Every business is looking to maximize profits while cutting liabilities. But it’s impossible to seal loopholes without automating business operations. The rise of software dedicated to easing business operations has seen a significant efficiency boost.
However, running this software also can become a liability to businesses if they aren’t properly utilized and managed.
When you install software that is not the final, these assets require licensing compliance, maintenance, and other necessary monitoring. That is why you must employ software asset management (SAM) tools. It is one of the best ways to ensure your business remains compliant and cuts the overall cost.
To understand the features and benefits of companies embracing software management, follow this article to the end.
What Is Software Asset Management?
For non-IT experts, when the SAM is mentioned, they wonder what this is. Software asset management is a business strategy of acquiring, controlling, using, deploying, and disposing of digital tools. The process ensures the software is up to date, licensed, properly configured, and used to perform licensed tasks.
The main driver of businesses adopting this strategy is to ensure that during the software auditing, they are compliant. Non-compliance always leads to extra costs since vendors might take legal action or settle for compensation for wrongful usage of their software.
Benefits of Software Asset Management
There are numerous benefits of software asset management for Businesses. Whether it’s a small or large business, some of the gains are expounded below.
1. Saving Cost
Yes, SAM is great for cost reduction in businesses. One way to achieve this is by optimizing the software usage in an organization. The optimization involves ensuring a company has the only number of licenses needed. By maintaining the correct number of software, you can be sure of spending money on the necessary software.
The other way of reducing cost is identifying underutilized and redundant software. When a business has no SAM team, it is easy to have underutilized software while others may be redundant. It’s easy to weed out redundant and underutilized software by conducting software metering.
Reallocating licenses is another way businesses save costs when they engage in SAM. Usually, license reallocation involves using it within an enterprise. The reallocation process ensures that software is maximally utilized in an organization. Saving costs from all these tasks can be used to improve other business activities.
2. Enhances Compliance
One of the main objectives of applying SAM is to ensure software license compliance.
Businesses with robust IT departments don’t wait until it’s too late to implement SAM. This is because it can be costly if the vendor conducts an audit and finds any breach of usage agreement in their software. The process helps businesses comply with software terms and conditions when implemented on time. As a result, this helps to avert any consequences and fines.
Additionally, SAM helps in maintaining software documentation. With constant monitoring, businesses can keep excellent data about the software. Therefore, in case of any dispute, it can be easy to solve through the available data.
3. Improved Business Productivity
Having a centralized software management strategy is critical in improving overall productivity. SAM tools bring ease to the procurement of software in a business. Since professionals run the tools, they allow procurement of only the necessary software. By doing so, the firm saves a lot since there is no purchase of unnecessary software.
Another way businesses enjoy great productivity is through software maintenance and monitoring. Once installed, software requires constant monitoring, and SAM effectively achieves this. The team ensures all software is updated on time, patched if necessary, and detects performance issues.
Effective maintenance is vital as it allows the business to run without experiencing glitches caused by software breakdowns.
4. Helps Business Make Strategic Decisions
Implementing SAM in enterprises is one way of helping in making strategic decisions to increase productivity. The strategy is usually robust in monitoring data about software usage and performance. The company or business can use this data when planning since you can make decisions based on the data obtained from the software.
The assessment of different apps running in a business also helps pinpoint the vital ones aligning with the set goal. This enables enterprises to prioritize when procuring new software or renewing existing ones.
5. Safety Improvement
Letting the SAM team deal with your business software department significantly saves you from everyday threats. Especially when you employ a reliable team, it guarantees impressive safety for your business.
One of the main tasks is to check any vulnerabilities in the installed apps and address any threats. This is essential in protecting businesses from malicious attacks through applying software patches and security updates.
Apart from preventing attacks, SAM experts oversee the installation of any software in a business computer system. Therefore, in case of any attempt to install an unauthorized app, it is not possible. This has impressive benefits since the installation of malicious apps is put under check. Checking outdated programs is also the work of SAM, which decides if they are worth renewing or disposing of.
How is SAM Implemented in A Business?
Initial implementation of software asset management can be daunting, especially for large corporations. However, it’s worth adopting the process as it will cushion your business from the repercussions of software license violations and other issues. These are some of the best SAM implementation practices to achieve good results.
1. Conduct Software Inventory
Before you implement SAM, an inventory of all software assets your business owns is recommended. Listing all your software helps determine the number of licenses owned.
2. Analyze and Evaluate Software Usage
Owning software enhances productivity, but keeping the useful ones is the best practice. Analyzing and evaluating software usage is essential, as knowing the most used ones is easy. It’s also easy to discover unwanted apps, eliminate unused ones and maximize underutilized ones.
3. Implement Software Licensing Policies
To avoid legal implications, businesses should develop policies governing software acquisition, implementation, and usage. This step is essential since monitoring software usage to protect against violations is easy.
4. Implementation of SAM Tools
Adopting SAM tools is the ultimate decision since they allow the automation of all processes. Whether it’s optimization, audit, or other tasks, these tools efficiently eliminate costly manual processes.
Conclusion
Software asset management is vital for any business hoping to maximize productivity and escape costly fines. Implementing these tools ensures that firms can concentrate on productivity without worrying about violations due to automated monitoring.
While initial implementations might be expensive, the strategy helps businesses to save significantly in the long run.