SoftwareOne case study

A major telco supercharges its software sourcing and portfolio management with SoftwareOne

Learn how a European telecom provider became more efficient at procuring and managing large volumes of software with the help of SoftwareOne's Software Sourcing Services.

A telecommunications company with a long history in Europe provides services to millions of customers. Its large workforce uses hundreds of applications for various business tasks, which means the company must keep track of hundreds of different software licensing agreements – all with different terms, conditions and renewal deadlines. With so many different licences to manage, the organisation often had no time to review the end-user licence agreements (EULAs) for its large number of lower-value transactions, known as long-tail spend. This meant it couldn’t always identify potential risks or opportunities to optimise how it used different kinds of software. When the company did conduct EULA checks, its legal team was left with less time to spend on other business-critical work. Because the software contracts couldn’t be finalised while those internal reviews were taking place, end users were unable to purchase and use that software for essential daily business activities.

Single pane of glass
for understanding and managing software procurement, licensing and renewals
90-day alerting
ahead of software licence renewal deadlines
Traffic-light ratings
to better assess potential risks in end-user licence agreements

Client: Telecommunications company
Industry: Media and communications
Services: Software Sourcing Services

Tackling software procurement inefficiencies

SoftwareOne has long supported the telecom provider as a software reseller, helping it to negotiate contracts with vendors to procure the applications it needs. SoftwareOne suggested the company could improve key software lifecycle management tasks, eliminate duplicate and unused licences, make more efficient use of its in-house staff, reduce risk and save costs by using SoftwareOne’s Software Sourcing Services. That also includes SoftwareOne’s proprietary PyraCloud platform for integrated software spend management. The platform is especially useful for keeping track of licences and spending for long-tail vendors. The data in PyraCloud is then used by SoftwareOne’s Sourcing Services team to help organisations track, manage and optimise their software spend.

SoftwareOne’s recommendations were in line with the client’s outlook, which meant that work could begin on transforming how the company procured and managed its large volume of software contracts.

A building with a lot of triangles on it.

A business case for transformation

SoftwareOne started by speaking with different service owners across the organisation, many of whom had their own software budgets and negotiated individual software agreements with various vendors. Those service owners worked with the company’s Software Asset Management (SAM) team, which used a SAM tool to support software lifecycle management activities, but lacked full visibility of entitlements and purchases across the business.

Through these discussions, SoftwareOne discovered that different users across the organisation often had contracts with the same vendors. In one case, for example, the company was paying for dozens of licences for the same piece of software rather than for a single licence for the business as a whole. With a master agreement for a single licence, organisations can typically pay a lower unit price for most kinds of software.

Using this knowledge, SoftwareOne was able to build a business case to show the company how it could save money and reduce risk by consolidating multiple software contracts into one.

Because deploying PyraCloud and making other changes to the company’s software procurement practices would require new ways of working, it took several months for SoftwareOne and the organisation’s leadership to win buy-in from service owners across the business. After the service delivery began, SoftwareOne led several workshops to guide the company’s SAM team on how to use PyraCloud and align internal procurement processes with SoftwareOne’s Software Sourcing Services. It also provided users across the organisation with standard documentation about how to use the new procurement processes.

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Can we do this for you?

Learn what SoftwareOne’s Software Sourcing Services can do for you. Get in touch with our experts now.

SoftwareOne helped the organisation to:

Improve its use of SAM information by providing monthly software entitlement reports for purchases made via SoftwareOne
Streamline software entitlement collection and reconciliation against the software installed and actively used across the business
Efficiently establish effective licence positions and support licence reharvesting initiatives across the business

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Improved productivity and licence risk awareness

The company has now been using the new procurement processes for over two years and has seen significant benefits from the transformation. SoftwareOne’s PyraCloud platform provides a single-pane-of-glass view for understanding and managing software procurement, licensing and renewals across the entire organisation. The SAM team can instantly gain access to software entitlement information, identify the correct service owners and trace the full history of its software contracts.

Using PyraCloud’s Renewal Manager, the team also receives automatic notifications well ahead of contract expiration dates and can see at a glance which contracts are expiring in the coming 90 days. That has eliminated a problem that was once common in the organisation, in which a service owner would discover only a day or two beforehand that a licence was due to expire, leading to panicked efforts to renew on time.

The company also receives guidance from SoftwareOne on the EULA terms, with a traffic light rating to indicate which terms fully meet their requirements, which ones need closer consideration and which ones are not aligned with the company’s needs. This is helping the business to make more informed software purchasing decisions with a better understanding of potential risks.

With a more efficient and standardised process for managing software procurement, the organisation’s employees can make better use of their time, resulting in improved productivity. The company can also input data tracked by PyraCloud into its SAM tool, helping it to move to a demand-based renewal management strategy and right-size its software consumption and spending.

The success of the service is the result of more than just well-implemented technology. In addition to the strengths of its PyraCloud platform, SoftwareOne is also supporting the company with its knowledge of best practices and its team’s extensive expertise in SAM and the software vendor landscape. Drawing on SoftwareOne’s unique blend of people, processes and technology the organisation has successfully transformed its software sourcing and asset management practices.