Why is Software License Optimization Important?
11 July 2023
Michaela Gray
Blog,
Ensuring that your organization is vendor audit ready is important, but it’s only one of the benefits of software optimization. We explore why software license optimization is so important to your overall business goals and what processes you need in place to gain value from it.
Software license optimization is important for cost-saving, compliance, and efficient use of technology. Many organizations over-spend on software by purchasing unnecessary software licenses, not managing their licenses effectively, and not assessing license usage. Investing in software license optimization helps to identify these challenges by putting processes in place to effectively manage and utilize software licenses. This includes identifying unused or underutilized licenses, negotiating better terms with vendors, and implementing processes for tracking and managing licenses.
Benefits of investing in software license optimization
- Better utilize budgets and save money
- Ensure compliance with license agreements
- Helps to prevent overspending on licenses
- Releases budget to implement new technologies
How to save money with software license optimization
There are three key software license optimization best practice steps to ensure your business can start saving money and streamline processes when it comes to SAM. These include:
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Optimize software configurations: the default configurations for a lot of software is usually the most expensive, but making small changes can result in big savings
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Recycle software licenses: identify unused or misused licenses for reuse to reduce the need to buy unnecessary new licenses
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Use a SAM tool: Our software asset management (SAM) tools automate the manual process of identifying and optimizing software licenses, saving you time and money
Using software license optimization to prepare for an audit
The chance that an organization will be audited for software compliance varies depending on the industry and the size of the business. For some industries, such as healthcare and finance, audits may be more frequent due to regulations, and large businesses are more likely to be audited than small businesses. However, it’s important for all organizations to implement software license management practices to minimize the risk of non-compliance and the financial and legal consequences that can result from an audit.
In preparation for an audit, software license optimization acts as a self-audit to identify potential issues with your current license usage. This is done by reviewing your software inventory, usage data, and purchase records, allowing you to determine where additional licenses are needed or where software can be removed.
Working with a SAM specialist to assist with the audit preparation process gives you access to best practice guidance and industry standards and helps to ensure that you are complying with license agreements. Contact us today for support from our specialists ahead of your next software audit.
Software license optimization with License Dashboard
We approach software license optimization in three stages:
- Our product, License Manager, provides a centralized ‘single source of truth’ for all software entitlements owned by your organization
- License Manager then reconciles this information against software inventory data to establish your organization’s current Effective Licensing Position (ELP)
- Detailed management reports enable you to make more focused decisions about future requirements, driving out wastage and increasing availability
Regardless of your organization’s SAM maturity or approach to software license optimization, our specialists are on hand to help you optimize your software estate and reduce your software licensing costs. Chat to them today.
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Michaela has worked within the industry for over 11 years, both within sales and marketing. She works closely with the team to support them with all their marketing needs and maintains and promotes the License Dashboard brand.
Michaela Gray
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