SAM Step 4: Develop a SAM plan
Related Links
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The final step in the software asset management (SAM) process is to create a plan of action.
On This Page
 | Create a plan |
| Analyze software needs |
| Software training |
| Inventory schedule |
Create a plan
Before moving forward, you may want to perform the following tasks:
| • | Standardize software titles so that employees all have the same versions. |
| • | Centralize software purchasing to keep it under control and organized. |
| • | Retire obsolete workstations and software. |
| • | Create a software inventory database or spreadsheet to keep track of software licenses. |
Then review the following information and tips so that your company can gain the most benefit from your SAM efforts.
Analyze software needs
1. | It’s important to determine which software titles your company needs for business purposes. Work with key people in each department to clarify what software their employees really require in order to get their jobs done. |
2. | In addition, ask employees what software they need and what they aren’t using. Follow up with employees on a yearly, twice-yearly, or quarterly basis. Also assess employees’ skill sets to determine if their job competencies reflect their software needs. |
3. | After this analysis, you can retire all software not used for business purposes and provide employees with software they might require for their jobs. |
Download
Questionnaire PDF
Portable Document Format
434 KB
Software training
If your company has the resources available, you might wish to set up training for specific software titles. Training might be especially valuable for new software titles that have never previously been used at your company. Proper training helps ensure that employees get the most from their new software, which can result in fewer service calls.
Reduce support costs
1. | Limit the number of applications and devices your support staff must support by standardizing applications and systems whenever possible. |
2. | Avoid custom in-house solutions if possible -- the support overhead is generally greater for custom applications than for prepackaged software. In addition, with prepackaged software your support staff can contact the vendor if issues arise --they have no one to fall back on for applications created in-house. |
3. | Encourage your staff to find ways to automate any repetitive tasks that they perform. This gets them thinking more directly about the tasks they do, and can result in an astonishing accumulation of saved time. Just make sure to document any automated task and set up a procedure for checking up on it regularly. |
Download
Tips on reducing support costs.pdf
Portable Document Format
759 KB
Keep software safe. It’s important to make sure that all licensing documentation and at least one copy of each of software title and version are protected in a safe place. A limited number of employees should have access to the software to help protect against possible misuse or theft.
Create a software and hardware map. Knowing what software is installed on which machines and knowing where they are located throughout your organisation can be very helpful, especially for your support team. This information can be included in a software inventory database, created in a separate spreadsheet, or mapped out in a Visio diagram that shows the location of each machine, the user at that machine, and the software installed on that machine.
Download
Software and hardware spreadsheet template.xls
Excel spreadsheet
16 KB
Download
Software and hardware spreadsheet template.vsd
Visio Document
264 KB
Inventory schedule
Determine how often you will perform regular software inventories to keep your information up-to-date. The schedule should be determined by the size of your company, purchasing habits, and growth rate. Certain software asset management tools continuously monitor software installations on networked PCs and provide software inventory reports in real time.
Even with such advanced SAM tools it is important to perform periodic spot-checks on software inventory. Spot checks can be performed on a random sample of specific PCs or for a few specific software titles. Determine a threshold of error for these spot checks -- if the difference between the software inventory report and the spot check is significant it might be wise to perform a full software inventory.
Congratulations. After you’ve completed all of the SAM steps, you’ll know what you own, acquire only what you need, and get the most from your software assets. Congratulations!