Global Technology Vendor Accelerates Risk Remediation with Anglepoint

The Challenge

This organization manages a vast and complex IT estate with over 100 years of operation and a presence in 85 countries. The original challenge was understanding its risk profile, having a single source of truth for entitlements and visibility across the entire estate. In 2020, with no formal SAM program in place and Flexera’s FlexNet Management Suite (FNMS) not yet fully utilized, the organization had limited coverage of its estate. After originally engaging Anglepoint to manage 100 publishers, the approach has since matured, with a refined focus on its top 12 software publishers, which collectively account for the majority of its annual software spend.

As part of these services, Anglepoint delivers regular Effective Licensing Positions (ELPs) which are used to create a compliance assessment for the highest value and highest audit risk vendors. The team also produces Risk & Opportunity Assessment Reports (ROARs) that quantify the risk and opportunities, and provide actionable recommendations. Managing 12 publishers—each with unique software licensing rules—alongside a mix of global and local contracts and multiple data sources is a significant challenge. However, this process is crucial to address the risks of both over- and under-consumption of software and cloud services, as well as any potential breaches of licensing terms and conditions which can lead to substantial commercial liabilities.

While these semi-annual ELPs and ROARs provide a clear and comprehensive view of software-related risks, the decentralized structure of the organization posed challenges around effective remediation and working collaboratively with the business units. The Global SAM team recognized the need for stricter governance and remediation processes to hold stakeholders accountable and ensure timely mitigation actions.

Additionally, the SAM team aimed to eliminate unauthorized software usage, which could pose further risks around compliance, unplanned expenditure, and security.

Finally, with over 100,000 employees across four business units—each with autonomy in IT decision-making—the organization required robust measures to ensure that all software requests followed approved processes.

The Solution

Since becoming the organization’s SAM partner in 2020, Anglepoint has developed a deep understanding of its organizational structure, IT estate, and licensing entitlements. Anglepoint has also successfully migrated the client from FNMS to Flexera One to provide full-reporting over its entire estate.

This history of working together placed Anglepoint in the ideal position to develop the organization’s risk remediation processes, an initiative that began in 2021.

After establishing the ELP for each top-tier publisher, Anglepoint produces a ROAR, an executive overview quantifying the potential financial risk and optimization opportunities, achievements made since the previous ROAR, and actionable recommendations to remediate and further optimize the estate.

The risks and recommendations outlined in the ROAR are then entered into the client’s own Global Risk and Compliance tool with CIO level visibility to hold the individual owners accountable. The ROAR recommendations are then also uploaded into Elevate, Anglepoint’s proprietary tool used for project management, data processing, and automation. With its robust project management functionality, Elevate provides a single view of all risks and optimization opportunities so that the collective Anglepoint and client teams can track remediation actions, ensure these are assigned to the appropriate stakeholders and offering them clear and actionable plans.

To ensure accountability, strict KPIs have been implemented that guarantee Anglepoint delivers ROARs on time. These ITAM KPIs also track speed to update Elevate with remediation actions assigned and completed by the organization within agreed timeframes. All of Anglepoint’s KPIs are reported on a monthly basis in dashboards to management. The client’s SAM team members are then also have KPIs on time to close the remediation tasks and provide internal monthly updates to ensure that progress is made and remediation actions are actioned.

Additionally, Anglepoint delivers continuous service delivery through partnering with the organization’s SAM team with regular cadence calls to maintain progress, address emerging challenges, and accelerate resolution times.

Results

• Cost Avoidance: The organization’s new risk remediation processes have delivered $314M in cost avoidance across their top-tier publishers.
• Zero-Risk Microsoft Estate: All risks related to the organization’s Microsoft environment have been fully mitigated, resulting in $26 million in realized cost avoidance and $0 True Up needed. This achievement serves as a blueprint for managing risks across all software publisher relationships.
• Successful Oracle Unlimited License Agreement (ULA) exit: With Anglepoint’s expertise, the organization was able to exit an expensive Oracle ULA, with $160 million remediated within a six month period.
• Risk Reduction and Audit Support: Facing audits from both SAP and IBM, the organization was able to avoid costs of $32 million and $ 7 million respectively. Anglepoint has also migrated the organization onto the IBM’s Client Value Accelerator (CVA) Program, previously the IBM Authorized SAM Provider (IASP) program, which involves sharing regular reporting with IBM in exchange for the certainty of an audit waiver.
• Comprehensive Risk Visibility: Through Elevate, Anglepoint ensures complete transparency over all identified risks, providing an at-a-glance overview of how they are being managed. This fosters confidence in the data and keeps the organization in a constant state of audit readiness.
• Accelerated Remediation: The implementation of robust resolution processes has improved the speed of remediation actions, which have eliminated the likelihood of repeat recommendations during each ELP and ROAR cycle, significantly enhancing efficiency.
• Adaptable and Evolving Processes: The organization has complete flexibility in how risk and remediation activities are assigned, tailored to each publisher’s requirements, the organizational operating model and internal workflows.
• Best-Practice SAM Program: Swift and effective risk resolution continues to elevate the organization’s high-performing SAM program, solidifying it as a model of industry best practices.