About the customer

Sherborne Schools Group brings together a boys' school, a girls' school, a co-ed prep school and an all-girls' prep school around the small, bustling Dorset town of Sherborne. Sharing facilities and expertise across the group gives pupils access to a greater range of opportunities, from music and sport to drama and socials - a combination the group is proud of. Sherborne Schools Group offers a unique, transformative education for girls and boys aged 3 to 18.

The challenge

With Microsoft 365 and Azure estates supporting staff and students across the organisation, Sherborne Schools Group wanted to cut Microsoft licensing costs, improve governance, strengthen security, and get more value from its existing Microsoft investment. It's a familiar picture in education, where frequent student and staff turnover can leave a substantial chunk of budget tied up in dormant accounts and licences. Over time, Sherborne had built up thousands of Entra ID accounts as people moved through the organisation. Former students, departing teachers and temporary staff often left behind accounts, passwords, and licence assignments long after they'd gone - some retained well beyond what the group's own governance policies required. Every one of those accounts widened the potential attack surface, including the risk of leaked or compromised passwords being used to gain access. With limited internal capacity to review an estate that size, Sherborne needed a practical way to find what could safely be removed, cut security exposure, and uncover savings.

The solution

We combined Streamline 365 analytics, Microsoft licensing expertise, and hands-on remediation support to turn the findings into action:

• Sherborne's global administrator connected Streamline 365 to Microsoft Graph using two secure links, one for Azure and one for Microsoft 365 - a deliberately light-touch onboarding process.
• The platform ingested telemetry about the tenancy, rather than the organisation's internal content, building a detailed view of the environment over the following two weeks.
• The review surfaced dormant, "zombie" accounts still holding licences, giving the team a clear starting point for both optimisation and security improvement.
• We worked with Sherborne's IT and HR teams to validate every account, including those set up for temporary teaching staff, confirming what was still genuinely needed.
• Accounts no longer required were removed and Active Directory and Entra ID hygiene improved, without disrupting active users or removing anything still serving a legitimate purpose.
• Where Sherborne didn't have the internal capacity to work through the volume alone, our "Get to Good" service supplied the extra resource and Microsoft expertise to complete the clean-up.

Removing unnecessary identities and their associated passwords cut the number of potential access points and the risk posed by leaked or compromised credentials.

The Streamline 365 platform also gives a view of Copilot readiness and adoption, helping identify the users most likely to benefit from AI first - supporting a phased rollout rather than a broad deployment without clear demand. Where Copilot is already in use, the reporting drills down to show how people are using it and which Microsoft 365 applications, such as Teams, Word and PowerPoint, are seeing the most activity.

Alongside licensing optimisation, Streamline 365 gives visibility into the security estate, helping us make practical recommendations that support a more secure tenant and a higher Microsoft Secure Score. It also flags inactive licences, including those assigned to people who've never used them, or haven't for a long time, giving the organisation the evidence to decide whether a licence should be removed, reassigned, or whether the user simply needs training and a clearer, role-specific use case.

"Wavenet's team made the whole process straightforward, from the initial estate review right through to removing the accounts we no longer needed. Identifying an incredible £33,000 in savings means we can reinvest in more things that really matter to our pupils and staff."

Tim Farr, Director of ICT, Sherborne Schools Group

The results

• Estimated annual cost savings of £33,000 by removing unnecessary accounts and licence assignments.
• Released licences returned to the available pool and reassigned to new starters, helping the group avoid unnecessary purchases.
• A simpler onboarding process for new students, supported by a cleaner, better-managed account environment.
• Clearer visibility and tighter control across the Microsoft estate.
• A stronger security position, with fewer dormant accounts, passwords and potential access points exposed to credential leakage or compromise.
• A managed clean-up programme that provided practical support where the internal team didn't have the capacity to complete the work alone.
• A clearer basis for future decisions across the group's Azure and Microsoft 365 estate.

 "We knew we had accounts sitting there costing us money, but we didn't have the time or resource to get to the bottom of it ourselves. Wavenet gave us the visibility and the hands-on support to sort it, and a significant saving speaks for itself. We'd happily recommend them."

Tim Farr, Director of ICT, Sherborne Schools Group 

If you’d like to find out more about how Wavenet could help your business with the areas covered in this case study, then get in touch at enquiries@wavenet.co.uk.