Juggling numbers on paper or tracking data on endless Excel spreadsheets is not easy – or practical for that matter. This is where software asset management (SAM) comes into the picture – it’s a business practice that offers simple and optimized asset management. 

You’d be surprised to learn that 43% of businesses still track their assets in spreadsheets. To be more, 56% of organizations don’t know of a way to manage the lifecycle of the assets, which leads to bigger expenses and graver mistakes along the way. 

As a result of poor asset management, organizations spend excess time and pay additional staff hours trying to reconcile their assets and inventory, not to mention deal with out-of-support and out-of-warranty policy assets. 

Now, it may seem like incorporating a new business practice to track your assets is a lot of work, but some platforms make this simple and efficient. With the right tool in your arsenal, you can reap many benefits by incorporating the right SAM into your organization.

In this article, you’ll learn more about these tools as well as the perks they offer. So, let’s get started!

Software asset management platforms: How to choose

There are plenty of software asset management platforms, which can make it hard to find one that best fits your needs. 

Just like with any other software product, there are a few top-ranked gems in the SAM industry, too. Consider using Zluri, a tool that allows users to discover, secure, and optimize different applications, as well as streamline the delivery of different IT services. 

Some of the perks of using Zluri include:

• Automate the most repetitive and time-consuming IT tasks
• The largest app library available – it can discover all your software with nearly 100% accuracy
• Updates for upcoming renewals and payments
• Optimize the application cost and eliminate budget wastage
• Direct integrations with over 600 popular apps and tools
• Remove the unsecured app and maintain audit readiness for compliance

Once you learn about the perks of a good SAM listed below, you’ll realize why we ranked this as a great choice. 

Top 8 benefits of SAM platforms

There are plenty of benefits from good asset management, and we’ve listed the top 8 for your convenience.

1. Cost savings

If you implement a modern SAM platform, you can expect to achieve up to 30% in annual savings on management costs for your software. SAM can help your spending in many ways, including but not limited to the following:

• Reduce redundancy
• Renegotiate contracts based on data for your assets
• Detect and pinpoint unused software or underutilized software (companies overspend around $135,000 on licenses for unused software every year)
• Help you avoid penalties due to non-compliance with regulations
• Save you a fortune on excess work power for repetitive and automated tasks

2. Smooth employee onboarding 

Companies hire new employees regularly. They grow over time and need more people to complete the job, or they replace former employees with new ones. Whenever you do this, it’s important to optimize the onboarding process for your staff.

Why is this important, you wonder?

It costs around $4,129 to hire and onboard a new employee. This is why businesses work hard to retain the staff they have – to avoid big expenses and gaps in the work. But, it doesn’t start here. It starts as early as the onboarding journey. 

Now, consider this. According to BusinessWire, poor onboarding is one of the biggest causes of employee turnover, one that can cost up to 300% of the employee’s salary. This is why, when you hire new people, you must make sure that the onboarding process is clear, simple, and optimized for them. 

When it comes to software, your job is to ensure that the new employee gets access to all the tools they need – and information on how to use them. This will make their experience more pleasant and help them become productive at their new job faster. 

SAM platforms can help greatly in this. Whenever you hire a new person, you can simply add them to the platform, assign them to a selected department, and the tool will do the rest for you. It will walk them through the process and give them access to the software they need. 

3. Effective employee offboarding

SAM is useful for the other side of the coin, too – it can help with employee offboarding. When you want to let someone go or they expressed the desire to leave your organization, there’s a lot to be done. You need to deactivate their work accounts and remove their access to your software and systems. This is vital if you want to avoid risks of security breaches, data leaks, and many other types of liabilities to your company. 

As it does with onboarding, a SAM platform will ensure that a former employee is offboarded entirely, without errors or mishaps. It will remove their access to any software your company uses or data that was previously at their disposal. 

4. Reduced liability risks

What do you do when a vendor requires a software audit? If you don’t have all the data organized in one place, gathering it and preparing a report can take a long time – and require many people from your staff to pitch in and help.

This doesn’t even begin to cover the risks of human error, which is high in such cases. In the rush, your team can miss important information or make a mistake – or misplace some data. You aren’t just looking at extra costs for the employees’ work, but also at potential fines.

A good SAM tool will increase your compliance with the software licenses and give you a solution to this fast. Whenever you need a report, you can generate one with your SAM tool detailing the journey of every asset your company uses. 

5. Smart and accurate budgeting

Using a SAM tool can help you with budgeting for your business. You can use the data from the reports to compare it with your planned budget. This will give you an accurate insight into what you can – and cannot afford.

SAM will also help you plan your purchases and figure out what you should prioritize based on your business’s financial abilities. Very often, companies spend money on software they never use when they can allocate it to something more useful. 

6. Stronger security

Data theft is one of the biggest concerns of businesses that use software and let’s be real – most of them do these days. If you use a variety of SaaS tools, your business is highly vulnerable to security risks. To mitigate risks and protect your company from malware, viruses, and security breaches, incorporating SAM is a smart move. 

How does SAM improve your security?

By properly managing your assets, it will make sure that all your software is configured and upgraded properly, therefore reducing a myriad of security risks. 

7. Licensing optimization

A SAM tool can help you optimize your asset licensing in the following ways:

• Automatically detect every new SaaS product added to your company’s network and store information regarding its type, vendor, and updates
• Update you or automatically renew the licenses
• Eliminate over-licensing and overbuying
• Update you when an update is required
• Inform you on the best software to purchase

8. Asset tracking for better software utilization

SAM will track the assets and provide you with the opportunity to maximize and optimize software utilization across the organization. For example, users can get automated reminders regarding routine tasks and repairs, therefore reducing downtime for different tools. 

Have you used SAM for your business?

If you haven’t done this, incorporate a quality tool into your business as soon as possible, and you’ll notice these benefits after a short while. Many of the tools come with free trial versions that you can make use of while you test the software and its capabilities. 

Managing software assets these days is highly important for all brands that rely on technology to tackle the work, and this is especially important if your business uses a variety of assets on a regular basis. 

It’s a way to achieve compliance, save a fortune, and optimize the processes for your team at a minimal cost – and with almost no effort!

FAQ

What is a SAM tool?

SAM refers to Software Asset Management and is a tool that optimizes controls, and manages a company’s software assets in a single place. 

What does the lifecycle of assets include?

This includes the purchase, utilization, deployment, maintenance, and disposal of assets within an organization. 

How much money can a SAM platform save for my business?

While this is different for all businesses, research data shows that you can achieve up to 30% in savings annually by using a SAM platform.