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Canadian Financial Services Cooperative Discovers the Perfect SAM Solution & Cut Costly RFP & POC Efforts by Over 4 Months

(February 2023)

Company Profile

  • Industry: Financial Services
  • Size: 50,000 – 100,000 employees
  • Revenue: 10B – 25B CAD 
  • Region: North America
  • Market: Enterprise
Analysis:
4 months
in time save on costly RFP & POC efforts.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This Anglepoint client is a Canadian financial services cooperative with over 50,000 employees. Seen as the safest and strongest bank in North America, security is essential to instill confidence in its members and clients. They needed a robust Software Asset Management tool that would provide visibility of their entire estate and any security vulnerabilities then translate the provided information into actionable business insights to mitigate risk and manage the lifecycle of software assets.

Anglepoint’s attention to gaining a deep understanding of the client’s needs, coupled with an extensive knowledge of the SAM tool market and tool capabilities, provided independent advice and support to select and implement the right tool and cut costly RFP & Proof of Concept (POC) efforts by over 4 months.

The Challenge

Finding the right solution – fast

For any financial organization, security is paramount.  With the explosion of technology and the security challenges this gives rise to, ITAM has become an integral function to identify risks around security vulnerabilities associated with software not being properly licensed or up to date. To provide this effectively required a clear and accurate view of all software assets in one central solid repository. 

The internal team didn’t have the appropriate skill set or time to outline exactly what was required for an RFP, evaluate and assess the vast selection of SAM tools available on the market; and then run a POC exercise on their own.  They needed an independent partner to help them understand the capabilities of the tools and ensure that the right solution was selected in the short timeframe – there was no margin for costly errors.

They partnered with Anglepoint to support this major purchase to ensure they were working with an independent SAM Managed Service provider with the industry knowledge and experience around evaluating, implementing and managing SAM tools for large complex organizations.

The Solution

A comprehensive comparative analysis

Anglepoint’s tooling experts worked closely with the team to review the client’s requirements and benchmark this against other financial organizations to ensure everything was in scope.

Anglepoint undertook a detailed verification of the depth, breadth and quality of the out-of-the-box content libraries of SAM solutions to aid with the normalization and identification process of discovered and purchased software. This would ensure they could identify and mitigate risk for unsupported, legacy software titles.

A comprehensive comparative analysis was then constructed giving careful consideration to the outlined requirements and included functionality and costs for the four shortlisted SAM solutions – Flexera FNMS, Snow License Manager, USU Aspera SmartTrack and ServiceNow SAM Pro.  All the relevant technical capabilities of a centralized Discovery, Inventory and Normalization solution were included in this analysis to find the perfect fit for the client.

RESULTS

Cut potential lengthy and costly RFP & POC efforts by over 4 months

The client decided to move forward with ServiceNow SAM Pro as their solution of choice. The decision was based on the independent analysis provided by Anglepoint, who is not a SAM solution partner or reseller. The client had a centralized view of the true cost and functionality reports available for analysis by the board for intelligent purchasing and investment decisions. This method cut potential lengthy and costly RFP & POC efforts by over 4 months.

The client continues to work with Anglepoint to implement and roll out the chosen solution to ensure the ongoing success of their SAM tool and the value delivered to the organization to provide the highly valued layer of security required by stakeholders.

The internal team didn’t have the appropriate skill set or time to outline exactly what was required for an RFP, evaluate and assess the vast selection of SAM tools available on the market; and then run a POC exercise on their own.

“From a vendor audit perspective, Anglepoint’s expertise is unbelievable. Our purchase with Anglepoint has been recognized by executive leadership as a great decision for our organization.”
– SAM Program Director in the Banking and Finance Industry