Minus 50 percent.In two months.
Titlis and Zation cut recurring Microsoft licence cost by around 50 percent in two months. With a FinOps analysis, a user profiling framework built together, and a renegotiated CSP contract.
Success Story · July 2026
On the mountain since 1911.
Titlis BergbahnenEngelberg, Obwalden
From Engelberg, Titlis Bergbahnen opens up the Titlis, the only glacier in central Switzerland. The roots go back to 1911, the company in its present form was created in 1982 and is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange.
Since 1992 the Rotair, the world's first rotating cable car, has carried guests to the summit, and the Titlis Cliff Walk at 3,041 metres is the highest suspension bridge in Europe. An operation that runs all year, for guests from around the world.
Every Microsoft estate drifts.
Licence cost quietly decouples from actual usage.
The animation starts as soon as it enters the view. Click to play it again.
Vendors and resellers follow a strategy of their own, and that strategy is not built to lower your cost. Annual price increases, forced bundles, changing SKUs and steadily growing licensing complexity push cost up by an average of around 15 percent every year. Opaque contract rules and dependencies make the picture even harder to read.
This is not an oversight by an IT team, it is how the market works. What is missing is the transparency and the tooling to see where money sits unused. That is exactly where the savings are, and they stay invisible without the right analysis.
Four steps, one cycle.
Grant access once
Titlis approved our enterprise app once, with selected Microsoft 365 Graph read permissions. Since then their people sign in with their existing Microsoft work account. We never need and never receive write access to customer data.
Analyze
The relevant data flows into the Zation FinOps platform and is analyzed systematically: inventory, usage, assignment and contract in one picture.
Optimize
Numbers turn into decisions. Licence tiers follow actual usage, assignment gets automated, and terms go under review.
Manage
The state you reach stays in place instead of drifting apart after the project. The platform carries day to day operations.
Granting access itself took a few minutes.
Three levers at once.
User profiling
Titlis knows its own roles and ways of working best. Out of that we built a tailored profiling framework with clear licence groups together.
Automated assignment
A PowerShell script now handles licence assignment reliably and consistently. It saves time and all but eliminates errors.
Commercial benchmarking
Part of every optimization project. The findings secured Titlis better terms in the CSP contract directly.
Most of the collaboration ran through Teams: fast, direct and light on resources for both sides. Titlis decided quickly and shared the information openly. That is what made the pace possible.
The result in one number.
Within two months Titlis cut recurring Microsoft licence cost by around 50 percent. That was possible through the combination of technical cleanup, automation and commercial contract optimization, and through a team at Titlis that pulled with us.
Above our own average
Across more than 200 optimization projects we achieve around 30 percent savings on average. Titlis is well above that, because all three levers were allowed instead of just one.
What the people involved say.
Zation cut our cost substantially, and in a very short time. That surprised us positively. On top of that, we clearly gained transparency.
Cost was only part of the win. We also got a proper cleanup, real standardization and a new awareness across the team. In Zation we have a competent partner who genuinely moves us forward in the Microsoft space.
A great project, and proof that this works just as well in the Microsoft business segment for small and mid sized companies. As a big fan of Titlis Bergbahnen and a passionate skier, it was close to my heart as well.
After the project it continues.
Continuous usage tracking
Titlis has used the FinOps platform for cost control ever since and has full transparency over its own Microsoft estate at any time.
Direct access
When something is unclear, a Zation consultant is available directly.
Proactive before renewal
Before the contract comes up for renewal we reach out to Titlis and review terms and savings potential again.
What does this look like in your estate?
The path is the same as it was for Titlis: grant access, analyze, optimize, manage. After the first step you already know where your money sits.