Get Maximum Value from ServiceNow Software Asset Management
Written by Harini Krish
Lead Technical Content WriterToday’s enterprises are soaring towards digital transformation, and software asset management (SAM) continues to reduce costs for fueling this C-level imperative. However, software license management is not a tiny task, and software publisher's material risk of being audited and the disruption it causes has never been greater. These risks are a significant distraction from innovation and other initiatives.
Organizations also strive to identify software entitlements, whether licenses are being used, and if they have over-purchased and are wasting idle cloud resources. Seeing beyond the financial risks, you also have inefficiencies coupled with too many tools, inaccurate data, lack of business context, and delayed communications with stakeholders. Employees inside and outside IT are often left exasperated by the tools they use and the manual processes they build. ServiceNow SAM is the only solution to resolve these issues with a single IT platform, single architecture and data model.
What is Software Asset Management?
Software asset management is a business practice that entails managing and optimizing the purchase, deployment, maintenance, consumption, and disposal of software applications within the business. The ServiceNow Software Asset Management application thoroughly tracks, evaluates, and manages software licenses, compliance, and optimization. It lets you reclaim unused software rights, purchase new software rights, and manage allocations for entitlements.
It is a practice of managing and optimizing software applications' purchase, deployment, maintenance, utilization, and disposal. Organizations often lack visibility & control of software license processes through their life cycle. They need to ask:
What software do you own?
Are you buying what you need?
Are you using what you have?
SAM allows businesses to create an accurate system of record for all software assets that can be maintained in real time.
The Goal of SAM is to
- Optimize license usage
- Eliminate duplication of software licenses
- Reduce software-related expenses
- Identify license agreement violations
- Inform software purchasing decisions
Why Do Businesses Need SAM?
Businesses spend extensive time and resources to manage software assets; this process is often done manually in spreadsheets and requires multiple inventories and discovery tools.
- Every week, the average organization spends 15 hours resolving inconsistencies within their IT assets.
- On average organization devotes 30 hours collecting asset entitlement information in formulating a significant software audit.
- Organizations successful at SAM are more likely to rely on next-generation automation technologies than organizations comparatively successful at SAM.
Enterprises are buying more and more software to support their business environment. According to ServiceNow, spending on software can easily surpass 20% of IT budgets. In addition, the research firm Gartner has estimated that spending on enterprise software will grow at 8.6% per year through 2020, with the growth of SaaS calculated at a whopping 19.3%.
A 2016 Gartner study found that organizations can cut spending on software assets by as much as 30% by implementing the following SAM best practices:
- Looking for savings in how software is configured
- Identifying all opportunities to recycle software licenses instead of making new purchases
- Using a SAM to automate, accelerate, and improve manual processes
How can ServiceNow Asset Management Help your Business?
The benefits of ITAM are endless. But for the asset management plan to be effective, it needs to be strengthened by an asset management system that has the capabilities to monitor and maintain things of value. A proper ITAM solution should be able to
Improve time management
Keep track of all your assets
Define service levels
Managing Licenses
Manage your assets from different locations
Analyze and monitor lifecycle costs
Plan against financial, operational, and legal risks
Organize asset portfolio
The Strategic Benefits of using ServiceNow Software Asset Management
Increases software asset visibility
ServiceNow SAM architecture
Software spends detection
Dedicated Dashboards
License Optimization
Summary
Businesses that efficiently manage their software assets can have a significant cost advantage over their counterparts. But for this readiness, a clear and well-planned SAM program that defines roles and responsibilities should be implemented and managed by a group of experts. While implementing these software asset management best practices might not happen immediately, they can still be accomplished quickly, provided you have the right person with the right skill and a mindset to adapt to a major cultural shift. You may be interested to watch this webcast on how to Improve Service Operations with ServiceNow CSM.
Royal Cyber’s ServiceNow ITSM solution helps businesses successfully implement software asset management best practices in their organizations custom-made to their IT environment. Our delivery methodology best fits ServiceNow implementations and deploys ServiceNow capabilities much quicker. As a ServiceNow Partner, we bring together our vast consulting leadership with deep platform knowledge to help our customers increase the value from their investment in ServiceNow. Sign up for this webinar to watch how ServiceNow Software Asset Management (SAM) empowers organizations by driving transparency, control, and compliance of software assets through a single platform. For more information, you can email us at [email protected] or visit www.royalcyber.com.
