Author: Mike Austin

Convincing your boss to bring on a team of people is no easy task. You want your boss to think you’re capable, that you’re the one-person army you promised when they hired you. However, if you’ve been handed the task of managing the software assets of your company’s entire software architecture, then you may have quickly discovered that you can’t, in fact, do it all. There’s no shame in that, especially if such a large job has been prioritized as little more than a side project to be put on top of all your other work, we’re only humans, after all. We get tired, burned-out and even the hardest working among us can’t take on the gigantic task of enterprise-level software asset management alone. So how do you convince your boss to expand and bring on a team?

At MetrixData 360, we have been in the software asset management game for many years now and we have seen the consequences of companies not having a proper SAM solution in place only to have a software audit hitting them like a shovel to the face.

In this article, we’ll break down how you can get your leadership to invest in software asset management, so the task doesn’t fall solely on your shoulders.

Convincing Your Boss a Software Asset Management Expert is Best

Software Asset Management is a relatively new industry, with few people understanding what it is and even less understanding the need to invest in it. So, if you want the help you require, you’ll need to convince your boss of  the value of bringing on software asset management expertise.

Let’s look at the various skills that are required for one person to successfully maintain their company’s software asset management strategy:

As you have probably figured out from this robust list, being an expert in any of these fields would be a full-time profession. The main appeal of seeking external SAM expertise is that you will instantly have a team of experts from the second they walk through the door.

Providing Options to Expanding Your SAM Team

It’s important that you don’t frame your proposal to your superiors as a win-lose/yes-no scenario, try to present options to your boss. When confronted with the situation of needing more manpower for your company’s software asset management goals, you have a few options at your disposal.

Hiring a Full-Time, In-House Team

Building an internal team is both costly to initiate and upkeep over the long term. You may also have trouble finding someone to fill the positions you need, you don’t have the time to train a new college grad and the seasoned veterans in the software asset management community know that they’re in high demand.

Hire External Experts

Hiring an expert offers the greatest long-term value with a reasonably smaller upfront cost since they offer a wide team of experts from the second they walk through the door and their specialization can be hand-tailored to your time frame and challenge.

While there is the issue of becoming dependent on the SAM experts’ services, MetrixData 360 counters such issues by offering training wherever possible to our customers.

Hybrid Solution

Some organizations may only need assistance in specific areas. Perhaps you already have a SAM tool installed and merely need someone to manage it or your company excels at day-to-day SAM but needs assistance in an audit. Either way, there are many SAM solutions to pick from that can accommodate your unique case.

Have a Clear Goal for Your Company’s SAM Journey

As you may have already discovered, Software Asset Management can prove to be completely overwhelming. The sheer amount of raw data your discovery tool can drag in is enough to discourage and confuse anyone whose brain isn’t built with a motherboard.
A fully optimized SAM solution also isn’t gained just with the mere installation of a discovery tool, although that is an important element to it. There are five stages of SAM maturity:

Chaotic:

Exactly what it sounds like. There’s no visibility into your software environment, it’s anyone’s guess how many licenses you use or need. When an audit comes, there’s a lot of scrambling and confusion, with only the auditor’s findings to go on — even though the chances are that you aren’t as far out of compliance as they say. The goal at this stage should just be to gain visibility.

Reactive:

At this stage, you have probably had a SAM tool installed and have some level of visibility, although software audits are still a matter of damage control and you still suffer from compliance issues. Now that you have visibility, your goal at this stage is to gain compliance.

Compliance Plus:

You’ve reached compliance, you have visibility into your software environment and problems found there are corrected before they are confronted in a software audit. From this stage your next goal is to start searching for saving opportunities.

Optimization:

At this stage you’ve reached peak optimization, you’ve made use of all the saving opportunities you’ve found. Now the next step is to solidify your efforts and to make sure the SAM processes you set in place outlast you by making them a part of your company’s regular procedures.

Amplified Value:

You’ve now achieved the ideal software environment. You have proper visibility and can handle a software audit like it is nothing. Your software environment is as efficient as possible, and you are only purchasing what you need. Best of all, the change will now be permanent for the betterment of your company in years to come.

Now, it’s important to understand that climbing up the SAM maturity ladder takes time and it may not be necessary for your company to reach the peak of SAM maturity. Assess where you want to go and where your company is heading and present your boss with a strategy to reach that goal.

Timing Your Request

Timing is everything. This is just a general rule, try not to come to your boss with your list of suggested SAM solutions when they are upset or frustrated, it might not bode well.
Take note of any of the more pressing issues that you are dealing with when it comes to your company’s software environment and frame your argument accordingly. If your company for instance, is dealing with an unpleasant software audit, then focus on more immediate and short-term SAM solutions as opposed to anything long-term. You’ll need to make a good impression.

