Insight into your licensing estate should be the basis for every decision

Most companies invest large amounts on software and yours is probably no exception. Whether you spend it on purchasing licenses, ongoing maintenance and support fees or on cloud subscriptions, software spend is taking up a huge part of the overall IT budget. Based on our experience, most companies want to reduce this spend, and it’s very likely you have the same goals. You are also probably refining or defining your IT strategy, considering how and when to move to the cloud. Additionally, you want to ensure that software costs are being allocated to the correct departments and teams, and you want to come out of any licensing audit with a clean sheet.

All of these things are important; but where do you start?

First things first

The starting point for all of the aforementioned points is the same: having licensing insight. You need to know what your current situation looks like, so you have a good foundation for any future decisions. The definition of insight is ‘an accurate and deep understanding’, but we see all too often that licensing decisions are based on assumptions, incomplete information, and inaccurate data. Treat your licensing decisions as you would any other big investment: base them on complete and accurate information.

To make a simple analogy; imagine you want to buy a house. Before looking at the market, you would start by assessing your needs. Do you want an apartment, a duplex, a single house? Should it be in a small town, in a big city? Are the schools near and reputable? This list can be exhaustive when you’re looking at making such a large investment. Taking from another viewpoint, let’s say you decided to buy a house that needed improvements. Again, you would want to know the extent of the improvements and the cost before you made a sound decision.

Why should your process be any different when it comes to your IT investment? Before purchasing any new licenses, you should understand which ones you already have, and possibly reassign them, if necessary. Or you have shelfware licenses which are better to terminate than continuing to pay support for. Maybe your organization is looking to migrate to the cloud. Regardless of the situation you’re in, you need to have insight into your licensing estate to determine which option is best.

Why insight?

Assessing your needs and having insight into your current licensing situation can potentially save you a great deal of money. What kind of information do you need? Your data should be complete and accurate. Additionally, you need to make sure that your data comes from all relevant systems. If you do not know exactly which software products you are licensed for and which ones you use, you will not be able to make any adjustments to your investment and ultimately lower your spend. Accuracy means having reliable data that you are able to interpret correctly. Turning your data into relevant information that you can use is called insight.

Why is gaining insight so overlooked when it comes to your IT investment? One could argue that it takes too much time; and that is partially true, as it does take time. Time means money, so there is definitely a cost associated with getting insight. However, by not spending the required time and money to make decisions based on anything other than real insight will lead to sub-optimal decisions in the best situation, and bad decisions in the worst situation. IT-related decisions impact an entire organization. Once you have made a less than optimal decision, reverting from that will be timely, costly, and frustrating.