Are You Prepared for Software Renewals?

Tracking, managing and optimizing software assets can cause major headaches for organizations and their IT, Software Asset Management (SAM), Procurement and Finance departments.

A survey from Flexera highlighted that 93 percent of organizations reported spending money on shelfware (i.e. purchasing more software than is required). This misstep is easily done if organizations don’t have full visibility into what they own, consume and are entitled to use.

Not understanding software entitlements can lead to wasted budget and compliance issues. The Flexera survey also uncovered that 44 percent of enterprises paid $100k or more in true-up costs to software publishers as a result of non-compliant software use.

A lack of insights and collaboration between IT, SAM, Procurement and Finance can often mean that organizations pay too much when it comes to contract negotiations. For example, a procurement manager may have no knowledge of what assets are being used across the organization when negotiating a contract renewal, and therefore may purchase more than is actually required.

One of the key challenges of managing renewals is understanding what you own across the business and effectively tracking these assets. As outlined in our previous blog “Visibility Into What You Own With PyraCloud,” this can be extremely difficult without the right tools and processes in place.

When it comes to renewals, enterprises usually have numerous software agreements across multiple publishers, and these agreements often have varying renewal dates making it very tricky and time consuming to manage.

Vital software asset data is often not captured at the point of purchase, such as:

• Terms and conditions
• Contract lengths (start and end dates)
• Maintenance duration
• Purchase model
• License keys

Without this information it is impossible to be on top of renewals and to be in a position to negotiate better renewal terms with publishers at the time of renewal.

Organizations that don’t keep track of software license agreements and renewal dates could find themselves out of maintenance or in breach of use rights as well as:

• Paying hefty reinstatement fees
• Renewing more than is required
• Budgeting and spending more than needed
• Exhausting internal resources dealing with license renewals

Many organizations use spreadsheets to manage and track contracts, which requires a lot of manual effort and as mentioned above vital data is often lost and the actual contracts are spread across the organization.

Having a central place to manage software contracts and assets from the point of purchase through the entire lifecycle allows organizations to track, manage and optimize software spend, while decreasing risk.

SoftwareONE’s PyraCloud platform offers organizations just that, a central place to manage your software contracts and assets from point of purchase through retirement.

PyraCloud Renewal Manager helps you to plan, govern and manage upcoming software and maintenance renewals on a continuous basis. The renewals of all software transacted through SoftwareONE can be managed through Renewal Manager. For software not transacted through SoftwareONE customers can leverage the SoftwareONE TrakIT service to discover, normalize and upload software contracts from third parties into PyraCloud for ongoing management with Renewal Manager.

Renewal Manager allows you to manage renewals based on end dates, set customizable alerts so you are notified well in advance of the renewal, and prioritize the contract terms most critical to your upcoming publisher negotiations.

Additionally, it provides details around what products or groups of products are included within those renewals and provides estimated renewal costs so you can budget proactively.

By proactively managing software renewals, PyraCloud puts you in a better position to negotiate at the time of renewals based on your specific business requirements.

Software licensing is complex and managing software renewal, maintenance and contracts in a spreadsheet will not give you the visibility and centralized control that you need. Lack of insight into your software usage can leave you overspending on software you may not need at the time of renewal.

PyraCloud Renewal Manager enables you to get the most value out of your software contracts by helping you govern, manage and track contract renewals. PyraCloud can help you put in place a process and methodology to manage software and maintenance renewals from a central location, saving time and helping you make an informed decision at the time of renewal.