As software increasingly becomes a prominent feature to help organisations run effectively, keeping up to date with the number of licences that an organisation has, as well as maintaining all the different licences can be an issue for many organisations. Implementing a good Software Asset Management system can help optimise the full software lifecycle process from the initial purchase, installation, maintenance and removal stages. That said here are 5 business benefits of using Software Asset Management software:

1. Reduce Costs

One of the big advantages of using Software Asset Management software is that it can actually help to lower costs as well as giving businesses better financial control. Typically, a good Software Asset Management system will provide the following functionality:

  • Preventing the organisation from purchasing licences that are not needed.
  • Giving organisations the ability to plan for the future and to create a budget that more accurately reflects their software support and upgrade requirements. This will help to prevent any surprise software costs.
  • Once the organisation knows exactly which software it needs it can take advantage of bulk purchase discounts by purchasing all the software that it needs together.

2. Software Security

Software Asset Management Systems can track all software that is installed on an organisations computer network. This can help prevent workers from downloading and installing unauthorised software onto their machines. This in turn improves software security by preventing the chances of the user (whether it be accidently or intentionally) downloading software bundled in with viruses onto the organisations machines.

3. Licence Compliance

One of the major benefits of using a Software Asset Management system is that it protects the organisation from unintentionally acquiring illegal software licences which would be useful in the event of a surprise software audit.

4. Make use of Asset Inventory Tools

A number of Asset Management Tools exist and although they can help the business in many ways, most have been designed to help organisations to manage their technical responsibilities. Here are some of the more common Asset Inventory Tools and how they can benefit a business:

  • Configuration Management Database – All the components relating to an organisations IT Assets are stored here. This allows for more technical aspects regarding hardware and software to be managed effectively.
  • Contract Management – A Register which organisations can use to make a record of their global contracts and therefore assisting in the procurement process.
  • Deployment and Release Management – Gives better control of software deployment and management of software updates.
  • System Management –Provides a central location for the management of the computers within the organisation.

5. Reduced IT Support

As Software Asset Management systems help to prevent unauthorised software from making its way into the organisation, there should be fewer software issues which means that the organisation can downsize their IT support team due to fewer IT support related issues.