Efficiencies in Software Management

I don’t believe there are efficiencies in Software Management – After all, an organisation is in business to make money and regulatory red-tape forces and organisations to spend money on non-business (money generating) activities like software management.  However, saying that I believe the following go some way to achieving degrees of efficiency: 

1. All members of staff sign and understand a corporate software usage policy
2. Centralise purchasing of software
3. Centralise the Software Auditing position, in organizations with localised purchasing (now centralised) then must provide purchase records – licenses to the centralised position)
4. Determine your current position and re-evaluate licensing models with suppliers

Most importantly, Software Management is ongoing, it should be recognised as a corporate management task and should be budgeted for accordingly – after all you could end up saving money for the organisation. 

1. An initial stake in the ground marker will determine what you have got installed, not necessarily what you have purchased nor what you have “in use”.  This may well be fine but it depends on what you are trying to achieve.
2. The “manual element” of Software Management – License reconciliation puts off a large number of organizations carrying out any type of audit.

Solutions like SMS are reasonably good at determining how many packages are being deployed, other off the shelf solutions can discover with some accuracy.

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