How Smallstep Gained Visibility into $3M in Spend Across 7 Departments and 175+ Vendors
As Smallstep’s platform matured, teams across the company adopted and relied on dozens of tools to run infrastructure, support development, and manage day-to-day operations. But for Cass Fultz, Head of Operations at Smallstep, each new tool introduced another set of pricing terms, renewal dates, and internal owners to track.
To stay organized, she built a detailed map of every tool the company used and how they all connected. While the visual helped her understand the tool ecosystem, it still left many operational questions unanswered. “The diagram didn’t tell me what we were paying for each tool or give me visibility into our contracts,” Cass explains.
The Problem
“Stackpack gave us a level of visibility and control we simply didn’t have before. Looking back, I don’t know how we were managing vendor oversight without a tool like this.”
Manual Vendor Tracking Put Contract and Spend Visibility at Risk
Like many fast-growing companies, Smallstep initially relied on spreadsheets, internal tools, and calendar reminders to manage vendor contracts and renewals. That approach worked when the vendor footprint was smaller. But as the company scaled and the number of vendors grew, those manual systems simply couldn’t keep up.
As Smallstep’s vendor ecosystem expanded, with spend ranging from small monthly subscriptions to high-value contracts and variable ad programs, the lean operations team found its existing processes increasingly difficult to manage. Without a centralized system tying everything together, there was no clear way to keep every contract, owner, and renewal date in sync or quickly evaluate whether certain tools and programs were delivering value.
“Sometimes, we were making decisions without the full picture,” Cass explains. “And when something like an auto-renewal slipped by, we might get stuck spending an extra $16,000 on a tool we didn't need.”
Smallstep recognized that the company had reached the limits of what manual systems could support. The team needed a more centralized way to manage vendor contracts, spend visibility, and renewals as the business continued to scale.
After evaluating both homegrown approaches and dedicated tooling, Smallstep moved quickly when introduced to Stackpack because it aligned closely with the operational visibility the team was looking for.
“We had the information, but it lived across too many different systems to work with efficiently. We needed a centralized way to see contracts, spend, and renewals together without relying on manual effort.”
The Solution
Always-on Vendor Intelligence Simplifies Tool and Spend Management
Stackpack kicked off onboarding by connecting to Smallstep’s accounting software. Even with a third-party finance team involved, implementation was straightforward and quickly surfaced existing subscriptions and vendor data in a single place.
Once that connection was live, the platform surfaced existing subscriptions and organized vendor data into a single, unified view, replacing Smallstep's web of spreadsheets, internal notes, and calendar reminders. “Right away, we were on the same wavelength,” Cass says. “Their team knew exactly what I needed as an operations person.”
Within days, the operations team had a centralized view of every vendor, subscription, and line item that had previously lived across disconnected systems. Cass could now see exactly what every tool cost, who owned it, and when it renewed in a single place instead of piecing that information together across teams and manual workflows.
Behind the scenes, Stackpack’s AI reads vendor contracts, extracts key terms, and maps spend details to each vendor automatically, reducing the need for the operations team to search through PDFs, email threads, and internal notes to find critical information.
That same visibility extends across departments, bringing previously siloed data into a single, coherent view. Because all vendor data and spend details flow through the platform, the team can review everything from fixed subscriptions to variable programs in one place. This makes it easier to spot duplicate tools, flag underused vendors, and confirm whether usage-based spend is worth the investment.
With that foundation in place, last-minute renewal management has shifted to proactive operational planning. Stackpack flags upcoming renewals months in advance, giving each vendor owner time to renew, renegotiate, or turn off tools before auto-renewals kick in.
Together, these changes give Smallstep a dependable operating rhythm for vendor management. Spend, ownership, and contracts all stay under control — even as the stack grows.
“Things just run on autopilot now. I've freed up so much brain space not having to think through every single detail for all the tools in our stack.”
The Outcome
Operational Clarity Replaces Guesswork Across Every Vendor Relationship
Partnering with Stackpack gave Smallstep centralized visibility into vendor contracts, spend, and renewals — turning vendor management into a more proactive and operationally scalable process across the business.
The impact:
- 175+ vendors under centralized spend and contract visibility
- $3M in spend visibility across 7 departments
- 3-month advance renewal notice for contract deadlines, giving vendor owners time to renew, renegotiate, or turn off tools before auto-renewals kick in
That visibility has already helped the team move faster and make better-informed operational decisions. When Stackpack flagged a significant month-over-month increase in LinkedIn spend, the team was able to quickly verify the change against an approved budget instead of manually piecing the data together across systems.
In another instance, an alert tied to an upcoming $12K renewal revealed that the contractual window to make changes closed earlier than expected, giving the team enough time to contact the vendor and renegotiate terms before the deadline passed.
Looking ahead, Smallstep plans to continue expanding how the team uses Stackpack’s AI capabilities, including the built-in chat feature that allows the operations team to quickly pull contract details, vendor information, and spend data directly from the platform.
“With Stackpack, we finally have a clear picture of today’s vendors and a plan for tomorrow’s growth. It’s the system we rely on to manage our vendor ecosystem as we scale.”
About Smallstep
Smallstep is a Series A cybersecurity company trusted by enterprises like Anduril, Booking.com, and Sunday Robotics to secure infrastructure, devices, and AI systems. The company helps organizations continuously verify that only trusted users, devices, and workloads can access sensitive systems and data.