How Flexera Strengthens ITAM Programs and Supports Software Asset Management 

Flexera One, the flagship IT Asset Management (ITAM) tool from Flexera, offers organizations a wealth of opportunities. When used effectively, Flexera One can help maximize ROI by helping your organization to make informed decisions, reduce compliance risk, and unlock cost savings. However, these benefits can only be realised when organizations understand a key distinction: Flexera One is not a one-stop solution. It is technology, and like any tool, it’s only as effective as the Software Asset Management (SAM) or ITAM program that supports it.  

Common Misconceptions About Flexera One Adoption 

We spoke in detail in our last article about the importance of feeding Flexera One with the correct data from across the business. This is to ensure that you have all the information at hand to deliver the insights to empower your team to realize savings, consolidate IT estates and satisfy compliance. However, to enable this practice, the tool needs to be coupled with a strong SAM/ITAM program to steer it to success.   

From our extensive experience in working with organizations and Flexera One, these are the most common missteps we see: 

1. Lack of Stakeholder Engagement: Flexera One requires data from all across the business but often business leaders are not engaged early enough to have full oversight across the entire organization. 
2. Unclear Roles and Responsibilities: It is not enough to simply identify the key stakeholders. To be truly effective you need to establish who is responsible for what – this is critical in ensuring insights can be acted on promptly. 
3. No Defined Risk Remediation Process: Flexera One outlines clearly where an organization is at risk. However, flagging the risk and acting on it are two distinct jobs. Many organizations fail to have a mapped-out remediation process in place that outlines how parties should proceed.These are just some of the ways in which we see organizations trip up in their Flexera One deployments. They deploy the tool and fail to acknowledge that to ensure the biggest impact it needs to be coupled with a robust program to manage it.

So how should organizations do it best? 

Building a Strong Foundation for Your ITAM and SAM Program 

The best SAM/ITAM programs are the ones that continuously evolve. This means periodically adapting and expanding the program’s remit to meet evolving business requirements and ensuring that the program continues to derive maximum value from Flexera One. To do so effectively means bringing together people, process and technology (Flexera One) to ensure full visibility and control across your IT estate.  

Flexera One will provide the data and insights, however, it can’t create the structure and the process to make informed decisions. That is where your SAM and ITAM program comes in. In our experience, organizations that get the most out of Flexera One share some key attributes – all of which form the building blocks of a solid SAM/ITAM program:  

• Business Aligned KPIs: Link your KPIs to tangible business metrics like cost avoidance, reduced risk, etc. This keeps your program aligned with business goals.   

• Clearly Defined Roles and Responsibilities: Assign ownership across areas including licensing, IT and procurement. By defining these roles, individuals understand clearly their responsibilities – meaning that they are empowered to turn insights into action. 

• Established Governance and Decision-Making Framework: The creation of a formal governance framework outlining the process around data reviews, risk assessments and approvals ensures everyone knows how to manage any areas of concern flagged by Flexera One. This also ensures that all stakeholders follow the same path of action – leading to consistent and reliable outcomes. 

• Integration with Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs): By integrating data from CMBDs, such as ServiceNow, organizations benefit from richer data that facilitates better decision-making. 

• Regular Program Reviews: To be truly successful, take the time to review insights, refine processes, and adjust workflows to ensure your program is aligned with business priorities. 

Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practic

Theory is all well and good but how should organizations look to bridge that gap in reality? 

Anglepoint has helped numerous organizations optimize their Flexera One environments. One customer – a U.S. Health Insurance Subsidiary – was struggling to effectively manage software entitlements. The organization lacked visibility into license positions, faced inconsistent contract renewals, and saw limited return on its investment, despite its investment in Flexera One. 

With a small internal ITAM team and fragmented processes, the client engaged Anglepoint to establish a scalable entitlement management strategy and maximize the value of Flexera One. 

Anglepoint gained access to the relevant entitlement data to get full visibility into the client’s procurement and supply chain processes. This allowed Anglepoint to establish a clear entitlement management process. As no standardized approach previously existed, the team worked closely with application owners across the organization to design and implement a tailored framework. 

Given the number of software vendors involved, Anglepoint prioritized efforts by analyzing five years of historical software spend. This analysis allowed them to categorize software vendors into two groups: the top 20 priority vendors, which required an enhanced standard, and long-tail publishers. This publisher prioritization formed the basis of building a centralized entitlement management strategy within Flexera One. Anglepoint built a centralized entitlement tracker in Flexera One to monitor software licenses for these key publishers.  

To ensure that the client’s small and dedicated ITAM team understood how to effectively manage the new process in Flexera One, Anglepoint carried out extensive training. The sessions demonstrated how to upload licenses, prepare and maintain the system, how to process entitlements and correct any errors – ensuring consistency in process and accuracy across data. This whole process enabled the client to transition from reactive, ad-hoc software asset management to a centralized, proactive, and data-driven approach that maximised the value from its investment in Flexera One. 

Unlocking the Full Potential of Flexera One 

Flexera One is a powerful tool, but its true value emerges when coupled with an effective SAM/ITAM program. With the correct foundations in place, Flexera One can deliver the insights required to drive decisions to reduce risk, optimize spend and improve visibility across your IT estate. However, success depends on the foundations laid and ensuring that the correct people and processes are in place to support this tool. 

If you are looking to maximize the value of your investment in Flexera One and want to understand how best to evolve your SAM/ITAM program to best support it, you can contact us here to set up a convenient time to chat.