Company Profile
This leading global service management and technology advisor provides hosting and cloud solutions to customers worldwide. Their leadership team identified that effective end-to-end management of all types of IT assets is critical to the business. An initiative was launched within the organization to create an effective corporate strategy-aligned management system, including governance and spend management. If the program succeeded, it meant they could protect their reputation by demonstrating to their stakeholders that they had secure, fit-for-purpose controls of the environment and were proactively mitigating risks, all while being financially prudent. They recognized the need to implement a business-outcome-aligned ITAM framework that would provide proactive governance to ensure they were using best industry practices around regulatory and software compliance and were removing inefficiencies across the business.
Because of Anglepoint’s track record of delivering excellence and expertise in the field, backed by their position as an industry leader, this client engaged with Anglepoint to help them build a robust ITAM Framework to manage and remediate their software environment.
Through Anglepoint’s ITAM Program Transformation assessment phase, the client created a structured roadmap to deliver a strategy that offered a standardized and client-focused approach to Software Asset Management with defined KPIs across the business. The client is now well-equipped to begin implementing a fit-for-purpose ITAM Program with the necessary resources for success.
This client’s business is firmly centered around delivering a profitable and superior experience, supporting their customers across the globe with an enterprise-grade infrastructure, while also ensuring the platform’s maintenance.
However, they were aware that their software purchases were suboptimal, and the negotiated terms and conditions were far from ideal, resulting in significant overspending. To exacerbate the situation, they had no visibility into associated risks, lacked information on priority vendors, and were unsure how to effectively address these issues.
People, Process and Technology
The client was struggling in the three key areas of ITAM: people, process, and technology:
People
Insufficiently defined roles within the team, causing ineffectiveness in translating data into actionable business value. Insufficient resources prevented them from delivering remediation within an appropriate timeframe.
Process
The absence of formalized processes and procedures meant they had no structure to control risk and spend. Furthermore, the lack of defined roles and allocated responsibilities across the IT functions further impeded governance and accountability. There was no defined roadmap to follow.
Technology
An inability to extract trustworthy and accurate data from their sub-optimally leveraged tools meant it was difficult to capture full entitlement and deployment information, and they were unable to forecast and manage IT spend.
Without these three key areas functioning optimally, their ability to engage in strong strategic contract negotiations with software vendors and achieve cost-effective software purchases was hindered. They lacked awareness of their software estate and what existed in their ecosystem, raising concerns regarding end-of-life, legacy hardware, and systems controls. With no interdepartmental collaboration, proactive software procurement planning was a continuous challenge, impacting the ability to negotiate cost-effective acquisitions, as well as securing favorably agreed terms and conditions with software vendors.
They needed clear visibility of their entire estate and a defined and well-communicated strategy and roadmap, supported by expert guidance driving them to align all their organizational objectives. Pressure was being applied by C-level stakeholders to put a solution in place and this was now a critical business priority.
The client sought support from the organization that they saw as the industry leader who demonstrated clearly that ITAM governance, driven by ISO 19770 standards, was the best practice that they needed. Anglepoint began with a series of expert-led workshops that would ensure a very clear understanding of their business drivers and subsequently provide the outcomes they were looking to achieve – ITAM governance and spend management.
Through the ITAM workshops, a clear strategy was defined that would respond to all the shortfalls they were experiencing and put a roadmap in place to start designing the governance that would be required.
The workshops initially enabled them to discuss critical risks and goals, uncover key challenges, and identify roles and responsibilities around Software Asset Management (SAM). Anglepoint established an understanding of the areas of the SAM framework where enhancements would be most beneficial to establish a foundational maturity level.
With two months of strategic planning, followed by four months of governance redesign, the client was able to define KPIs across their business and outline a roadmap to implement a fit-for-purpose ITAM Program.
The tooling and trustworthy data provisions were instrumental in delivering instant ROI for this project. Anglepoint undertook the arduous process of gap analysis with the incumbent tooling and presented a view of the client’s data they had never seen before. By combining the data from all their tools and using Anglepoint’s Dashboards, the client was able to visualize their data in one single pane view. For the first time, the client had a holistic view of their entire estate—a single source of truth on which to base their business decisions. This enabled Anglepoint to perform a publisher prioritization analysis on 69 publishers with a total spend of £43M.
The client has now established an ITAM framework aligned with industry best practices, tailored to their specific organizational structure. This framework is primed for implementation, with Anglepoint’s ongoing support and expert advisory services aimed at advancing the client’s ITAM maturity.
People – The client has defined roles to support the asset lifecycle. A SAM-focused RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) model and application ownership focused on software vendor management, data integrity, and IT security, enables them to measure role-based performance. This is supported by dedicated subject matter experts (SMEs) resourcing to support publisher management and cost optimization.
Process – The client has now developed a robust framework detailing the fundamentals of successful software asset lifecycle management. This includes request, procurement and contract renewal processes that are aligned with operational best practices, allowing them to measure cost containment and control software entry into the ecosystem. Additional optimization around de-provisioning and license re-harvesting further bolsters the cost-effective utilization of assets. Purposed KPIs further empower the client to monitor and achieve compliance, helping to attain the financial savings, risk mitigation and governance that the organization seeks and requires. The request processes are aligned with operational best practices as are procurement and renewals, allowing them to measure cost containment. Industry best practices processes will support the efficiency of lifecycle management with allocation, compliance, deprovisioning and re-harvesting with clear measurable KPIs.
Technology –Anglepoint’s dashboards provide the organization with a new dynamic knowledge-based perspective of their environment, enabling informed decisions around actions best suited to close tool gaps and enhance environment visibility.
Anglepoint continues to work with the client to operate the ITAM Program that will deliver scalable, flexible, best-in-class ITAM behavior and drive the required business outcome of superior client service and excellent revenue and profitability.
Without these three key areas functioning optimally, their ability to engage in strong strategic contract negotiations with software vendors and achieve cost-effective software purchases was hindered.
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