Promoting Software Asset Management to Your Team

• Massive Cost Saving Opportunies

Software Asset Management is about saving money, through making software environments as efficient as possible. With the removal of a few unused, unneeded licenses, companies have been known to save hundreds of thousands of dollars. An estimated 20-30% saving opportunity is available in the average software environment that SAM can access.

• Software Audit Readiness

Software audits happen and they do so frequently. The average sized company could expect a software audit at the very least once every three years. Should a software audit come our way and we are not prepared, we could be forced to pay out millions of dollars that we don’t have to. Our best defense against this outcome is to have strong and accurate data regarding our software environment that proves exactly what we have and exactly what we owe.

• Empowerment

1. • Empowered IT Security – Having a software environment that is devoid of redundancies will make it much easier for our IT Security to monitor our environment. Old and forgotten software that has neither been updated or patched is one of the most common pathways that hackers use to breach a company’s infrastructure.
   • Empowered IT – Software Asset Management supports the day to day role of the IT department. IT will have the data they need to track the value of deployed software. It will also give the data they need to advocate for any required software.
   • Empowered Finance and Procurement – Software Asset Management allows you to actually budget effectively and is an excellent risk management tool since we will be able to detect any compliance issues with our software licenses or any unexpected spikes in spending before they become a serious issue. SAM also addresses the dilemma of tracking the software of joiners, movers, and leavers in your company.

• Conduct a SAM Maturity Assessment

Software Asset Management is often a large undertaking and it’s very easy for companies to become overwhelmed and discouraged, a “can’t see the forest because of the trees” situation. The early days of software asset management revolved solely around creating an effective license position for a specific purpose such as an audit, or a contract negotiation. However, SAM done properly isn’t a single day task, it is an ongoing process that ensures compliance, optimization, and consistent savings. Which is why Software Asset Management is broken down into five stages.

It may not be necessary to achieve all the levels of maturity, depending on your business goals and the scope of your SAM process.

• Install a SAM Tool

For large software licensing environments, there’s simply no way we could possibly count and monitor our architecture manually to any degree of accuracy. Companies without a SAM tool in place have roughly 20% visibility of their entire software architecture. However, when they install a single SAM tool, this only improves their software visibility to 40%, taking them from a passive stage to a reactive stage.

It is actually companies who have installed multiple tools who achieve near 70% visibility. It is essential that during this process we install at least one SAM suit and if we already have one it is important to examine the accuracy of its data, as a poor reporting tool with faulty data will completely undermine the whole process.

• Get Someone Who Can Manage SAM

Depending on how much we want to commit to this SAM journey, we will most likely need to hire someone who can help with the task, either hiring an in-house manager or hiring an external third-party.

This cannot be the side project of one of the IT staff members. If we want the job done right, we will need the right people for the job!

• Reinforce Good Habits

Often companies lose all the progress they have made with their SAM after their initial goals are met, which means that they are left exposed to the same issues that alerted the need for SAM in the first place. With a continual SAM effort in place we will get to instead track the long-term improvement to our software environment.

• Consistent SAM Means Continual Savings

Keeping a software asset management process in place means that you will be able to continually access the saving potentials that our software licensing environments can offer. Never be stuck with outdated hardware or software that is unnecessarily expensive, those are savings that could be recycled back into the IT department.

• Learning Opportunities and Long-Term Empowerment

Gain insight into how our software is licensed, how it can be best fitted to suit the needs of our company to both reduce risks and improve efficiency of spend. Know exactly what we are paying for and feel more confident in our software contract negotiations and in our general relationship with the vendor because now we understand things on their level.