A Software Asset Manager for a large, global company told us recently that he spends 30% of his time doing internal stakeholder management. 30%! That’s a big chunk out of the work week. An IT Asset Manager at another large enterprise actually hired a person whose primary responsibility was stakeholder management for their global ITAM program. Stakeholder management is a key function for many software asset managers.
In today’s global organizations, there can be a lot of different IT / Software Asset Management program stakeholders:
- There may be a steering committee of senior executives that oversee the SAM program
- CIO and VP of IT Operations
- CFO and VPs of Finance and Procurement
- Chief Compliance Officer
- Business Unit Managers
- Etc.
What is Stakeholder Management?
Initially, stakeholder management means getting the backing you need to fund the SAM program and getting the go-ahead to get started. This could mean building a business case that addresses the needs of each of the key stakeholders.
After the SAM program is under way, stakeholder management involves providing the reports that they need to see how the program is doing—is it hitting key milestones in the project plan? What is the return on investment (ROI) of the program? Other reports are needed for procurement and vendor management, IT security, etc. At some point, stakeholder management may also involve getting funding for the next phase of the project.
IT Asset Management
It all starts with knowing what’s in your IT ecosystem. Flexera One discovers even the most elusive assets whether on-prem, SaaS, cloud, containers and more.
What if your SAM tools could help you significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to manage key stakeholders?
SAM tools need to provide executive level reports and insights that support each stakeholder’s agenda and interests. This is similar to when you were building the initial business case, as discussed above. Here are a couple of example charts that provide the data needed by some of your key stakeholders:
Figure 2: Publishers Over Purchased – Used by IT Procurement to Negotiate Contract Renewals, Annual EA True-ups and Maintenance Cost Reductions.
Figure 3: Unauthorized Installations—could be of interest to IT Security
How much time do you spend on SAM stakeholder management in your organization? Post a comment and let me know what sorts of reports you use to support this effort.
For more information on Flexera’s Software Asset Management and License Optimization solutions, please visit our website.
