SAM Tool Optimisation
A Software Asset Management tool is useless without people and processes.
Why SAM tool optimisation?
SAM is more than a tool: Deploying a SAM tool alone does not enable the realisation of the full financial, operational, legal, and compliance benefits that SAM offers. Effective SAM incorporates people, processes, and tools.
Greater ROI: You’ve invested in the SAM tools, now optimally configure them and implement best-practice SAM discipline to derive maximum value from your investment.
Cost and compliance benefits: An effective SAM program finds savings in what you already have and helps ensure ongoing contractual compliance so there are never any costly fines or true-ups.
Why now?
Rising vendor audits: 52% of organisations have been audited more than twice in the past 18 months. Use your SAM tools effectively to help ensure you’re always audit-ready.
Tighten security: Security teams can conduct easier risk and vulnerability assessments using SAM scripts that provide accurate information about the software deployed, versions and patch levels utilised, and which users are accessing it.
Time is money: Time and money invested in a SAM tool are wasted if it doesn’t give you an accurate, continuous, and complete view of all software installed, used, and accessed.
Why Invictus Partners?
Vendor-agnostic: We don’t have vested interests in any particular SAM tool vendors and have experience across all of them; our counsel is objective and tailored to you. In fact, many of our clients use a combination of tools.
Technical expertise: We have extensive knowledge and experience across a number of SAM toolsets and decades of combined experience across all the major software vendors. We understand how to set up your tools to meet each vendor’s specific configuration and compliance needs.
Strategic approach: We consider the big picture and how tools fit into it rather than take a tool-first approach to SAM.
Chat to an expert
Make your Software Asset Management systems work harder,
so you can work smarter.
Many organisations turn to expensive SAM tools to manage their assets, but fail to realise the ROI and benefits these solutions can offer. One of the most common themes our team has seen with SAM tools is the underwhelming reality versus expectation.
Our SAM Tool Optimisation Services are designed to extract real business value from your SAM solutions, in the form of cost optimisation, risk reduction, and business process improvements. Our SAM clients reduce annual software spend by 21% on average in the first 12 months of working with us.
We ensure your SAM tools do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to scanning and analysing data sources to identify what software is installed and what is being accessed by users, devices, and servers. This makes the job of staying compliant with your software contracts much easier and far less time consuming.
SAM tools can also help security teams by providing accurate and timely information about all software usage within the organisation, including the use of unsanctioned software. They can also help ensure that sanctioned software is being accessed by the right people and used in the correct way.
Eliminate compliance and operational risk
Gain visibility across the IT footprints
Control costs and licence repurpose
Savings of between 10-25% of annual spend
Want to know if you're managing software assets effectively? We can help you answer these questions:
- Do I have the right SAM tools for my vendors’ and organisation’s needs?
- Do I have the necessary SAM policies and governance structures in place?
- Have I defined and documented daily, weekly, and monthly operational processes and reporting requirements?
- Am I effectively implementing SAM processes and reporting?
- Do I have the right level of software licensing expertise to keep abreast of changing software publisher contracts and entitlements and analyse ongoing licence positions?
With the right foundation of people and processes, SAM tools are a valuable addition to an organisation’s SAM program if configured properly and managed well. Invictus Partners can help you optimally select and implement SAM tools as part of a best-practice SAM program. We can also assist you in extracting more value from SAM tools already in place.
Vendors we manage:
- SAP
- Oracle
- IBM
- Microsoft
- Citrix
- Red Hat
- VMware
- Adobe
- Informatica
- Salesforce
- Workday
- Autodesk
- ServiceNow
- Infor
- ServiceNow
- Flexera
- Aspera
- VOQUZ
- Snow Software
- Vendor-specific tools
- Other SAM tools
- Resource augmentation
- Fully outsourced
- Hybrid model
Our Software Asset Management Service breakdown:
Our services span SAM tool selection, set-up, and optimisation as part of an ongoing SAM program. These services are available as discrete engagements or as an end-to-end service.
