Lepide Software Asset Management

What is Software Asset Management?

Software Asset Management is a process or we can say a combination of several processes that are executed for managing software licenses and ensuring that the software licenses are compliant to license standards. Like computers, keyboards, chairs, etc. Software applications and licenses are also important organizational assets that require proper management. Managing software licenses is the best practice towards money saving and the smooth work flow.

Software Asset Management helps identifying software installed on various computers in the network. It provides information, such as which software is installed where, on which date the software was installed, what is the software license type, who is the software vendor, and so on. Effective Software Asset Management offers several benefits some of which are listed here in below. Let us first see the issues that can create a problem for you due to ineffective software asset management.

Issues that come to your way due to unorganized software assets

Improper software asset management may bring several problems to your door. Major issues are listed below:

  • Legal Issues causing huge penalty: Software that are not meeting license compliance may create legal issues at the time External software audits are done. Breaching the software license compliance may cause huge penalty to the organization, which could have been saved with proper software licenses administration and management. Apart from creating a big hole in the pocket, breaching the software license compliance harms the organization's reputation, which may lead into the business loss.
  • Money Loss: Insufficient information about the available and used software licenses often lead into the overbuying of the software licenses even when the organization does not need them. Buying additional software licenses when you actually do not need them is just a sign of useless investment i.e. the loss of money.
  • Reduced ROI: Upgrading software licenses once they are expired demands time. Insufficient information about when the software will expire often create situations when employees need to sit blank, as they cannot use the required software or all required software features because of the license expiry. Delay in the software license purchase increases the employees' downtime, which ultimately affects the ROI graph.
Benefits of the Software Asset Management
  • Keep a complete record of available and used software licenses
  • Get a complete overview of which software is installed where, when the software was installed, who is the software vendor, what is the software license type, and what is the installation key
  • Attain peace of mind by knowing that you are meeting the software license compliance thereby, you are away from legal issues
  • Efficiently organize the software licenses
  • Make quick and efficient decision on buying the software licenses and save money
  • No more need to buy the software licenses that the organization already owns; you buy additional software licenses due to lack of information, which will not happen anymore, as you are implementing Software Asset Management
  • Make wise investment on the software licenses with the Software Asset Management reports that give you a quick overview about the quantity of the software licenses available
  • Obtain employees peace of mind and let the keep working without interrupting the workflow
  • See a good improvement in the ROI graph
  • Obtain benefits of volume license purchase
Let us see how an effective Software Asset Management System can help dissolving legal issues and saving money

The effective and centralized Software Asset Management system helps you execute quick and impeccable software inventory. The efficient software inventory, provides you with a master record keeping information, such as software name, software vendor name, installation date, expiry date, license available, license is compliant or not, license type, etc. By having the quick overview on these factors at the time of internal audits, you can filter the software applications that are not meeting the license compliance parameters. By doing this, you save your organization from huge penalty and reputation harm.

If during an external software audit, the license compliance breach is noticed then depending on the severity level of the license compliance breach, a big hole can be created in the money-cabinet of the organization. Furthermore, the reputation is harmed as well. The effective Software Asset Management system helps tackling such issues by providing complete report on the software licenses and their compliances.

Apart from helping you to curb legal issues, the Software Asset Management system helps saving software inventory time, help desk cost and making wise investment. See how.

  • Saving Software Inventory Time- Carrying out manual software inventory is a lengthy, tedious, and time-consuming process. For this, the admin needs to stop over every computer, dig into it to collect information on how many software are installed, software license type, license key, software vendor, license expiry date, etc. The same process is executed on several computers one by one thus several inventory reports are created. For example, if software inventory is done on 500 computers then 500 inventory reports will be generated. After that, those inventory reports are merged to create a master report based on which the decision about buying new software licenses is made. The whole process may take several days and inclusion of many help desk personnel.
    Whereas the centralized Software Asset Management system stops you from moving computer to computer and generating manual reports. It provides you complete report about the software licenses for every computer in a domain, for a group, or for the whole network. Generating software inventory report with the Software Asset Management system is just a few mouse clicks process thus it helps saving time and making quick decision about the software license Purchase.
  • Saving Help Desk Cost- During manual software inventory, several help desk personnel are required. And depending on how long the inventory task will go on, all help desk personnel only do the work related to the software license inventory. While using the Software Asset Management system, there is no need to employ several help desk personnel for the software inventory. Only the system admin can do this task in just few mouse clicks thus the software helps saving help desk cost.
  • Making Wise Investment - The Software Asset Management tool provides you with a clear picture of how many software licenses are already used for a particular software and how many are left. Furthermore, it provides information on software location. Based on this report, you can make a quick decision on whether the software licenses are being used efficiently or not; for example, if a computer has a software installed where it should not be then you can make a decision on whether to install the software again on that computer or not. This way, the software helps making wise decision about investing organization's money on software license purchase.