Do You Know SAM?

Software asset management (SAM) is an important part of your ITSM toolkit. According to an industry-wide report, the SAM market is estimated to expand to USD 3.82 Billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 14%.  This number alone underscores its importance to the overall ITSM operations within an organization.  Investments in SAM, today will translate to better efficiency and customer satisfaction in the long run. If you’re just beginning to build software asset management for your organization, this blog should be your starting point. If you already have a policy in place, this is your chance to take another look at it and polish it well.

Before we dive into the strategy, let’s understand the fundamentals.

What exactly is Software Asset Management?

It is the process of handling the entire lifecycle of an IT asset – beginning with procurement and implementation to licensing and retiring the asset. It is a critical component of your overall business strategy since the software is essential to every department of your organization.

What are the benefits of implementing SAM?
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1. Budgeting and expenditure

Having a SAM policy in place helps control your IT spend. This is because it provides a bird’s eye view of the current lifecycle of all your software assets. One can easily check which licenses are up for renewal. You also get to periodically monitor your agreements with large vendors resulting in a prudent spending policy. SAM also allows you to keep an eye on your software usage, enabling you to identify which ones are being used and which ones can be discontinued. This creates a major chunk of savings in your IT budget.

2. Licensing and compliance (Legal)

As the dependency on external software to run a business rises, it is important to ensure that all your software licenses comply with existing rules and regulations. A solid SAM framework is necessary to understand how your assets are being utilised. Such an understanding plays a part in the long-term buying and licensing decisions of your company. Software asset management also helps during software compliance audits by an external agency.

3. Software security

Cybersecurity risks are ever-present in today’s digital world. Software asset management is the simplest, yet powerful answer to that problem. A SAM tool helps identify the software that is due for upgrades or those that need to be removed altogether. According to this Harvard Business Review article, outdated software provides the easiest key to hacking your entire network. Your software asset management tool can be used to schedule a periodic scan of all your assets to eliminate any risks in your IT infrastructure.

4. Employee empowerment

The right software tools play a large role in employee experience and enable them to complete their tasks efficiently. In a recent HBR report commissioned by Freshworks, 77% of respondents said that good employees will look for a new employer if their current job does not provide the tools, technology, or information they need to do their job well. A good SAM policy benefits all departments from IT to HR. With access to the right tools for work, employees are not only more productive but also more motivated. And, What’s more, having a common framework l drastically reduces the time and expenditure spent on training your employees.

5. Identifying patterns

Your Software Asset Management tool gives you the added benefit of identifying patterns in usage based on previous incidents that have occurred. This becomes extremely useful when you want to schedule your existing assets’ maintenance and check their compliance. You can respond quickly before any major crisis occurs in the network. Additionally, having a SAM solution helps with integrating other managed services that you may use in the future – these may include self-service portals, support solutions and the like.

Having learnt the benefits of implementing a Software Asset Management strategy in your organization, the ideal next step is to get started. Check out our blog on the best practices to set up SAM.

Freshservice is an intelligent, right-sized ITSM solution that delivers exceptional employee experiences with an intuitive, scalable, no-code solution. With its state-of-the-art AI and ML capabilities, Freshservice helps organizations ease an IT agent’s workload and improve their productivity by automating mundane tasks. To learn more on how you can manage your IT assets with Freshservice, check out our list of features here.