Industries around the world are turning to Digital Transformation to stay up-to-date with what their users want. As more and more services become backed by software, it’s more important than ever to have an effective digital supply chain (DSC). A strong digital supply chain aims to automate regular tasks, equip stakeholders with real-time insights, achieve the best cost-to-benefit ratio for your organization, and more.
Your organization can truly benefit from having a digital supply chain in place, which is why it is the first step in software lifecycle management (SLM) and also known as the gatekeeper for SLM. It is important to note, however, that a DSC can have a negative impact if you’re not careful. Let’s delve into how a poor digital supply chain can affect your software lifecycle management.
A digital supply chain should maximize your software portfolio. If your organization’s digital supply chain does not include looking for outdated, unused, or unauthorized software, your SLM strategy will get bogged down with wasteful consumption. If you are falling behind in this regard, you’re not alone. In fact, only 29 percent of organizations continually monitor their systems to find unauthorized software.
Your digital supply chain should have a centralized global software catalog that you can monitor on a regular basis. This catalog should be updated regularly with accurate pricing in all available currencies. Without this aspect, you can easily fall victim to purchasing outdated or incorrect software, which will cause a breakdown in your supply chain.
The digital supply chain is all about using what you have, which may be easier said than done. When organizations don’t evaluate what they have by creating a comprehensive strategy, they will likely end up overspending by purchasing new licenses and letting perfectly good software go unused.
In order to successfully reuse what you own, your organization must have a process in place to check for spare licenses. If spares are detected, you can go ahead and begin the re-harvesting process. Re-harvesting means you identify underused or unused software and either retire those licenses or re-assign licenses to new users. This will end up saving you money that can be better allocated elsewhere. However, without the right strategy, these unused licenses could remain hidden for an untold amount of time.
When your organization starts out on your own digital supply chain journey, it’s of the utmost importance that you have a good base knowledge of potential audit risk factors. If you don’t fully understand how you can use or re-harvest the software you’ve purchased, you’ll only run into more issues as time goes on. You will want to know the quantity of licenses you are entitled to use, any possible geographic restrictions, and the timeframe in which you are entitled to use them for.
If you aren’t staying on top of these factors, your organization may fall out of compliance, which could lead to a software audit and hefty fines. Another audit risk? Unlicensed software. Make sure that everything you own is licensed, or your organization may open itself up to an audit.
The digital supply chain should be seamless and integrated from demand to fulfillment. Manual entry and disparate systems can both lead to issues throughout the organization, such as inefficient purchasing processes, little-to-no visibility in global purchasing and overall purchase history, errors in managing renewals, a lack of governance over transactions, and a poor end-user experience.
Having a poor end-user experience can be truly frustrating for your organization. An example of this would be users requesting software and not receiving it for weeks. A strong digital supply chain will implement the use of automation, eliminating time-consuming manual entry and quelling any worries over human error. This will, in turn, improve the end-user experience by helping to ensure the right software is making it into the hands of the right user at the right time.
Having proper data and analytics is one of the largest challenges facing organizations today, and a poor digital supply chain can make that even harder to accomplish. Entitlement data specifically is one of the biggest pain points in maintaining Software Asset Management (SAM), which is one half of the duo that makes up SLM. With a poor digital supply chain, there aren’t any mechanisms to auto capture and normalize entitlement data, which can lead to a slew of issues. Organizations may end up with missing versions and editions of software, incorrect license types, manual creation of licenses, and improperly linked applications.
The other half of the SLM duo is procurement. Your procurement team should always stay on top of upcoming renewals. A poor DSC chain may lead to your procurement team missing a renewal due to a lack of visibility and monitoring. This could cause your organization to face several roadblocks. First, you could get hit with a few penalties. Second, you’ll have limited time to plan and prepare for contract negotiations. Missing a renewal leads to overspending and missed opportunities to co-terminate contracts and drive overall efficiency.
If you stay aware of the above challenges, your organization will have a better opportunity to maintain a strong digital supply chain that can benefit everyone involved. Again, a digital supply chain is the first component of software lifecycle management. You simply cannot have one without the other. When your DSC begins to break down, your entire SLM strategy will be affected.
Here at SoftwareOne, we know that having a strong digital supply chain can majorly boost your bottom line. That’s why we built our Digital Supply Chain services with customer challenges in mind. When you pair up with us, you’ll be able to experience data transparency, optimized costs and renewals, and even process management. We know the first step is the hardest, so let us lend a hand.
The world is changing, and you need to know how to keep up. Click here to learn more about how your organization can strengthen your digital supply chain.
The world is changing, and you need to know how to keep up. Click here to learn more about how your organization can strengthen your digital supply chain.
