, or three-year, and whether the structure still fits the headcount profile of the business. Often the renewal model itself is the saving, before any SKU change.
How the review works (90 minutes, no obligation)
The review is a single 90-minute working session, in person at your office, at our Holborn office, or by Microsoft Teams. Two days before the call, we send a short data request: read-only access to billing and licence data in your Microsoft 365 admin center, plus a one-page pre-read so we are not starting cold.
During the session we walk through the inventory with your team, surface the obvious findings, and capture the questions we cannot answer in the meeting itself. Within five working days you receive the one-page written verdict. It is calibrated for board pack inclusion: the headline saving (or confirmation that you are correctly licensed), the three highest-priority changes, and the indicative effort to make each change.
If you ask us to implement any of the findings, we will quote separately. If you do not, the engagement ends there and there is no second call from a salesperson.
Why a Microsoft Direct CSP partner does this better
Most UK SMBs buy Microsoft 365 through an Indirect reseller (a CSP partner who buys from a wholesaler such as Pax8, TD SYNNEX, or Crayon, and resells to you). Lanmark is a Microsoft Direct Cloud Solution Provider, which means we hold the contract directly with Microsoft. In plain English: we buy from Microsoft, not through a middleman, and we are accountable to Microsoft for the licensing recommendations we make. The same accountability runs through our managed IT services in London, where licensing is administered as part of the monthly service rather than billed as a separate consultancy exercise.
That matters for a licence review in three specific ways. First, we see the full price book and can recommend SKU changes a wholesaler-tier reseller may not even know exist. Second, we are bound by Microsoft Partner programme conduct rules that prohibit selling unnecessary licences. Third, we hold Microsoft’s Support Service Designation, an accreditation held by only a handful of companies worldwide, which requires demonstrated competence across the Microsoft 365 estate. Plain English: we have to know our subject matter cold to keep the badge.
A genuine independent licence review by a Direct CSP looks different from a reseller licence review. The reseller has an incentive to keep your subscription complex; we do not.
Who this is for
This review is calibrated for UK SMBs in the 20 to 500 user range who are already on Microsoft 365 and want to know whether the spend is right. Common trigger events:
The annual budget cycle, where IT spend is being scrutinised and the FD wants a credible second opinion on the Microsoft line. The tenant renewal date, where the FD or Operations Director suspects the existing reseller is no longer the right partner. A board ask to identify cost savings without cutting headcount. A pending Copilot rollout, where the licensing prerequisites are not well understood.
We work with professional services firms (law, accountancy, surveying, consultancy), financial services firms (wealth managers, IFAs, fund administrators), retail head offices, operations-led businesses, and education and not-for-profit. The review is conducted in language that an FD will follow, not technical Microsoft licensing jargon.
What you walk away with
A one-page written summary that contains:
The current Microsoft 365 spend by SKU, simply presented. The headline saving (or a clear statement that no saving is available). The three highest-priority changes ranked by speed of saving and ease of implementation. The Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness verdict, as a yes, not yet, or no with the reason. The two or three security and governance gaps the review surfaced, with whether they are licensed and just unconfigured, or genuinely require a step up. An indicative effort and cost line for each recommended change.
You can hand this to your board as it stands. Most of our clients do.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Microsoft 365 licence review really free? Yes. There is no charge for the 90-minute session, the read-through of your tenant, or the one-page written verdict. If we find you are correctly licensed, the summary will say so and the engagement ends.
How long does it take and does it disrupt the team? The session itself is 90 minutes. We need read-only access to billing and licence data in your Microsoft 365 admin center two days before the call, which takes about ten minutes to set up. The written verdict follows within five working days. There is no impact on staff productivity at any point.
What is the catch? There is no catch. Microsoft 365 licence reviews are one of the lowest-friction ways for an SMB to meet a Microsoft Direct CSP partner. Some of the FDs we run reviews for ask us to implement the findings or to take over their managed IT support afterwards. Many take the savings and stay where they are. Both outcomes are fine.
Will Lanmark recommend cheaper SKUs or only upsells? Both, where the evidence supports it. The review is honest. If we recommend a step up (for example, Business Premium where you are running Business Standard plus Defender add-ons that duplicate features), we will explain why. If we recommend a step down (for example, E3 where E5 features are unused), we will explain that too. The review’s value is in the impartiality.
What if we are happy with our current reseller? Can we still take the review? Yes. Many of the FDs who book our review have no intention of changing reseller. We are not bound by an exclusivity clause and you do not have to move your tenant to Lanmark to receive the verdict. If you want to apply our findings yourself, or ask your existing reseller to apply them, that is your decision.
How does the review work alongside our Enterprise Agreement? If you are on a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA), the licence review still runs and we will identify whether EA is still the right structure for you. EA is rarely the right model for SMBs under 250 users on the new pricing, and a CSP-based renewal will often be cheaper. If you are on an EA today and approaching renewal, the review is the right preparation. We have a dedicated comparison piece on Microsoft Enterprise Agreement vs CSP that we will share if relevant.
Will the review identify security or governance gaps as well as cost savings? Yes. Conditional Access coverage, MFA, Privileged Identity Management, Purview retention, Defender posture, and Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness are all included. Where the gaps are licensing-related, we will say so. Where they are configuration-only, we will say that too. If you want us to fix any of the gaps, we will quote separately for the work; if you do not, the verdict is yours to take elsewhere.
Can the review cover Microsoft 365 Copilot specifically? Yes, and we recommend it. Copilot is the single highest-cost-per-user add-on in the Microsoft 365 family at the moment, and the prerequisites are easy to misjudge. The review tells you whether your tenant is ready, what the cleanest path to a controlled pilot looks like, and whether the per-user spread you are considering is realistic. For SMBs going further with AI, we link this conversation into our broader AI consultancy work.
How quickly can we book? Most reviews are scheduled within five working days. Use the form below or call 020 7123 4910 and ask for the licensing team.
Book your free Microsoft 365 licence review
Two ways to start.
Option 1: Book the conversation. Use the contact form on our contact page and we will be in touch within one working day to schedule the 90 minutes. Most reviews are run within the same working week.
Option 2: Pick up the phone. Call 020 7123 4910 and ask for the licensing team.
Either way, the verdict is yours, the review is free, and the only follow-up is the one you ask for.