Getting a Handle on Your Software Assets

With so many organizations new to the idea of SAM, a lot of them are still writing the rules on what that process should be like and how many people should be given the task. If you find yourself overworked and burnt out because you’re trying to run your organization’s SAM with a penny’s budget and a scant team (if you have a team at all), then you’ve come to the right place.

At MetrixData 360, we pride ourselves in being both educators (so you can learn and improve your skill after an engagement with us) and SAM experts whose whole process from start to finish involves saving you money. Given our wealth of SAM experience getting our clients to the point where they are compliant while also cutting down unnecessary costs, we can create an estimate of the potential savings and Return on Investments of SAM Solutions. If you’d like to learn more about the kinds of solutions MetrixData 360 offers and which one would be best for your organization, you can contact our director of client success and you can expect a response in less than 24 hours.

If a software audit was to come to your organization today, do you know what they would find? Or does the idea of a surprise audit fill you with dread and a general wave of anxiety over the unknown? Running an internal software audit can help ease that anxiety and give you peace of mind.

The majority of organizations do not have any sort of software asset management solution in place and, as a result, a software audit for them would only be a matter of damage control to stop the bleeding wherever possible.

Needless to say, this is not an ideal situation to be in. Especially in these hard times, the old solution of throwing money at a software audit until it goes away is a luxury few organizations can afford.

At MetrixData 360, we have seen companies struggle to get their software environments in order at the last minute. But it is possible to get out ahead of the game.

How do you maintain a clean software environment that is compliant and under control all year round and not just when the software auditors darken your door? Self-assessments and internal software audits are an excellent step to helping you get your software environment in order.

Why You Should Perform an Internal Software Audit

Internal audits may come across as though they are nitpicking and critiquing the work of the IT and procurement departments. While it’s natural to become defensive when an audit team takes a critical look at past behavior, an internal audit isn’t meant to be adversarial. In fact, the purpose of an internal audit or self-assessment is to safeguard the company, not pick it apart.

The actual reasons for performing these software audits can be broken down into two parts:

When Should You Perform an Internal Software Audit?

Timing is everything in the business world. When would be the perfect time to kick off an internal audit? If you are experiencing any of the following situations, then performing an internalized software audit is an excellent idea.

• Feeling the Threat of a Software Audit

While software audits are sometimes distributed at random, and every customer should anticipate a software audit of some kind from each of their vendors at least once a year, there can be a certain rhythm to them that we have noticed at MetrixData 360.

Some common factors that can catch the software vendor’s attention and may lead you to receive an audit sometime in the future are as follows:

Performing a self-assessment is the best way to prepare for a software audit if you feel like one is coming. Times being what they are, software audits are expected to only increase as software vendors are desperate to make up for their lost revenue, so if you aren’t in a software audit, you have a good chance of being in one soon.

• Going Through a Merger and Acquistion

The reason why this point gets its own section is because there are many reasons why it is a good idea to perform a self-assessment when your organization is going through a M&A and it’s not just because an M&A is the number one way to incite an audit (which it is!). Examining your own resources and the resources of the other company will give you better insight into what you are signing up for. You want to assume that the other organization is perfectly compliant and has their software licensing environment in order. However, we have often seen many organizations halt their M&A because they realize at the last second that the other organization has massive compliance issues that they will have to bear as well.

Their compliance issues become your compliance issues after the M&A is completed. Performing an internal self-assessment will not only give you the ability to check for compliance issues before the move, but it will also allow you to cross-compare which assets you can keep, which assets you can dispose of, and which assets won’t be able to move. It’s common after an M&A to have multiple pieces of software that serve the same function, and this duplication will only serve as a waste of money in your new software environment. This is the perfect opportunity to do a little spring cleaning and cut back any wastage.

It is also important to note that not every license can be transferred during an M&A, many organizations simply assume this without checking their licenses to determine if it is actually possible and they run the risk of being non-compliant. The last thing you want to do is be caught with compliance issues immediately after your M&A, it’s what the software vendors will be expecting and they will be knocking on your door with a software audit notice within 12 months of your finished M&A. You need to be ready for when that happens.

• A Contract Renewal or True-Up Is Upon You

Contract renewals or true-ups are your opportunity as a customer to alter your current agreements to better suit your business needs. But you won’t be able to make informed purchasing decisions if you don’t have the data to back it up.

A self-assessment can tell you which licenses you need more of, which you can cut back on and the numbers for each. Simply buying based on what you’ve purchased in the past or making a rough estimation will not allow you to purchase in the most cost-effective manner, and you’re bound to lose money either by purchasing too many licenses or too few, leaving you exposed to compliance issues.

