Software audit engagements with a SAM Expert consultant, it sounds quite fancy, technical and expensive. Before a long, labor-intensive audit, you’ll come to the part that most people think about all throughout the process, waiting, dreading and hoping the consultant has accurately assessed your environment and their calculations are correct.
In this blog we are going to be answering a few common questions many businesses have about hiring an audit consultant. Is it worth the investment in hiring a third party? How much does hiring a software audit consultant cost? What is the industry standard of pricing for a software audit consultant?
What Is The Value Of An Audit Consultant?
The main job of an auditing consultant is to get you organized and ready for your upcoming audit. Their primary focus will be to save you money, energy, and provide their expertise.
Save You Money
The financial penalties a company can suffer due to lack of preparation and organization can be absolutely crippling. According to the BSA Global Software Survey, the global rate of PC software that was installed without proper licensing in 2013 was at 43%, making it an issue that impacts many businesses worldwide. A software audit gone sideways can leave a company with a bill that is anywhere up to 100% of their annual software budget (for some companies that’s $50,000 and for other companies, that budget is millions of dollars). Your business has hardworking employees to keep on the payroll and it would be a rare thing if you just happened to have that kind of money in your back pocket. That’s the main reason people hire software auditing consultants, to analyze the data (freeing up your internal resources) and to get your bill down to the lowest possible number. If your environment data is accurately inventoried and organized, it’s possible to hand over your data for an audit and have your vendor respond “You owe much less than we initially thought.” What a great feeling! Software auditing consultants can potentially achieve that result for you.
Save You Resources
One of the advantages to having software auditing consultant as a part of your team is how much time and energy you save. Software auditors can come into a company like an impatient tornado, wanting data to be gathered yesterday. These are the type of tasks that you can’t pass off to your assistant, the data gathered will be highly sensitive and can only be done by high-paid employees from every department, from IT to finances, legal to security, all the way to upper management. Software auditing consultants can streamline a lot of the data collection process because what the software auditors will ask for and what they actually need to run the audit are not the same thing. It drains the time of your highest paid employees by sending them off on fool’s errands. So as to prevent valuable internal resources from being consumed with collecting required data, software audit consultants gather your data for you, using their own finely tuned SAM tools.
Provide You With Expertise
Another great advantage of deciding to have software audit consultants on your team is that this is what they do; they analyze data. Compare it to use-rights, look at product bundles and figure out how best to leverage what you have, as opposed to what you need in the near future. Software auditing consultants dive into the data and effectively achieve a strong push back position, getting rid of all shades of grey in audit assumptions with clear, concise and accurate license inventory used during negotiations. Consultants can also prevent overspending, showing you not just where you are underpaying in your licensing but also where you are overpaying and where your costs can be cut and put back into your budget. They are with you every step of the way, so you don’t have to worry about software vendors pushing you around. Instead, you’ll be able to push back.
Who Is A Consultant A Good Fit For?
Companies that need software audit consultants come from all branches of every industry and range in all sizes. If you’re a single location or if your company reaches a global scale, as long as you have software licenses and the need to manage those licenses, you could probably benefit from the help that software auditing consultants can offer. In a survey run by Gartner in 2013, 49% of respondents reported experiencing more than one audit in the previous year, so it’s not a question of if you’ll be audited… it’s when. However, if your company is small enough that it only has a few licenses to keep in order or if your IT department is running flawlessly and they have the situation perfectly under control, then you probably won’t need the services a software auditing consultant can offer.
How Much Does It Cost?
There are many factors that can affect the cost at the end of the day, so to give you one price to fit every case would be inappropriate and inaccurate. It also doesn’t help the situation that most consulting firms will keep their prices locked away to whip out only after you’ve contacted them for a quote and after a five-minute sales pitch about all their fine services. Here are the factors that can drive up your costs:
- Size: How big is your organization (how many software users)? This will affect the volume of data a software consulting firm will have to go through.
- Vendor Type: What type of vendor are you facing down? Some vendors like Microsoft, SAP, IBM, or Oracle will have a more labor-intensive process compared to vendors like Adobe.
- Timeframe: What is the engagement’s estimated timeframe? Some audits (hopefully yours) take two to three months, others can drag on for the better part of a year.
- Consultants Payment Method: The method by which software auditing consultants can charge you could be based on either a flat rate, a contingency rate or based on the number of working hours.
A Software Audit Consultant With MetrixData 360
At Metrixdata360, we want to see you succeed by saving time and money. If you are interested in a software audit our engagements typically range between $35,000-$100,000 depending on each client’s unique environment (as discussed there are many factors that contribute to cost). That being said, most of our projects fall into the $75,000 range. Our preference in pricing is usually at a fixed fee.
After reading this you may have realized that you need the expertise of an audit consultant to keep you company on track. We would be happy to help you take the next step toward hiring the perfect consultant for your project. Get a quote now.
