ServiceNow’s Focus on Software Asset Management - Reinvigorating ITAM

ServiceNow held its annual Knowledge conference in Las Vegas this past spring and with all of the emphasis that the organization is putting on Software Asset Management (SAM) as of late, we were excited to be a first time sponsor of the conference.

For those that have not experienced Knowledge, it is an incredible four days that draws over 20,000 customers, prospects, partners and ServiceNow representatives. In summary, it is the place to learn about upcoming initiatives and cutting-edge ideas in the world of IT Service Management, IT Operations Management and of course, SAM.  Of particular note - this year’s conference featured over 13 breakout sessions focused on IT Asset Management and SAM in particular.

Be sure to save the date for May 3-7, 2020 in Orlando, FL for next year’s event.

As a SAM focused partner of ServiceNow, SoftwareONE has seen the incredible transformation of ServiceNow’s 'SAM Pro' offering since its launch less than 18 months ago.

Don’t boil the ocean; prioritize to succeed and reap the benefits of effective SAM. Typically, organizations spend 90% of their software budget on their top five publishers. This is where the focus should be when it comes to publisher on-boarding and management as this is where most of the optimization benefits will be found.

SaaS management is critical and can no longer be ignored by SAM teams. While Gartner suggests 90% of organizations have low overall SAM Maturity, it can be argued that maturity when it comes to SaaS spend management could be even lower. SAM managers have to leverage tool functionality to gain transparency into cloud resources, visibility into usage and proactively manage budget and spend. ServiceNow plans to introduce SaaS License Management with the New York release. This is the much awaited functionality following the acquisition of Vendorhawk, which has now been re-platformed and will be made available to 'SAM Pro' customers.

'Effective Contract & Entitlement Management' process is not straight forward and should not be underestimated when implementing SAM. While it’s critical that organizations gain full visibility of their environment through implementation of SAM tools, the effort involved in gathering, normalizing, upload and processing of entitlements and contract data is often downplayed.  The effectiveness of SAM tools is directly dependent on the quality and accuracy of the data that feeds the tool.  Therefore, ensuring accurate contract and entitlement data import and an effective process for ongoing entry and management of entitlements into the tool, along with financials is key for a successful SAM program.

Ensure that you have support from executive level management from areas such as HR, Security, IT and Procurement. In order to gain this support, you need to have a story to tell of why SAM is important. The first step is understanding your current state and this can be done through a diagnostic of your current SAM people, processes and solution. In order to implement a successful SAM Program, you need to have policies that can be enforced, and a SAM person cannot do this alone – it needs to come from the top down.

Ensure that you have the right partner, adequate staffing, process and licensing expertise to implement, maintain and constantly improve your SAM Program.

You don’t know what you don’t know, so be prepared for surprises and get ready to put on your investigator hats. You will need to rely on a number of other areas, especially IT, Procurement and Security, to get the data you need. People, policies and process are key to any program and especially true for SAM. Selecting the right solution is also key, and one of the most important factors here is what your company’s overall goals are for a SAM program.

As your SAM Program develops, you will quickly realize that SAM is more than just about managing compliance and avoiding publisher audits and hefty fines, but equally about optimization and consumption controls. As organizations go through significant transformation and digitization, an effective SAM program enables them to be more proactive in decision making around software investments, IT transformation and better manage SaaS and subscription based licensing.