Transform Your Software Asset Management Strategy

Investment in next-gen software and technologies without a proper Software Asset Management (SAM) approach can be challenging for your IT teams. It carries the risk of operational inefficiencies, compliance failures, and cost overruns. According to ServiceNow, organizations invest nearly 20% of their enterprise IT budgets to purchase and maintain enterprise software. Beyond the financial complexity, organizations often face inefficiencies in SAM due to siloed tools, inaccurate data, manual processes, and poor coordination between different departmental stakeholders. These challenges demand businesses to invest in holistic IT solutions that help track, manage, and optimize software usage and costs from one single location.

ServiceNow SAM is one such comprehensive solution enabling organizations to address software visibility, overspending, and licensing compliance issues on the robust ServiceNow platform. Alcor can take your SAM journey to the next level as an elite ServiceNow partner with proven expertise in IT asset management. However, before we dig deeper into how Alcor can optimize your SAM approach, let’s first understand:

What is ServiceNow SAM and Why It’s Essential 

ServiceNow Software Asset Management (SAM) is an innovative solution that helps you overcome the challenge of managing software licenses within a unified IT platform. It ensures comprehensive management of software and SaaS assets throughout their lifecycle, from purchase to end-of-life, to prevent the risk of overspending, compliance issues, and security threats. Below are some key benefits:   

• Improves Software Asset Visibility: Gaining in-depth visibility into software assets becomes easier with SAM. It helps you track, evaluate, and manage software licenses, reclaim unused rights, and optimize purchases to enhance your overall asset management strategy.  

• Drives Integrated Asset Management: ServiceNow uniquely combines Software Asset Management (SAM) with Hardware Asset Management (HAM) under the IT Asset Management (ITAM) offering on the NOW platform. This unique integration assists you in seamless tracking and management of software assets, whether on-premises or in the cloud.  

• Optimizes IT Costs: You can gain a holistic view of software spending and utilization in your business using ServiceNow SAM. The software spend detection module tracks, evaluates, and analyzes software purchases, helping you regulate software costs effectively. This visibility ensures that resources are allocated efficiently to bring down unnecessary expenditures.  

• Ensures License Compliance: License compliance is crucial to avoid financial penalties and maintain organizational reputation. ServiceNow offers real-time insights into software usage and compliance status. The License Workbench provides remediation suggestions for non-compliant licenses, ensuring organizations remain audit ready.  

• Improves Vendor Relationship Management: Effective vendor management is critical for long-term business success. With contract and renewal management capability, SAM helps you manage software contracts and lease renewals proactively. With timely renewals, you can maintain a healthy relationship with vendors while ensuring robust compliance. 

Key Capabilities of ServiceNow SAM 

ServiceNow SAM provides a range of capabilities that help you streamline software asset management. Below are some key capabilities:  

• SaaS License Management: helps you optimize SaaS application usage and costs with real-time data around underutilization, overspending, and stale licenses.  

• Software Asset Management Playbooks: offers step-by-step guidance for completing software management tasks. This helps you streamline software management processes while ensuring superior efficiency, compliance, and budget control.  

• Software Asset Workspace: provides a centralized, intuitive dashboard with a 360-degree view of software asset management activities. Consolidated SAM tasks and actionable alerts also help you make better decisions around software usage, compliance, and costs. 

• Restricted Software Lists: provides you with details regarding unauthorized software and initiates actions for removal to improve your organizational compliance and security posture.  

• Remediation Options: enables you to address the software non-compliance issues by automating remediation actions, such as removing unallocated software.   

• Software Spend Detection: offers a complete picture of software and SaaS purchases, enabling you to track, manage, and optimize IT software spending.  

• Software Asset Connections: allow you to ingest data from third-party discovery tools to track and manage software for better visibility and compliance.   

• Software Exposure Assessment: identifies and remediates software vulnerabilities with automated workflows to overcome security and compliance gaps.  

• License and Contract Management: allows you to streamline software contract and lease renewal processes with automated workflows and industry best practices.  

• Real-time Dashboards and Reports: offer in-depth analytics to help you track software compliance, cost, and usage trends for improved decision-making. 

The Alcor Advantage: Optimize Your Software Licensing Costs and Usage 

In a nutshell, ServiceNow Software Asset Managment (SAM) provides an ideal solution for organizations to manage and optimize their software usage, licensing costs, and compliance posture. However, its implementation requires a strategic and well-planned approach. Alcor with its proven domain knowledge, consulting leadership, and agile delivery methodologies is an ideal partner for organizations looking for rapid yet planned ServiceNow implementations. With a proven track record of complex SAM implementation and maintenance for clients across different industries, we empower organizations to track software assets throughout their lifecycle, avoid unnecessary spending, and ensure licensing compliance while boosting overall IT efficiency. 

To know more about Alcor’s ServiceNow expertise and how it can transform your IT asset management practices, reach out to us at information@alcortech.com