How Dakota Financial Transformed from Technical Overspend to a Cost-Optimized, Modern Lending Operation

When a leading equipment lender's back-office transition created runaway IT costs, SmartCost stepped in. The result: six figures in savings and optimizations, compounding year over year.

Ross Bright

Procurement Expert

The Problem: Overspend on Key Technical Projects and SaaS

Dakota Financial, an industry-leading equipment finance company with multiple entities, had been oversold on a CRM implementation involving critical business processes.

Without dedicated in-house procurement or technical architecture expertise, the company overspent on both services and software — a common pattern for firms in the 100–300 FTE range.

Walking back costs on large, established vendor contracts and engagements presented a significant challenge.

The Approach: Fast Diagnosis, Targeted Execution

SmartCost completed a full spend diagnostic within one week, mapping all vendor relationships, contract terms, and category-level pricing against current market benchmarks.

Savings opportunities were prioritized across three buckets:

discount negotiation,
product optimization and reduction,
and cross-tool synergies.

Stakeholders were freed to focus on the business outcomes of key technical projects, without having to worry about cost overruns or scope creep — critical for a team already stretched thin.

A multi-year engagement structure created compounding savings opportunities across both the vendor portfolio and technical stack year over year.

The Result: Back on Track — and Built to Stay There

Achieved a mid-six-figure annualized savings target in year one.
Sustained similar results through years two and three of the partnership.
Dakota Financial now has the cost visibility, operational flexibility, and headroom to invest in new tools and capabilities — with IT spend near fully optimized.