Software license management is vital to maintaining compliance and optimizing your organization’s software assets. Many organizations struggle to manage their software licenses, but it doesn’t have to be that way! Read on if you’re wondering how or why you should improve your organization’s software management practices.
Software management is an important initiative for businesses. It can help you reduce costs, mitigate risks, increase compliance, revenues, customer satisfaction, and more.
What is software management?
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Software license management is the process of tracking software licenses and ensuring that they are used correctly. It includes tracking software licenses, managing them, and reporting on them.
Managing software licenses are important because they’re a high cost for the business.
Suppose your company doesn’t have a good system in place for managing its software licenses. In that case, you could be paying more than you need to when it comes time to renew your contracts or, worse yet, getting caught using pirated versions of programs when no one knows what version or edition you have installed!
What can you do to improve your software license management?
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- Use a centralized repository to manage all software licenses.
- Automate the process of reporting on and renewing your software licenses.
- Use an inventory tool to manage your assets, so you know what you have, who uses it, and where it’s being used.
Centralized repository
The centralized repository is the single source of truth. It stores all the details of your software licenses, including information about your vendors, products, and users. Using a centralized license management system allows you to manage the entire lifecycle of your software licenses.
You can easily configure it to automatically check for expiring subscriptions or set up alerts when they do expire so that you are notified immediately. A centralized repository also makes it easy to manage multiple vendors and products in one place, making it easy for IT administrators to keep track of their software licenses at all times.
Automation
Automation is key to managing software licenses. Since the goal is to ensure compliance and reduce the risk of non-compliance, automation will help you keep track of license usage and ensure that your organization is within its license limits.
Automation can also be used to create reports and alerts that will point out when you have exceeded your limits and need to go back into budgeting mode. With a few simple clicks, you’ll be able to disable a user’s access or generate an event notification; all without leaving your office chair!
Reporting
Reporting is a key component of software management. Reporting provides you with information that can help you manage your licenses, understand how they are being used, and control costs. Here are some examples of what reports might tell you:
- How many licenses do you have in use right now? Do they exceed the number of licenses on the contract? If so, what’s the cause? Is someone using more than their fair share? Are there too many active users who aren’t paying for their accounts anymore (or ever)? Manual review can be time-consuming, but software tools make it easier to find answers by showing all available data in one place.
- How much money is being spent on each vendor/application combination? How much has been spent over time, and how does it compare with other vendors/applications or periods in time? This will help identify anomalies where spending may be higher than expected due to factors such as volume discount programs or unexpected usage spikes within specific groups (e.g., sales) at particular times during the year when budgets were set before those events occurred.
Conclusion
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No matter what software license management you use, it’s important to ensure that you’re paying for the right licenses and using them correctly.