I uncover how even well-run companies silently hemorrhage money through unused tools, forgotten subscriptions, and unchecked vendor contracts. I introduce Value Sponsorship—a discipline that demands each cost have an accountable owner who actively justifies its worth. Through Kaamfu’s Work Control System, this principle becomes operationalized, ensuring that every dollar spent has a champion and purpose. I explain how this system evolved from a manual practice to a deeply integrated feature that brings clarity and rigor to everyday operations. The goal is not micromanagement, but to create a culture where nothing is invisible and waste can’t hide.
In every growing company, there’s a point when costs start to slip through the cracks. A tool gets purchased for a one-off project and is never canceled. A contractor quietly stops delivering value but remains on the payroll. A team signs up for a platform, uses it for a week, then forgets about it—but the invoice keeps arriving. Over time, this invisible drag compounds.
And it’s not just a theoretical problem. A recent study found that nearly 49% of SaaS licenses go unused, costing companies approximately $5,600 per employee per year on idle tools (Productiv, 2021). Another analysis revealed that 50% of enterprises waste over 10% of their budgets on underutilized software, SaaS, and cloud infrastructure (Flexera, 2023). Even lean startups aren’t immune—it’s not unusual to see 5-10% of monthly spend vanish into unused, underperforming, or unaccountable resources.
That’s why I introduced a principle we call Value Sponsorship—a core component of the Work Control System (WCS), the software category we’re building at Kaamfu. If you think of a CRM as a way to manage relationships and an ERP as a way to manage inventory, then a WCS is how you manage work itself. It brings discipline, clarity, and accountability to the moving parts of an organization—especially the ones that cost money.
Value Sponsorship is a simple idea with powerful implications: everything that costs the company money must have a sponsor. That means every employee, every contractor, every subscription, every lease, every retainer, and every service provider. If a cost exists, someone must explicitly vouch for its value on a regular cadence—usually weekly. No sponsor? It’s flagged. No approval? It’s on the chopping block.
At its heart, this isn’t about micromanagement. It’s about control. In a healthy organization, there should be no orphaned costs. Every recurring expense should live in a shared space, where it’s tied to a sponsor, tagged by department or function, and actively reviewed. In our WCS, this lives in a simple chat-first board we call the Value Sponsorship Space. Each item is represented as an entry—think of it like a card—with the sponsor’s name, the cost, the context, and links to related performance signals like reminders, outcomes, and work scores.
The review process is conversational and lightweight. It might look like a simple ping: “<SPONSORSHIP APPROVAL REQUIRED: John needs to confirm whether LinkedIn Sales Navigator is approved for one more period>”
If the sponsor doesn’t respond, the system escalates or flags the item. If they do respond, they must provide a quick justification: Are we still using it? Is it delivering value? Is there a better or cheaper alternative? If not, the tool gets paused, replaced, or cut. In this way, the organization keeps its operating environment clean—no different than regularly checking if your car has a fuel leak.
There’s also a cultural benefit. Value Sponsorship puts real accountability back on supervisors and managers. If someone is consistently vouching for non-performers—whether people or tools—it raises questions about their judgment. On the other hand, when managers actively review and trim unnecessary costs, it signals clarity, ownership, and alignment with the company’s financial discipline.
When I first introduced this system, I managed it manually—creating boards by department, tracking approvals, and tagging sponsors. It worked for a while, but without automation and reminder flows, it became a hassle. The moment we stopped enforcing it, waste started creeping back in. That’s the nature of organizations: left alone, they bloat. Without an explicit mechanism for control, even the best teams accumulate drag.
That’s why we are making Value Sponsorship a native component of the Work Control System. As we scale, it will integrate directly into conversations, task threads, worker reviews, and financial dashboards. Eventually, it will plug into cost centers and generate automatic termination proposals for underperforming spend. But in the beginning, it’s just a simple discipline: every cost has an owner, and every owner answers for the value.
If you’re building a high-performance company, this is non-optional. Waste is not just financial—it’s cultural. It creates confusion, hides underperformance, and erodes clarity. Value Sponsorship restores it. Because in a Work Control System, nothing should be invisible—and nothing should be free of responsibility.
This is one of the many features we’re building directly into Kaamfu’s Work Control System—so every dollar, person, and platform in your business stays accountable, visible, and value-driven.
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