“No one wants to admit that they’ve overspent thousands of dollars in company funds for unnecessary IT asset purchases. Survey helps us prevent these types of dilemmas, by identifying usage for our software, hardware, and printer assets, before we make important purchasing decisions.”
-Michael Page, Chief Manager Open Systems IT
St. George Bank is Australia’s fifth largest bank and one of the top 15 publicly listed companies in Australia.
“With 420 offices scattered throughout Australia and more than 7,000 desktops and laptops, we needed to be able to account for all hardware and software inventory, and also understand what is being used,” said Michael Page, Chief Manager Open Systems IT. “We knew we needed a solution that provided both pieces of information in a single, timely, accurate report.
Pending external audits loom over St. George Bank
The bank has strict policies to manage software compliance. Faced with pending external audits by Novell and Adobe, St. George Bank needed to provide auditors accurate license information necessary to satisfy compliance inquiries without significantly impacting the bank’s high volume, daily transaction based business.
Scalable’s Survey helps prove compliance
By leveraging Scalable’s Survey license reporting, St. George was able to validate that the Bank was fully compliant across its 420 remote offices, within three days.
“Had this audit taken place two years ago, we would have been hard-pressed to gather and organize invoices and original software agreements within such a short time frame,” said Page. Fortunately St. George Bank already had this information readily available within Survey. During installation, Page and staff were able to easily import existing license information into Survey, to track purchase history, maintenance costs, and renewal schedules.
Survey’s intuitive web-based interface allowed Page’s team automatic notification of when licenses were out of compliance, and pending maintenance agreements needed renewal, helping ensure their entire enterprise remained in compliance. The audit was over before it even started. Page presented auditors concise, detailed reports on what vendor titles were purchased, installed, and to their surprise, actually used. It quickly became obvious to the auditors, that St. George had implemented a successful license management program.
Further internal investigation was merely a formality. “Auditors soon discontinued the audit altogether, making my job and theirs so much easier. I expected it to be a two-week process involving many hours of diverted IT productivity. Survey saved us valuable time, effort and money, and at least seven full days of sitting down working with auditors,” says Page.
Survey saves St. George Bank money
Loss of productivity equals lost money for any company. By leveraging Survey to successfully manage software inventory and complete software audits, St. George Bank is able to avoid potential embarrassing non-compliance violations, and losing many hours in IT staff productivity. “When you include the cost
avoidance alone for not having to pull in additional technical support, legal, and executive resources, our savings were significantly higher”, said Page.
“We’ve realized a ROI for Survey in just less than one year. We’ve also benefited from a reduction in recurring software license costs, and have been able to negotiate better maintenance agreements by using Survey’s usage-based license management solution,” says Page. “No one wants to admit that they’ve overspent thousands of dollars in company funds for unnecessary IT asset purchases. Survey helps us prevent these types of dilemmas, by identifying usage for our software, hardware, and printer assets, before we make important purchasing decisions.”
St. George Bank uses Survey enterprise-wide to support three core areas: software license management, hardware asset management, and general support issues. “Everyday we find a need for Survey; it’s become an essential tool for us”, says Page. “When employee requests come in for new software or hardware, St. George Bank is able to leverage Survey reports to confirm if these needs are warranted. For example, if the IT administrator receives a request for Adobe Photoshop to be installed on their PC, they can first generate a report to see how many licenses are installed, being utilized, are re-deployable, or need to be purchased. This information enables more informed decision-making, while also preventing exposure to security risk with non-compliant software.”
