10th January 2012 – The last two years has seen a fundamental shift in the way some strategic software agreements have been managed within NHS England.  NHS Connecting for Health has been working towards distributing the many licences from the old agreements to each of the NHS entities and the NHS has had to adapt very quickly to manage these moving forward.

The NHS is now at a pivotal point. The last batch of licences from the National Enterprise Agreement have been distributed, the purchasing ban has been lifted, and control has been placed in the hands of the local trusts and institutions. With this in mind, it is the opportune time for NHS organisations to take stock and optimise their software asset for the future.

We at Trustmarque have been involved with the NHS for a number of years’, in fact several members of our team used to work for Connecting for Health, so we have a clear understanding of the challenges these organisations face moving forward. The key thing now is to make sure organisations have the processes and procedures in place to ensure proper governance moving forward. Through Software Asset Management NHS organisations can ensure they make the most of software purchases, avoid duplicated licences and unnecessary purchases and prove compliance.

The task of SAM can be quite daunting though and can appear unmanageable. The idea of taking charge of your assets can therefore be quite overwhelming as organisations see it as a huge task, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The key is to break the process down into manageable steps.

Firstly, discovery is vital. Take stock of all the licences you have been allocated from NHS Connecting for Health and what software you are entitled to use. It is important to have a view of your entitlements so that you can not only ensure you are compliant but also to ensure you are making the most of all the software available to you.

Secondly, assess the maturity of your Software Asset Management estate. It is important to consider what processes, tools and procedures you will need to put in place so that you can maintain visibility and control of your software estate moving forward. Maintaining control of software assets is a challenge for many organisations, this period of transference is a good time for NHS Trusts to deploy a best practice approach before software estates are complicated even further by new purchases.

This is the right time for NHS practices to put in place the controls to help manage software purchasing and Software Asset Management moving forward. The benefits of SAM are clear, cost avoidance, compliance, control and governance. Taking a step by step common sense approach is a good start.

For further information please take a look at our Managed Licence Services.