The business case for software asset management

In practice, even with a managed service, there is often a need to support communication and integration with internal IT and business stakeholders, and any outsourcers.

Process — ITAM is driven by the processes that provide the data and ensure the accuracy of its outputs. Without robust processes there is no ITAM activity. ITAM processes need to be carefully designed and integrated into business processes, as they are not separate from IT and business activities. There will be costs involved in process redesign, implementation and training, and an ongoing impact due to the need for continuous improvement both in terms of data quality and in processes as ITAM matures and the organization changes.

Technology — this is not just about specialist ITAM and SAM tools, but about all the data sources and tools needed to help manage all the different types of technology assets within our organization. This data also needs to be cleansed; feedback provided on quality issues and analysis of the outputs must be carried out.

When putting the business case together, all these costs must be identified, considered and explained, to ensure that the solution stands up to scrutiny and the true cost of both the project and the ongoing support for ITAM is understood. When planning any project there will be assumptions made, whether about the availability of data or resources, stakeholder buy in, or specific technologies that are already or should be in place.

This section should include any assumptions by other projects that ITAM data will be available to support their work and highlight the associated timescales. Your business case needs to include details of all risks and dependencies on other parts of the organization that may impact on the success of your project. These may be dependencies on other tools and technology such as financial, ERP, P2P or HCM systems, or on other projects being completed, or on specific resources being available to support the project.

Dependencies should be carefully mapped so the impact of any delay or failure in one place can be tracked through the entire project. This section should also call out all dependencies that other projects have on the ITAM implementation and the associated risks of not being able to support them.

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Executive Views. Thought Leadership. Identify all existing processes that will be needed for the SAM project normally most but not all processes are already in place and make a plan for how to implement required processes. Get an overview of software applications which are installed but not used. This information is good for making calculations for possible savings by implementing usage metering.

Most organisations will not know their license situation when starting the business case so it can be very hard to estimate the costs that will be inccured and how many licenses are missing. This fact should be mentioned in the business case. A SAM tool should not be purchased until all the processes are identified and being set in place. Last but by no means least, set the scope for the SAM project — Which geographies? It is recommended to start off with a limited scope with the long term goal of including the entire corporation and all used software.

What else would you add to help build a business case for SAM? The key to achieving recognition for the value of — and need for — ITAM is to link it to the business initiatives that are already perceived as truly important. Business cases are used to help senior stakeholders prioritize investment in finite resources that will support business objectives. As you build your business case, you need to ensure you can articulate the risks, benefits and impacts in terms that reflect business priorities.

There needs to be clear alignment of the proposed ITAM solution to key business initiatives through the related IT initiatives and specific funded IT projects. While these projects may not have included ITAM in their initial scope, it is likely that many of them particularly transformation projects such as cloud migration, OS upgrades, major business system upgrades or migrations such as ERP, CRM or HCM will have a dependency on good quality, accurate data about existing technology in order to plan any upgrade or replacement.

Where ITAM investment cannot be clearly linked to existing funding, then it must focus instead on highlighting the risk of non-investment, such as a software audit failure on a scale that has significant budgetary impact, a security breach that exposes lack of asset data as a key vulnerability, a internal audit failure that flags up a regulatory requirement for improved asset data, or a significant reduction of internal budgets due to unbudgeted overspending or external economic pressures reducing income.

In this case, there either needs to be a compelling reason which needs to speak directly to those holding the purse strings for immediate investment, or it may be that the initial business case is required to ensure that the project is on the list of funded projects for the next budget cycle.