"A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore." - Yogi Berra
IT costs businesses money. That’s a fact we can’t change. If a business wants to use technology, they need to pay for it in one form or another. Most organizations maintain an IT Staff, either outsourced or staffed with employees. No matter how you slice it or view it, money changes hands.
One of the benefits of a solid ITAM program is a reduction in the cost of IT. An organization with a mature ITAM program will run leaner than an organization without ITAM. The question is…how?
ITAM saves an organization money in several ways. One way ITAM can save money on IT costs is by reducing unnecessary spending. A mature ITAM program will help an organization to maximize the usage of money already spent by managing Return on Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). These numbers should be watched during the lifecycle of all assets to validate that they are worth the money spent. New assets aren’t purchased if there is not sufficient ROI or if the TCO is too high. New assets also aren’t purchased if there is another usable asset available.
Software is similar. If software is being requested, a mature ITAM program will know if there is an unused license available or if one needs to be purchased. A mature ITAM program would also perform license harvesting to reclaim licenses from computers where they are no longer in use.
Another way ITAM saves money is with cost avoidance. Cost avoidance can come in the form of a passed software audit where a software asset manager has successfully maintained compliance with software contracts. This avoids penalties from non-compliance and even potential lawsuits. Cost avoidance also comes in the form of time savings by having information readily available to project managers and other data consumers where inventory data would be required to scope a project. Rather than having project resources spend time to gather information, a mature ITAM repository will have the data readily available.
These are just a few examples of how an ITAM program can help an organization save IT money.
