Asset Management and Procurement Services
Trustmarque offers a broad portfolio of licence management and procurement services, ranging from tactical provision of licensing or compliance expertise through to fully managed and outsourced procurement and licensing asset management services geared to optimising contracts management, compliance management, SAM process and controls and SAM Tools management within an organisation. As a LAR (Large Account Reseller) for Microsoft and other major software vendors Trustmarque has successfully exploited the associated procurement services opportunity and has established a strong pedigree in service delivery from mid-market organisations to enterprise. Over time the range of value added services has grown substantially and includes:
- Entitlement Management;
- Benchmarking;
- Software Asset Management (“SAM”);
- Licensing Consultancy;
- Procurement;
- Renewals Management; and
- Portfolio and Catalogue Management.
In a typical customer engagement, Trustmarque will seek to understand current licensing status, entitlement and usage and review strategic plans with senior members of the IT team to formulate a licensing strategy and budget to support the future direction of the organisation. Key benchmarking and SAM tools are then utilised to secure the most cost effective solution that remains flexible enough to cope with changes to the IT environment, experienced through business expansion or contraction, employee churn and M&A activity.
Software Licence Management
Most companies neither have the time, nor the inclination to become experts in software licence management. However understanding your software position is critical to the ongoing healthy operation of your business – particularly as software licensing is often the largest section of the IT budget.
Trustmarque can help you choose the best way to monitor your software use. We have found that the establishment of good software licence management practices has revolutionised the way in which organisations can realise best value in their software purchases. In fact, organisations who adopt best practices with Trustmarque’s help typically achieve up to 25 percent cost savings annually.
Gaining Control of your Software Licences
Put simply, there are three key reasons why good software licence management is essential: cost avoidance, compliance, and change and complexity:
Cost Avoidance – reducing total expenditure is a priority for IT departments. Organisations need to ensure they are not procuring any unnecessary licences, fully utilising all their software and not paying for needless support and maintenance.
Compliance – alongside the regulatory driver, software vendors see compliance as their route to new licence sales and are taking a zero tolerance approach to illegal software usage.
Change and Complexity – technology change is creating more complexity making it difficult for companies to keep current. Plus managing new technologies such as cloud computing, virtualisation and SaaS is no easy task.
Finding the right Software Licence Agreement
Many organisations are not clear on the current state of their IT environment, their licensing entitlement and actual software usage. In effect they don’t really understand what they have, nor do they have a cohesive licensing strategy or understand the implications of all the licensing options available to them. This makes planning any new software agreements or negotiations a daunting prospect.
Going Beyond SAM
While a typical Software Asset Management review will look at your current licence use and compare it to the assets your business owns, procurement consultancy looks at your whole business strategy, and matches this to your software buying trends. This allows you to identify cost cutting measures now and ways to use budgets efficiently moving forward. In fact, our Commercial Benchmarking service alone has generated an average saving of 36 percent over three years for new software licence agreements and agreement renewals.
For example, a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement ties an organisation into a three or six year licensing agreement, but the likelihood of your business, or even your IT department, staying the same for six years is practically unthinkable. Therefore by incorporating your business plan into your software procurement strategy, suddenly licensing supports the direction of an organisation, rather than being an inconvenient addition struggling to keep up with the rest of the company.
Case Studies:
Herefordshire Council and NHS Shared Services
Markel International: Virtual Sanity
Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service