With software taking up an ever increasing share of your IT budget, it has become even more important to manage, control and protect your software assets. Having access to a comprehensive licence management tool, like Licence Dashboard, could help reduce your organisation’s software licence spend by up to 30% per year.
Licence Dashboard is Europe’s leading Software Licence Management tool, facilitating and driving more Software Asset Management (SAM) programmes than any other application on today’s market. Licence Dashboard is an essential tool for any organisation looking to hone its licence management process. Without it, managing software assets becomes an arduous and resource intensive task, one which suppresses the savings you could be making.
Here are just some examples of how our leading application can control costs and eliminate business risk within your organisation:
· Maintenance Renewals
Having a comprehensive maintenance schedule helps prevent agreements from expiring without renewal. With many manufacturers, if the maintenance expires then the licensee could be subject to purchasing a full perpetual licence when the product is refreshed to a later version.
Subsequently, this could mean that your organisation is paying up to 50% more than it would on maintenance renewal.
· Upgrades
Without having access to a comprehensive licence register, your organisation may find it difficult to procure licences based on historic purchases. For example, many manufacturers provide upgrade licences to earlier purchases - without maintaining a comprehensive audit trail of all purchases made, however, it is likely that your organisation will purchase full licences rather than upgrades.
Subsequently, this leads to a possible overspend of between 25-50%.
· Reallocation of Unused Licences
Without tracking licence entitlement on an ongoing basis, your organisation could lose sight of licences that have become available due to project completion or asset disposal.
Many organisations continue to purchase new licences when they could simply reallocate. A comprehensive licence management tool will provide your organisation with an interface that will enable you to maintain licence availability, thus minimising unnecessary expenditure.
· Increased Discounts
Maintaining a licence register will enable your organisation to review purchasing trends and be alerted to volume incentives. Many organisations are unable to track how many licences have been purchased over a period of time and therefore never challenge resellers to increase discounts.
Subsequently, your organisation may purchase software at a lower discount then you are entitled to. This may be happening in business areas that are purchasing locally, where the purchasing officer is unaware of global agreements or the Group is unaware of increased discounts available through volume agreements.
The basis of any good licence management process, therefore, has to be the provision of accurate and up-to-date information in a format that is easily accessible and can be used in conjunction with effective software policies and procedures. The tools that your organisation chooses are fundamental to the success of your SAM programme.
A thorough reconciliation of software licence entitlement not only ensures your organisation remains compliant, but also provides significant cost savings – in terms of direct expenditure on software, as well as in related process and implementation costs.
Other benefits could include:
· Better negotiating position
· Improved strategic infrastructure planning
· Prevention of software over-deployment
· Reduced hardware costs
· Improved purchasing arrangements
· Reduced costs of internal licensing support
· Better quality and more informed decision making
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