Guidelines for Choosing a Software Asset Management Tool

Software asset management (SAM) doesn’t always get the airtime it deserves. Yet it’s a critically important business initiative which – when done right – should help you save money, lower compliance and security risks, and even support sustainability programs.

Whatever your organization’s software asset management objectives, for your program to be successful, it’s imperative to align the right SAM tool with the right strategy. Even the best solution in the world will not add value if the underlying program is broken.

That’s where trusted third-party software asset management experts play a crucial role. They can work closely with your key stakeholders, and cut through vendor marketing noise to help you select the tool that’s the best fit for your organizational goals.

Why Do You Need a New SAM Tool?

If you’re at the point of considering a SAM refresh, it’s often for one of two reasons. Either you’re using legacy tools which are myopically focused on only specific software publishers or software types, or your existing software asset management approach relates only to one stage of the lifecycle, like procurement, so can’t provide the holistic insight necessary to drive value.

There are many modern software asset management tools from vendors like Flexera, ServiceNow, and , which offer a wealth of improvements over legacy solutions. But projects still fail alarmingly often.

This could be for technical reasons. For example, the number of software asset management data inputs could be limited due to your organization not being able to install an agent on each software system, or perhaps the tool itself is misconfigured, with However, there are sometimes more systemic reasons for project failure. This occurs when expectations are unrealistic and/or misaligned with your corporate requirements.

Modern software asset management technology is good, but it can’t work miracles. And while software asset management vendors may promise the earth, unless you’ve set realistic expectations early on in the project, there’s a danger that the solution may fall short.

Here’s Anglepoint’s methodology for ensuring SAM tool deployments deliver the business value your organization requires.

Best Practices for Selecting the Right SAM Tool

1. Define objectives
   Spend time upfront defining your objectives to ensure they’re aligned with those of the whole organization, rather than the siloed teams that may be driving software asset management. You may want to focus on cost savings, regulatory compliance, mitigating cybersecurity risk, or any number of business goals. The best way of surfacing and codifying these is with an expert partner, who will sit down with all relevant stakeholders across your business to understand their various requirements. Once these have been collected, the partner should then be able to ring the alarm bell if it suspects expectations may be too high, or not sufficiently aligned with business goals.
2. Establish use cases
   Add critical context to your business objectives by deciding what the main SAM use cases should be. Often companies will want to reduce their software spend and/or cloud costs, while others will want to rationalize their estate following a merger or acquisition. There will be multiple use cases depending on your IT environment and business priorities.
3. Prepare your questions
   With these use cases defined, the next priority is to compile a list of questions to ask a prospective software asset management vendor about their products and way of working. Common examples include: We run many SaaS publishers; which can you connect to out-of-the-box, and how much development work might a custom connection take?

   Other questions will inevitably be much more technical in nature, particularly if your organization has legacy data from custom applications, which can create integration challenges. Work with your software asset management consulting partner to ensure you are posing all of the right questions, with no omissions.

4. Tool vendor engagement
   With these preparation phases complete, the next step is to engage with the tool vendor. Here, it’s important to separate the marketing claims from the reality, as this will help you understand whether the product can meet all of your SAM technology use cases and requirements. This means speaking to a product manager with deep domain expertise, rather than a sales representative who might not understand the intricacies of how the tool works.
5. Evaluate and compare
   The vendor engagements should provide all the information you need to make an accurate evaluation of each software asset management tool’s capabilities. This should cover out-of-the-box functionality and customizations, as well as important pricing details such as how payment is collected and whether support fees are included. And it should compare products not just against each other, but how they perform against specific software publishers.

How Can Anglepoint Help?

Of course, all of the above is possible using your in-house team. But many organizations struggle with IT skills shortages and gaps, so don’t always have the expertise required to manage this process end-to-end. The job is made harder by the fact that vendor representatives are incentivized to tell the most positive story possible about their products.

We understand the technical capabilities of all major software asset management tools inside-out. But Anglpoint is also also vendor neutral, meaning we scour the market to find the best fit for your organization. Our proven methodology holds vendors accountable for their claims, delivering you a rigorously evaluated, highly customized assessment and recommendation. That’s the first step to software asset management tooling success.