The software vendors and their sales reps do not have your business’s interests in mind when they make recommendations to you. The sales rep’s goal is to increase your spending with them and to get you to buy from them exclusively. Ensuring that you are using what you buy and making sure that you get the most value out of the product is not on their agenda, so you shouldn’t rely on their advice alone.

Having your own data to back up your purchasing decisions will put you back in the driver’s seat during your next software contract negotiation.

• Are You Going through a Cloud Migration?

These days, it seems like everyone in the modern business world is either already in the Cloud or heading there. Transitioning to the Cloud can be an expensive endeavor, riddled with hidden fees and unexpected costs related to rampant spending and uncensored processes. When you move to the Cloud, it is important to prioritize and only take what can and should go with you. Unneeded licenses that are just acting as a leech to your budget and untransferable licenses that will only represent a compliance gap later should be left behind.

How to Perform a Software Audit Self-Assessment

Knowing that you need a software self-assessment is one thing, but knowing how to do it is quite another. Here are just a few elements that involved in creating a software self-assessment that will give results:

• Proactive Approach

It is easier to build something that is strong and stable in the first place than to go back later and fix it. Going back and reworking faulty systems is more likely to be met with resistance on the part of the IT team, who will have more work for them. Building controls upfront will help you to keep your software assets under control before they even grow into issues.

If you’d like to learn how you can create a proactive SAM approach, you can check out our article about growing in SAM Maturity.

• Informal Audit Activities

Internal audits can involve an extensive process of granular research that may be difficult to conduct on a regular basis. Allowing your team to perform informal, less rigorous research to simply scan an environment for red flags will greatly reduce the data you will have to sift through and will allow you to cover a lot more ground on a regular basis without losing steam.

Since you are not in an actual audit at the moment, there is only the need to keep a pulse on the health of your software environment, there’s no need to dig deep and cut into it just yet.

• Free-Flow of Information

In many organizations, there is a disconnect between the IT department and the procurement department; a communication breakdown between those who buy the software and those who use it. This is an inherent deterrent towards the goals of achieving a realized software asset management solution. Breaking down these walls by encouraging the free flow of information between departments is essential to ensuring a healthy software environment.

• Have the Right Team

Having a messy, unorganized and unmonitored software environment is a costly luxury and an unnecessary expense when compared to the savings that could be realized with a properly implemented software asset management solution. This is why performing internalized audits and self-assessments is a great way of realizing those risks before they grow into greater issues.

Who Should Act as Your Internal Software Audit Team?

When it comes to hiring a team, you can either create an internal SAM team or hire an external source.

At Metrixdata 360, we have helped many of our customers get their software licensing environment under control, cutting down your expenses to their smallest digit.
Our goal is to save you money and if you would like to learn more about the kind of services we offer, you can check out our self-assessment page.

Software Asset Management (SAM) is a set of business processes that are designed to maintain license compliance and spending efficiency regarding an organization’s software licenses. Buying a SAM tool to help gain visibility into your software licensing seems like a no-brainer, but not all SAM tools are created equally.

SAM done right can provide significant benefits to an organization, including:

If you have decided that your company would like to implement SAM, then your next logical step would be purchasing a SAM tool. The reasoning behind this is simple: modern software architecture is quite complicated. For mid-sized to large businesses, counting your licenses manually using nothing but a spreadsheet would produce enough data to drive anyone mad. To implement true software asset management, you need to purchase a SAM tool. At MetrixData 360, we have been working in the SAM tool industry for many years now and we pride ourselves in our high customer satisfaction rate.

To ensure you have a good experience, it’s important you don’t rush into this purchasing decision. In this buyer’s guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about SAM tools: what they are, where they often fall short, and how they fit into your greater plan with SAM.

What Are SAM Tools?

SAM tools are applications that are meant to aid and assist the management and organization of your software assets. SAM tools are divided into two categories: agent and agentless, both of which come with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Agentless SAM Tools

By far the more popular option of the two, agentless monitoring relies on protocols to relay information back to a central monitoring software. Software and hardware manufacturers have built features into their products which will allow the software or hardware to relay information about itself if prompted.

Agentless monitoring simply embeds itself within the software or hardware to tap into this relay of information in order to read their operational parameters before sending it back to the central monitoring software. So, it’s technically not agentless but simply tapping into a communication network that was already there within the product.

