Global Tech Vendor Achieves Sustainable Software Compliance

The Challenge

As a global entity, this organization’s engineering software estate spanned multiple regional business units and included a number of core publishers—including Dassault. With only a small internal team, fragmented regional agreements, limited insight into usage, an absence of centralized software governance and inconsistent monitoring processes, the organization struggled to proactively identify or prevent unauthorized software usage. Compounding these issues, the organization was undergoing a major divestiture. Numerous local Dassault agreements created duplication, fragmentation, and contractual ambiguity between regions. Without global alignment, compliance management became difficult, and licensing issues went unnoticed. As a result, the organization was repeatedly found non-compliant with Dassault audits—incurring $8.4M in audit settlement costs over a four-year period and prompting Dassault in 2020 to mandate quarterly infringement reports and immediate corrective measures. The ongoing unplanned spend created operational strain, eroded vendor trust, and forced IT and legal teams to divert time from strategic work to handle audits and remediation. To address the requirements from Dassault, the organization required independent expertise to analyze and correct the root causes of non-compliance, consolidate agreements, and establish formal governance. Anglepoint was selected for its proven track record in managing complex, global SAM programs and resolving vendor disputes. Its expertise in Dassault licensing and compliance remediation positioned Anglepoint as a trusted advisor for both operational recovery and strategic transformation.

The Solution

Starting with the client’s top three engineering application publishers—Dassault, Autodesk and PTC—Anglepoint performed an in-depth global analysis of software entitlements, deployments, and consumption to identify the root causes of unauthorized use. Although the client was aware of some licensing risks, the assessment revealed broader issues, including that 60 percent of all Dassault infringements originated from external hard drives. These findings shaped a strategic remediation roadmap that addressed both contractual and operational weaknesses. Working closely with global IT, procurement, compliance, and regional business owners, Anglepoint created a comprehensive and unified global SAM framework to manage publisher relationships more effectively. As part of this effort, Anglepoint conducted global entitlement and consumption reviews to better align usage of the three core publishers with contractual rights. New language was embedded into SAM policy documentation to define consequences for unauthorized software use. New proactive, reactive, and corrective processes were introduced, including vendor response protocols, device identification, and decommissioning workflows—ensuring consistency across all global business units. A USB approval and scanning program was also created to prevent external software installations—a key source of policy infringement. Reporting was also automated—with the process conducted monthly, rather than quarterly, to improve the speed and accuracy of compliance reviews. Anglepoint also recommended the implementation of Nexthink monitoring scripts to enhance visibility of infringements, resulting in 94 percent coverage of the engineering estate. This automation allowed near real-time identification of potential infringements and improved reporting accuracy. The creation of this comprehensive framework supported the negotiation of a new consolidated global Dassault agreement, replacing fragmented regional contracts and improving overall efficiency. The success of these initiatives expanded Anglepoint’s role in 2023 to cover the top 10 engineering application publishers, and in 2025, the top 12. Dassault also recognized the organization’s improved compliance posture by removing the quarterly reporting requirement in December 2024.

Results

• Achieved significant cost avoidance by identifying and mitigating potential risks. The client also realized substantial early risk prevention benefits and recorded a notable reduction in monthly infringement cases.
• Zero infringement payments since implementation, reflecting a full shift from reactive audit defense to proactive compliance management.
• Restored vendor trust, demonstrated by year-over-year declines in infringements and no settlement payments from 2023 to 2025.
• Significantly enhanced visibility and governance, enabling the client to manage licensing for its top engineering application publishers with greater accuracy, confidence, and predictability.