Phase 1
SAM Program Development
Phase 2
SAM Tool
Selection
Phase 3
SAM Tool Configuration
Phase 4
SAM Value Realisation
Phase 1
Software Asset Management Program Development
Many enterprises begin their SAM journey by looking at tools. While there are many fantastic solutions on the market, none of them absolve the need for the people, process, and governance elements of SAM.
Tools or not, we can help you establish a SAM practice within your organisation. Our team works with you to make sure you have the necessary SAM resourcing, processes, workflows, and reporting for a best-practice SAM program before turning our focus to the technology.
Phase 2
Software Asset Management Software Selection
Our team has extensive experience working across a variety of SAM tools, including ServiceNow, Flexera, Aspera, VOQUZ, Snow Software, and vendor-specific tools such as ILMT, and can provide vendor-agnostic advice on which one is best for your organisation.
We consider the functionality gaps in your existing tools and align tool selection with the goals of businesss takeholders and the reporting and compliance requirements of the software vendors you use.
Phase 3
Software Asset Management Solution Configuration
Optimally configuring your SAM tools requires a mix of technical experience and specialist software licensing expertise. We draw on our knowledge of each vendor’s intricacies to enable the right configuration of part numbers and rules to be set up.
With most organisations running a complex mix of products and technology from multiple vendors, the resulting matrix of vendor usage data, reporting, and integration requirements can overwhelm an organisation whose primary focus is implementation. We have found that the best approach is a collaboration between a specialist implementation partner and Invictus Partners providing expert enterprise software licence advisory.
Phase 4
SAM Maturity Model
The success of a SAM program comes down to the quality of the data and how it is managed and used. Contract and entitlement data attributes must not only be correctly inputted in the configuration stage but must be continuously updated and analysed correctly.
We can help you analyse and optimise your software usage data ongoing, and produce your initial and ongoing licence positions. We can provide SAM support to your in-house team to help realise the full potential of your SAM program.
Download our SAM Services datasheet
The Invictus Partners difference: SAM Tool Selection & Optimisation
Our knowledge and expertise across a number of market-leading SAM tools enable us to help you select and configure the right tool (or tools) to meet your organisation’s reporting needs, as well as each of your vendor’s specific compliance requirements.
We take a holistic view of SAM, rather than a tool-first approach, recognising that managing an organisation’s software and licence entitlements is a complex operation that requires a careful mix of people, processes, and tools. The Invictus Partners team has the technical expertise and knowledge of best-practice processes, systems, and tools to ensure an effective SAM roadmap and strategy for every organisation.
Our team comprises experienced SAM professionals and enterprise software licensing consultants who have many decades of combined experience working across all major SAM tool vendors and software publishers. We can provide expert SAM advice and guidance on a consulting basis, or augment your in-house SAM team with specialist software licensing resources on an as-needed or ongoing basis.
Talk to a SAM Tool Optimisation expert
Doug Gibson
Managing Partner
Doug is a 29+ year international IT veteran, having worked in executive and general manager roles with organisations including SAP, Oracle, and IBM across A/NZ, Asia Pacific, and Africa. Doug’s intimate knowledge of software vendors, licensing and auditing practice has enabled him to successfully assist clients in retail, manufacturing, utilities, the public sector, and financial services to achieve positive outcomes in their audits, along with assisting them during software contract negotiations. Heading up the team and the company, Doug embodies the relevant skills and mindset to grow this company into a worldwide organisation.
Talk to a SAM Tool Optimisation expert
Katherine Xu
SAM Delivery Lead
Katherine is a 20+ year veteran of the IT industry, holding numerous SAM and licence compliance roles on both client and vendor side. Katherine is adept at re-aligning existing ITAM business processes with best-practice frameworks based on the SAM/HAM/cloud asset lifecycle. Katherine’s background in software commercials, compliance and management brings significant value and thought leadership to the Invictus Partners team and our clients across managed services engagements, from full SAM-as-a-Service to single-vendor licence managed services for IBM and SAP.
Got questions about Invictus Partners SAM Tool Optimisation?
*Gartner, The Secrets to a Successful SAM Program, 2018