Actively shaping innovations in retail

Transparency creates advantages

SPAR ICS is the company-owned IT provider to the SPAR Austria Group. The provider delivers IT services in eight countries fulfilling all IT needs of SPAR, INTERSPAR, Hervis, and SES (Spar European Shopping Centers). Complex IT structures, including on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments, caused the IT provider's software budget to grow steadily. In addition, uncertain inventory data increased the need for up-to-date and meaningful compliance information. The company planned to create a global overview of the entire software inventory that would establish significant transparency for all group companies. The new system would replace manual tracking and true-up of license balances, relieving internal IT resources.

The SPAR ICS goal was to optimize company-wide software lifecycle management using a managed service and make a sustainable contribution to the digital transformation of the entire company.

Extensive insight into the software environment

A key reason for working with SoftwareOne to improve IT asset management was the outstanding experience on previous projects. SPAR ICS opted for SoftwareOne's SLMAdvanced managed service and Flexera's FlexNet Manager SLM tool to establish up-to-date inventory data.

With the FlexNet Manager, SLMAdvanced now guarantees the company a high level of data quality and transparency on software in use. Utilizing the Flexera Software Application Recognition Library (ARL), an extensive software catalog (SKU), including Product User Rights Libraries (PURL) with commercial and technical data, can be merged. This enables SPAR ICS to perform comprehensive data analysis and create detailed reporting and discover optimization potential during contract renewals while replacing the time-consuming process that manually maintained and merged the information.

SoftwareOne's PyraCloud provides a central tool for software procurement and enables SPAR ICS to manage roles easily. In addition, PyraCloud provides the basis for cross-country SLM reporting, incorporating a product portfolio overview across the entire group with a particular focus on Microsoft, Adobe, and SAP. If desired, other manufacturers can be added at any time.

Achieving competitive advantages with IT Asset Management

• Transparency created: Cross-country reporting with a complete overview of the entire product portfolio
• Ensuring compliance: Ongoing license management, including license optimization through the Managed Service SLMAdvanced
• Elimination of vulnerabilities: Merging different data sources
• High data quality: Daily inventory data is updated at the "push of a button" without manually maintaining Excel tables
• Greater control: Improved lifecycle management through continuous license maintenance and optimization, including auditing of all new additions and decommissioning of old devices and licenses
• Central & precise inventory management: All information is transparently provided in one tool and regularly maintained
• Cross-departmental data: Departments, such as purchasing and security, can control and manage data to benefit country managers with high-quality information