Part one: Uncovering and aligning your software assets
Author: Sonia Davies, licensing portfolio specialist, Jisc.
In today’s tough economic climate, institutions face increasing budget pressures, and IT is often among the departments hit hardest. Yet IT remains the backbone of operations, supporting teaching, research, and administration while managing increasingly complex software estates.
High-cost items – like IT hardware and software – are often targeted for cuts. However, some expenses such as software asset management (SAM) are crucial to keep the organisation’s wheels turning and the lights securely on. Though SAM might seem like an additional expense, neglecting it can expose institutions to far greater risks and costs.
What is software asset management?
SAM tracks software usage within an institution, who’s using it, where, and how. It ensures correct use, prevents unnecessary spend, and supports legal compliance. SAM helps organisations stay organised, manage risk, and maximise software value.
This two-part blog series aims to help you assess your current SAM maturity and identify opportunities to progress, working toward the gold standard of SAM excellence.
Summary of the benefits of SAM
A robust SAM strategy provides full control over your software, helping you to:
- Ensure compliance – reducing legal and financial risks
- Cut costs by tracking usage, forecasting demand and avoiding unnecessary purchases
- Maximise value by reallocating unused licences*
- Leverage discounts by consolidating licence management*
(*subject to the rights granted by the end user licence agreement)
How to get started
Recognise and evidence the requirement
Your first step is securing senior leadership support – including prioritising the budget.
Build the right team
SAM is a cross-team effort. Make sure all these teams are aligned:
- Procurement: processes orders but may not fully understand licensing details, leading to unintended purchases
- IT: should be consulted before purchasing to ensure compatibility and avoid deployment issues and should manage deployment and updates
- SAM team: must check licence terms before purchase—yet they’re often involved too late – only when IT runs into installation problems
- Privacy and information security teams: ensure the product meets data and security standards
The importance of the end user licence agreement (EULA) and the privacy policy
To support clarity, compliance, and shared accountability, many institutions position SAM within a neutral business function, such as operations or risk, rather than directly under IT or procurement. This ensures SAM can offer objective oversight while supporting both functions effectively.
Institutions face a significant risk if no one is designated to read the EULA and the privacy policy, especially when purchases are made by individual staff members using a departmental credit card.
Data protection may only get attention for big purchases through procurement. The smaller purchases below the procurement threshold (which may be as high as £5,000) can slip through without proper checks.
Discovery and reconciliation
Once your organisation is onboard with the right team in place, you are ready to set the foundation for understanding and managing your software landscape.
Discovering installed software
The first task is to identify all software currently installed across your organisation’s devices. If you’re using a SAM tool with a server/agent model, agents installed on devices will report software details to a central server, creating your baseline inventory.
Note that air-gapped devices or isolated network devices may require manual counting. Some tools support USB-based reporting, but regular reviews are still essential. These devices still consume licences, affecting licence management and necessitating updates to your SAM tool. Ensuring all devices have been counted helps prevent unnecessary purchases or renewals of unused licences.
Beginning the reconciliation process
After discovery, you can start the reconciliation process by generating comprehensive reports of all acquired software licences. Key sources for this information include:
Software resellers: Request consumption reports from the last 18 months to ensure late renewals or upgrades are captured.
Finance or procurement department: Similarly, request a report detailing software licences purchased.
Note that these reports may not capture:
- Long-term agreements (3 or 5-year contracts)
- Credit card purchases that didn’t register as software due to product codes
- Software provided free of charge under educational licence agreements and other *free or open-source software, covered under an open source or permissive licence, (for example MIT, BSD, GNU General Public License) that may not require an upfront cost.
Investigating discrepancies
Once you have the reports, compare known purchases with discovered software to reconcile each installation with its record of entitlement.
For any software not reconciled against known purchases, take one of the following actions:
- Locate the proof of entitlement and enter it into your records.
- Purchase the necessary entitlement to cover the installation if proof cannot be found.
- Remove or block software until you find proof of entitlement or acquire a licence.
These steps provide a solid foundation for effective SAM, ensuring compliance and optimising value from your software investments.
Software asset management collaboration workshop
In part two, we delve into what happens next: you have discovered and reconciled your software, how do you ensure ongoing compliance and uncover potential cost savings.
*free software here refers to the freedom to use, copy, distribute, study and modify the software – not necessarily the absence of cost.