Pros of Agentless SAM Tools

Cons of Agentless SAM Tools

Agent-Based SAM Tools

Comparatively, agent-based monitoring gives you the opportunity to collect and analyze more data from your infrastructure using agents that run on the monitored system. The agents are pieces of software that are installed to collect operational data and they will send it back to one central system. Since vendors of agent-based tools often provide their tool when you host on their platform, the increased breadth of data is expected.

Pros of Agent-Based SAM Tools

Cons of Agent-Based SAM Tools

How SAM Tools Fit in with a Good SAM Maturity Strategy

Every SAM strategy needs a good SAM tool to back it up. However, reaching that peak performance of software asset management — where you are completely compliant, cutting costs and gaining complete visibility into your software licensing environment — isn’t something that you gain as soon as your SAM tool is up and running.

The 5 Stages of SAM Maturity

There are actually five stages of SAM Maturity:

As you can see, purchasing your SAM tool is only a single step in your journey to SAM maturity, and it won’t take you straight to the later stages immediately. Now, your company doesn’t have to reach all of these stages, it may only be in your interests to reach the mid-level stages and that’s completely fine. This whole process from beginning to end represents roughly a year of effort from your SAM team.

How Do SAM Tools Work in the Cloud?

Everyone is heading into the Cloud, and for good reason, as it provides its users with flexibility and a pricing metric that is often comparatively cheaper than their on-prem counterparts.

One of the main appeals the cloud offers is the ability to use a pay-as-you-go model of payment, where you only pay month-to-month and only for what you need.

Surely this means that software asset management is no longer needed, since the confusing licensing part of it is handled by your provider and you can sleep easy at night, right? What companies often don’t realize is that SAM is now more important than ever, especially when it comes to the Cloud.

What Makes SAM so Essential?

Software asset management doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and software asset managers (especially if they are a part of a larger company) will spend a large chunk of their time appealing to stakeholders. In fact, some IT departments even hire stakeholder managers just for that specific task.

With so much riding on convincing this group of people that your SAM solution is a good one, what is the best way to foster a strong stakeholder relationship?

Over the years, the MetrixData 360 team has helped many companies work through their own SAM solutions and have helped manage dozens of stakeholders in the process of each engagement. so today we thought we’d share what we know about working with stakeholders, especially when they don’t know anything about SAM.

Who Are the Stakeholders?

Your group of stakeholders is composed of anyone affected in any way by your SAM project. The bigger your organization, the more stakeholders you’ll have whose job will be to either support or hinder it, depending on how they perceive your project will impact them (either negatively or positively). Some stakeholders that you might have to deal with in your attempts to implement an effective software asset management strategy in your company includes but are not limited to:

Having these stakeholders in your corner means that you’ll have someone who is willing to back your SAM project, defend it, and (most importantly) fund it and give you the go-ahead to begin.

Principles of Stakeholder Management for Software Asset Management

Build Your Business Case

The first thing that you’ll need to do is create a case which appeals to all the various stakeholders. Consider what’s in it for each of them, then highlight the benefits and key performance drivers.

For instance, if you’re speaking to the IT Operations VP, focus on how SAM will create labor saving potential and operational efficiency. If you’re speaking to the CFO on the other hand, focus instead on cost reductions and budgeting potential.

Clarify what you want from each of your stakeholders. Your case should accurately lay out the anticipated size and complexity of your SAM project, the amount of help and resources you’ll require and how long your project is estimated to take.

Try to put in as much detail as possible but make sure to account for the fact that SAM projects are subject to roadblocks in the form of missing data or discovered compliance issues.

Educate Your Stakeholders

It’s important to ask yourself how much each stakeholder might know about software asset management. Someone with a background in finances might not have a history working with or understanding the complexity of SAM.

If you feel like you might be greeted by a boardroom of blank faces with your business case, it might be worth it to include a quick overview of what SAM is and the general value it can provide to a company.

Reporting Your Progress

After you’ve gotten your initial shot to try out your plan, you’ll have to prove that it was worth their trust by providing progress reports frequently. These reports should detail if you’ve hit any milestones in the project plan, if you’re seeing any return on investment etc.

It’s especially important that you communicate your progress during the early stages of the project, where confidence in your SAM vision will be the shakiest and the project is most prone to change. At this point it may be beneficial to aim for easy wins and low-hanging fruit to display results quickly.

Once momentum is gained and the value of your project is proven, then the cost of pulling the plug will be higher and you can breathe a bit easier. These reports should also include any difficulties you are facing that present the potential of slowing down the results of your project.

You’ll need to provide separate reports for each of the stakeholders, tailored to their specific interests (don’t make the VP of Procurement slosh through data on how many hours of labor you’ve removed from the IT staff) and their certain level of supervision; will they be closely managing your project? Or will they simply need to be kept informed? These reports will be vital in securing permission to advance your project into its next phase.

