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:
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.