ABOUT CLIENT

Our client is a major Australian Government Department with a wide operation that plays a key role in serving the Commonwealth of Australia.

THE CHALLENGE

As with most large organisations, investments in skills and tools are focused on everyday operational procedures, and for high level strategic programs of work that contribute to the traditional view of efficiency and growth.

For our client, with a large and complex ICT environment, focus on the everyday had led to a lack of focus on proactively managing its large and growing software portfolio.

With such significant software licence holdings and annual expenditure, the client was concerned that it was without a clear view into how its software was deployed, for example- was it optimal, and how much of what had been procured was actually in use? It was therefore unclear whether its commercial arrangements and vendor relationships were providing value for money or had room to improve.

Following consultation with ASG’s Software Asset Management (SAM) team – Group 10 Consulting -there were four main challenge areas identified:

• Large numbers of requests for software products and advice in its service management queue with no mandated response time;
• Minimal controls/process and visibility regarding software deployment and usage;
• Lack of technology in support of SAM activities, such as discovery and asset management systems
• Little documentation and industry aligned standardised processes to operationally manage its software asset portfolio.

RISK FACTORS

Lack of processes and clarity around the client’s SAM meant a lack of visibility around detailed costs and efficiency. Drilling deeper into the client’s environment, Group 10 identified several issues that were not only costing the organisation millions of dollars every year, but were putting the client’s high-profile reputation at risk.

Firstly, not having a clear view of its software footprint had several cost implications, such as:

• Suboptimal software deployment meant the organisation was paying for more licenses than required to achieve the desired outcome;
• Ongoing licensing support costs were being incurred for licenses that were not in use.

Additionally, a general lack of awareness around how software was licensed across the business areas was putting the client at risk of non-compliant software deployments which can cost many tens of millions of dollars if penalised, and also create reputational risk.

THE SOLUTION

With its clear objectives around cost and risk reduction, the client enlisted Group 10 to help it implement an end to end SAM service to procure and manage its commercial software estate. The key objectives set by Group 10 and agreed upon by the client, were to:

• Produce cost reductions and efficiencies;
• Identify, manage, and mitigate commercial and business risks relating to SAM;
• Further improve software management practices to delivery efficient delivery of software to its own staff and strengthen vendor relationships and investment value.

As an experienced IT provider with a history of providing cost reduction services and instilling better practices for future improvements, Group 10 was able to deliver:

• A cost savings program generating significant year on year savings;
• Improved software management practices to strengthen vendor relationships and investment value;
• KPIs to measure the Services’ effectiveness;
• Annual SAM Maturity assessments and roadmaps to continuous improvement;
• A rolling compliance program prioritising those products and vendors posing the highest risk to the organisation;
• A SAM technology roadmap aligned with architectural direction;
• Licensing optimisation advice to projects prior to purchasing software and ensuring optimal use of licences;
• More efficient processes and governance.

This resulted in:

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  Savings and cost avoidance of $230M since Group 10 was engaged in 2013.

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  Significantly increased visibility of software deployments and usage.

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  Significantly reduced risk of software non-compliance.

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  Flexible, innovative commercial arrangements aimed to optimise current and minimise future spend with software vendors.

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  Significant improvement in business interaction (end user experience) through:

  • Effective user communications;
  • Reduction in software queue numbers and request times;
  • Implementation of performance management and reporting.

FUTURE STATE

With efficient processes, programs and governance in place, the client is now rapidly adopting cloud computing technology across large portions of its environment, with Group 10 leading the adoption, management, licensing optimisation and cost governance strategies within the cloud environment.

Group 10’s continued work includes modernisation of the client’s software discovery toolset to provide a generational increase in software discovery and management capability. This will dramatically increase the speed and efficiency of software compliance auditing and allow for real time software reclamation and reallocation. This increases the optimisation of license usage.

Being able to forecast software license shortfalls assists in optimising the procurement and provisioning processes. This will transform procurement from a reactive and often rushed process into a proactive activity that adds value to the customer’s operations.