For this reason, stakeholder management needs to be treated as a critical aspect of your project and not given the half-hearted attention of a side task. The last thing you want to do is have your stakeholders feel like you are treating them like a low priority.

For reporting your progress, your SAM tool can easily prove an excellent resource, since they will be able to provide excellent reports and insights that each of your stakeholders will find useful.

Develop a Strong Relationship with Your Stakeholders

Without appealing to the right stakeholders, your vision for properly implementing a strong SAM solution will never get off the ground. It’s not because it isn’t a good idea, SAM is an excellent way to curb expenses, manage risk and empower companies to manage their own software licenses. And it’s important to remember that is what you’ll be able to bring to the table.

At MetrixData 360, we have helped many companies realize their goals when it comes to software asset management, we’ve removed a lot of stress and headache from our clients by taking care of the majority of the difficult work, so you can deliver great results with minimal effort on your part.

If you’d like to learn more about our SAM-as-a-Service offering you can check out our service page!

If you’ve just begun to dip your toes into software asset management, you may have realized just how consuming of a job it can be. But implementing Proactive SAM measures can help to slow the chaos down and avoid it all together in the future.   Perhaps your software environment was disorganized when you started and now after weeks of struggling, data hunting, and persevering, you’ve reached a state that SAM experts like to call Reactive SAM.  At this stage, you have full visibility into your software architecture. And that really is great news! However, despite how tempting it may be to throw in your SAM towel and call your efforts good enough, there is a reason why, once you’ve reached this stage, it may be beneficial to keep going.  What’s the next step after this? And why would you even bother to continue after you’ve made it this far already?  At MetrixData 360, we have seen many companies who have made it to this stage only to have their motivation and interest dip, and so in this article, we’d like to show you the benefits of pushing forward in reaching your software asset management goals.  

The Problem with Reactive SAM  

When many companies first begin to implement SAM throughout their company, they may be tempted to assume that their job is done after they are finished running or installing their SAM tool, but it isn’t so simple. There are five stages to SAM maturity, of which the Reactive Stage is only the second: 

As you can see, while reaching Reactive SAM is an achievement, it is only the first milestone that will allow your company to reach meaningful savings. While many companies chose to halt their SAM process after reaching the Reactive stage, there are limitations in what you can do from this decision:  

What Does it Mean to Have a Proactive SAM Strategy?  

Being Proactive means that if confronted with a software audit, you will be ready to handle anything that comes your way without expending tremendous amounts of company resources. Although it will take a lot more time and energy to make it through the rest of your company’s SAM Maturity journey, there are tremendous benefits waiting for you along the way.  

Benefits of Proactive Software Asset Management 

Continuing Your SAM Journey

Now the next question that needs to be addressed is where do you go from here.. How do you get to that next stage in SAM Maturity? Here are a few goals to keep in mind in order to help you reach Proactive SAM:

Get the Stakeholders Involved 

Anyone who will have an influence on your SAM project should be considered a stakeholder, this includes people who are in charge of purchasing your company’s software licenses and people who manage that software. It may be difficult to balance the relationship between these two parties, since the financial side will tend to be motivated by a tight budget and may see SAM as a frivolous luxury.  Meanwhile, the tech side of things might see SAM as something of a deterrent to the effectiveness of their software infrastructure.  It may be a challenge to convince both parties to get on board with SAM, and for that reason, we’ve made a few assets to help you along the way:  

Have a Dedicated SAM Staff 

SAM is not a part-time job, if you want to make it to the Proactive stages, you’ll need someone to own the project. While the needs of every software environment are unique, when searching for your new SAM team you’ll need to take into consideration the number of vendors and the complexity of your software environment. There are a few options to pick from when it comes to hiring a SAM team, you can hire internal resources or outsource the project to a third-party.   If you’d like to learn more about the Pros and Cons of each solution,you can check out our article here!  

Anticipate Roadblocks  

Fortune favors the prepared, as the saying goes, and sadly not everyone in your company is bound to understand the inherent value of software asset management right from the get go. Expect and prepare for such obstacles like:  

Keep Calm and Carry on With Your SAM Journey!  

Now that you’ve started on your SAM journey it’s important that you keep on pushing to get more meaningful results. Reaching a stage of SAM Reactive is great but it is not the most stable position and the last thing you want is to let your software environment fall back into a state of chaos and risk.  At MetrixData 360 we have helped companies at every stage of SAM maturity and have helped them reach their own goals quickly and efficiently. If you’d like to learn more about our Software Asset Management as a Service offering, check out our SAM Service Page.