SaaS Management

  • 5 min read

How to Manage Software Assets

Rohit Rao

7th November, 2022

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For many organizations, managing software assets is a tedious task. It involves procurement of software licenses, their usage, deployment of software licenses and subscriptions, security and compliance, etc.

An efficient software asset management solution can help you gain visibility into the software stack of the organization and optimize your ROI.

Software asset management (SAM) in the SaaS world is very different from traditional on-prem software asset management. Traditional SAM was focused on tracking and optimizing the software licenses. 

On the contrary, the core focus of SaaS is to eliminate expenses and optimize software spending. But, to do so, you should understand which software licenses you are paying for and their actual usage.

Now with the easy accessibility of SaaS apps, the purchase of SaaS apps has become easier without the knowledge of IT teams. This is why finding a centralized solution for software asset management is essential.

This article will discuss the four ways to manage software assets in your organization. However, before discussing the ways, let us take a look at some of the benefits of managing software assets. 

This includes:

• Reduce software costs by managing software licenses and their usage, being proactive with renewals, and eliminating underutilized software licenses.

• Improve productivity by deploying the right software that meets the requirements of the business.

• Additionally, it helps you secure your business data and stay compliant.

4 Ways To Manage Software Assets

Let us discuss the four efficient ways to manage your software assets.

1. Use Spreadsheets

The spreadsheet is a manual process to manage the software assets and their usage. But maintaining spreadsheets is time-consuming and ineffective. When a large number of assets are involved in the organization, managing the software licenses becomes difficult and time-consuming.

Considering the easy accessibility of SaaS apps, users sign in for new apps almost regularly. This is why it becomes mandatory to keep track of software licenses constantly. Hence, the spreadsheet needs to be regularly updated. 

Considering if the spreadsheets are updated monthly or quarterly, then you need to wait patiently for the complete cycle for the update, and still, the data does not guarantee 100% accuracy. Moreover, it leads to an increase in duplicate licenses and an unnecessary increase in software expenses. 

At times, manually authenticating the results is not possible. Besides, the employees miss out on mentioning the software licenses. As a result, the spreadsheet reports are inaccurate and cannot keep track of the full software stack of the company.

2. Use IT Asset Management Software

IT asset management (ITAM) is a set of business practices that includes managing all your organization's IT assets. It is a subset of IT service management and is primarily focused on hardware assets like servers, computers, printers, etc.

But managing hardware assets is different from managing software assets. The traditional tools for IT asset management available are all focused on hardware. 

Thus, the increase in SaaS adoption might end up in spending more by subscribing to various SaaS apps. In contrast, ITAM tools lack focus on SaaS apps, so it is not appropriate for efficiently tracking software licenses.

3. Use a Software Asset Management Tool

Software asset management (SAM) is a business initiative that manages the software applications within the organization but majorly focuses on on-premise software. Also, manage the traditional licenses that are installed on your desktop.

With SAM tools, you can manage the on-premise software licenses and their renewals in the organization. Most SAM tools focus on traditional licenses and not SaaS apps.

The software assets comprise both on-premise software and SaaS apps. So, in that case, if the SaaS licenses are not tracked with SAM tools, then IT teams lack visibility of the complete software stack of the organization.

4. Adopt a SaaS Management Platform

A SaaS management platform is an absolute solution to manage software assets. It will identify the software licenses, their usage, and the subscriptions in the organization. It will give you visibility into the complete software landscape in the organization.

An SMP, like Zluri, will help the organization manage software assets, monitor software usage, and more. This will lead the organization to avoid hefty penalties after the audit.

Zluri provides visibility to the IT teams that facilitate the empowerment of the business units, can measure value, determine thresholds for centralized governance, and benchmark costs.

Zluri has the largest app library with 225000+ apps and uses five strong discovery methods to discover 100% of SaaS app licenses in your organization. The methods include SSO, finance, and expense management systems, direct integration through APIs, desktop agent (optional), and browser agent (optional).

License Management: With Zluri, IT teams can easily track apps, users, license types, the number of licenses for each type, user role, and SaaS spending in one single platform. Additionally, it gives a clear view of the subscriptions, contracts, and perpetual licenses. 

This view assists the IT teams in gathering information on unused licenses and abandoned apps, rightsizing unused licenses, or downgrading to a suitable tier.

Renewal Licenses: Zluri alerts you on your upcoming payment and contract renewals, giving you sufficient time to make decisions for the app.

For contracts, you get alerts 30 days, 15 days, and 1 day in advance. For payment, you get 7 days and 1-day alerts. You can set custom alerts as well. This helps you prioritize high-value contracts.

Renewal Calendar

Zluri empowers IT teams to manage all the renewals by making an approval process that minimizes unnecessary spending. Moreover, it helps you plan for negotiation with SaaS vendors. We level the playing field for IT and procurement teams.

Zluri equips IT teams with SaaS usage data. You can find apps that cost you a lot, but the usage is very less.

Zluri's usage monitoring feature helps you to optimize your SaaS stack, application efficiency, and licensing costs.

Additionally, it gives you app insights that improve your SaaS governance. We provide you with actionable cards on the application overview.

Vendor Management: Zluri empowers you to manage your software vendors, software licenses, and contract renewals. It gives you easy access to metadata and allows you to cut down your software spending and increase overall ROI.

You can track and get insights on vendors and contracts for each license. Also, you can keep track of licenses assigned to users external to the company, like vendors, freelancers, consultants, etc.

With Zluri, each and every contract is stored contextually with other vendors' information. This gives you access to the required information: during renewals, audits, terminations, etc. 

Automate License Requisition, Approval, and Revocation: With Zluri, you can automate the entire process of license requisition, approval, and revoking. This can be done during the onboarding and offboarding process.

You can create onboarding workflows to provide access to all the app licenses at once. Zluri recommends apps that the joiner will require when creating a new workflow based on their department and seniority.

Similarly, the offboarding workflow ensures that all licenses are terminated when access is revoked. 

You can use our ROI calculator to view the number of hours you are currently wasting on these tasks if you are doing them manually.

With Zluri, you can view the critical apps with high threat levels and risk scores. It alerts you on critical apps which can prevent your data from cyber-attacks.

The threat levels, risk scores, risk, scopes, etc., will determine the risk related to SaaS apps.

We help you to stay secure and compliant with ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, etc., and maintain SaaS compliance. It makes you audit-ready.

In addition, Zluri comes with an employee app store that acts as a self-service system. When employees require a new app or license between their work terms (for events like short projects or in case of promotion or internal change of role), they can procure it through the app store.

Employees' app store makes the whole process of SaaS app license requisition, approval, and revocation automated.

With Zluri, IT teams can manage the software assets in the company. It will help them to manage the software licenses and their usage, optimize software spending, and more. It provides deeper insights into software assets and relevant information required for the company's software stack's advancement .

About the author

Rohit Rao

Rohit works in the Community and Marketing Team of Zluri and is a strong advocate of community led growth.