3 Reasons To Mature Your SAM Program

You have probably heard of Software Asset Management (SAM) and its connection to ‘best practice’ in IT Service Management.  However, did you know there are multiple unexpected benefits that can come from implementing or maturing SAM in your organization? Read on to discover how SAM can benefit organizations of all types.

1. Knowing What You Have

When SAM is implemented properly, it is easy to understand how many software applications are running in your IT environment. Software scanning/discovery solutions, when connected to a SAM tool, give invaluable insight into “knowing what you have.” Furthermore, this can be taken to the next level. If you know how many copies are currently in use, you can leverage this data to ensure your organization is only buying the licenses that are needed. This information can also safeguard you from overuse and potentially expensive audits.

2. Supporting Multiple Teams

Software asset management can also provide support to multiple teams and departments within your organization. For example, your Contract and Procurement teams. Imagine two scenarios: First, a critical negotiation with a major strategic software supplier in which your team was NOT certain about the volume of software in use. And second, that same negotiation but the Contract and Procurement teams are armed with exact details of each installation of software. Which scenario would benefit your business most? Under the second scenario, you can practically guarantee favorable pricing negotiations because the SAM data allows your teams to negotiate from a position of strength. At a minimum, your teams would be in a good position to potentially leverage volume discount information from the software publisher.

Another area of the organization that can benefit from SAM is the Finance team. Depending on the level of discovery (and the specific tools that have been implemented), SAM data can contain information concerning the actual usage of software products. Without SAM usage data, an organization likely ‘guesstimates’ future usage of software titles and related maintenance/depreciation costs. Or even worse, costs are simply calculated based on “what they had last year” without a detailed review! Armed with SAM data, accurate usage information and trend data can be analyzed to provide Finance with a much more granular view of software usage and costs for their forecasting. This allows your organization to place multi-year renewal orders with your software partners and realize large discounts. As you can see, SAM data can be leveraged by several areas within an organization.

3. Preventing Legal and Reputational Damage

SAM is mostly known for helping organizations prevent legal and reputational damage due to under-licensing of software, however, this can be a market differentiator for those organizations that have successfully implemented and matured SAM. When presented with a compliance challenge, you can rely on your SAM capability to demonstrate, with all applicable proof, that you are 100% compliant with a specific software publisher’s software titles.  What would be a quick and painless exercise for your organization could result in your competitor’s company name being splashed all over next week’s headlines in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit.

By integrating SAM into other IT Service Management Lifecycle areas, several benefits can be realized. More successful negotiations, discounts on software through maintenance cancellations and/or volume discounts, more accurate financial forecasts, and protection to reputational damage are only a few of the many benefits that SAM delivers.

Mature SAM is much more than license compliance- true to its name, you can be sure that you are delivering maximum ROI on your organization’s software assets because they are being proactively managed.

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Do you need help figuring out where to start implementing SAM in your organization?  Or do you have an existing SAM capability that you want to mature to realize further benefits?  We are here to help.  Contact Anglepoint at Info@Anglepoint.com or schedule a meeting to speak with a SAM expert.