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IT Procurement and IT Asset Management: Best Practices to Bridge the Gap

  • Posted by: Scalable Team

In order for IT procurement and IT asset management to provide more value to their organizations, their best practices must bridge more than a few gaps.

IT procurement teams are often separated from IT asset management by more than responsibility, since procurement is typically found in the finance department, whereas IT asset management is a role more likely to be found in the IT department. Both IT asset management and IT procurement must bridge departmental silos in order to reduce IT spending and optimize IT costs. One best practice in doing so is through regular, reliable reporting on software usage throughout the IT estate.

Before IT procurement can improve outcomes in renewal negotiations, they must have a thorough understanding of the opportunities to reduce the number and/or level of software licenses. IT asset management can provide reporting on software licenses by usage, and can help identify areas of license audit risk and license recycling opportunities to help their procurement colleagues successfully optimize IT spending on software licenses.

Some of the IT and software asset management reporting that IT procurement might find most helpful include:

  • A 360 degree view of the entire organization’s software assets. Especially for those organizations that have grown through merger and acquisition, it is sometimes difficult to accurately identify all software assets in use. IT procurement cannot hope to negotiate the best terms and volume pricing for their organization without understanding the true extent of software usage.
  • Software usage reporting. This means not just the time an application is open, but the number of keystrokes and engagement with many features of the application. These reports can show instances of “shelfware” that can be cut without any deleterious effect on the organization, of underused applications that can be recycled or retired in favor of less costly alternatives, and of software where maintenance costs can be cut.
  • Warranty reporting. This is an especially important area for IT procurement in organizations with a variety of vendors. It is important to identify all IT assets under warranty, before warranties expire or renewal and maintenance negotiations begin.

Providing reliable, regular reporting on the items above must not be a burden on IT asset management. Aligning IT procurement and IT asset management can be made almost effortless with new approaches to IT cost optimization. Once such new approach, Asset Vision from Scalable Software, can provide almost forensic-level reporting on software assets—including dashboard views—that make it easier for IT procurement to get better value in software vendor contract negotiations.

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