Software Asset Management (SAM) Blog

In my last blog post, I looked at why board level approval is essential for a successful Software Asset Management (SAM) program. Unfortunately, SAM is not automatically on the board agenda for most organizations today, which explains why so few enterprises have yet integrated SAM into their Business As Usual activities.

The challenge for the SAM program manager is to how to communicate to the board why SAM needs to be on the agenda.

There are two key messages that will get the board’s attention and two that won’t!

The threat of director’s fines and prison is a common reason for implementing SAM but is somewhat hollow as, in practice, it’s often far too hard to prove in court. Using cost savings to justify SAM is also problematical as it can be hard to predict exactly where the cost savings will coem from until you have the SAM program well underway.

The two messages that will get the boards attention are Corporate Governance and Risk Management. With increasing emphasis on good Corporate Governance, Software Asset Management can be shown to have a small but important role to play in meeting compliance requirements. Many financial directors don’t really understand the risk to the business that un-managed software poses, either from a large unbudgeted cost or disruption to business operations due to license compliance activities from the software vendors.

In the current economic climate, all major software vendors are increasing their license compliance activities as a means of maximizing revenues, so now is a good time to take the SAM message to the board!

As well as the message that SAM is essential to do and do well, the board will want to see a business plan that shows the costs to identify and manage the risk and an estimated return on the investment from improved efficiency and license optimization.

This business plan is very difficult to create from scratch, especially if you’re embarking on a SAM program for the first time.  Luckily, there are a few resources that can help. FrontRange SAM Essentials provides a wealth of help and documented best practice guidance in putting together a business case and can be used to communicate the benefits of SAM to senior management.

According to the BSI/ISO 19770-1 SAM Standard, for SAM to be effective, the board has to sign up and acknowledge its responsibility for corporate governance relating to software licenses and software assets. The board also needs to periodically review and approve the risk assessment relating to software assets with reference to regulatory and licensing non compliance, excessive spending and organisational processes and procedures.

Selling SAM to the board can be tough, especially when you can’t accurately gauge exactly where the savings are going to come from.  However, with tools like FrontRange SAM Essentials, this task can be significantly eased with the aid of documented best practices and clear project management goals.

A recent discussion with an IT manager once again confirmed my belief that getting top level management buy-in is the most important factor in implementing a successful SAM program.  The company had just invested in a new Software Auditing and License Management toolset, but priority changes meant that the part-time resources originally focused on SAM were reallocated and approval couldn’t be obtained for additional resources to maintain the SAM activities.  In my experience this is a recurring theme: IT management get budget approval for the SAM toolsets but do not get adequate budget for the resources to implement and operate the SAM tools and new SAM processes.

As well as getting the right resources, the other major challenge facing SAM practitioners is how to change bad practices and the perceived un-importance of software management.  Implementing SAM best practice will inevitably impact on many areas of IT, such as help desk, procurement, deployment, change management and also the business managers and users.  It will require them to follow new policies and procedures and different work methods. There will be resistance to new working practices and to effect change in the organisation culture will require senior management support to overcome vested interests in keeping things as they are.

So what level of senior management support is needed to turn SAM into a “Business As Usual” activity?

ITIL best practice states that “Board-level sponsorship and commitment is essential to ensure successful SAM”.  Note the word “essential” in the advice, it’s not desirable or useful but “essential” to have sponsorship from a director who sits on the board.  Is this really true?  Based on my experience of working with many organizations of different sizes and complexity, I can unequivocally say that it is. In those with board level sponsorship, SAM is implemented more quickly and efficiently and shows better returns on the investment.  Regardless of organisation size, where there is no board level sponsorship the SAM manager always struggles to get resources, other projects take priority and the SAM program stutters in Stop/Start mode until eventually the SAM manager and the tool set are blamed for poor performance!

So do you have board level support for SAM in your organisation? If not you really do need to get it to ensure your SAM program is successful.

We will look at how you can get the management support you need in part two.  Stay Tuned!

It’s a commonly-held view that 70-80 percent of IT projects fail - that’s to say they either fall apart completely or, at best, miss key deadlines and go over-budget. The bad news is that it’s no different for Software Asset Management, unless you get the basics right.

Like all IT projects, a critical factor to ensuring success is to have a comprehensive and reliable project plan. And while ‘generalist’ IT project planning principles are still just as relevant to SAM, the simple fact is that the majority of organizations are relatively new to the concept of SAM and therefore don’t have much in the way of experience or expertise to call on (another key factor in determining IT project success or failure).

Traditionally, organizations in this situation would have turned to the services of an external consultant - either a SAM specialist, or someone from their preferred licensing provider. However, with IT budgets at best static (or perhaps more realistically, in decline) this option may not be as viable as it once was. At least, it is probably preferrable to look for a way to minimize the amount of time and money spent on expensive consultants.

Thankfully, there are a limited number of tools available on the market designed to help organizations with little or no prior SAM experience to scope and ‘own’ their SAM initiative - guiding them through each step of the five-stage cycle of SAM - Scope, Discover, Record, Reconcile, Automate.

Working with the right tools, managing the SAM project becomes an interactive process, where progress can be visually tracked and key requirements are flagged to key stakeholders across the team. What’s more, even if the individuals are not familiar with standards like ISO 19770-1 or the Microsoft SAM Optimization Model, these are built-in to the project - ensuring that, while industry standards might not be the initial business driver, any effort put in to SAM will deliver benefits in both the short and long term.

Building the right plan is the key to overcoming one of the most dangerous misconceptions about SAM - that it is primarily a techological challenge. In fact, effective SAM needs three things - people, processes and technology.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll look at each of these five stages and how even organizations with no prior experience can create and manage a SAM project that will deliver real benefit to the organization (and by benefit, we’re talking bottom-line financial savings…).