Home / Expert Advice / Hardware and Software Asset Management: Securing Stakeholder and Sponsor Buy-In for Your ITAM and SAM Program
Robin Cronan, Marketing Director, Certero
The modern world is one of increasing technological complexity, pushing Hardware and Software Asset Management teams to the limit in controlling and optimizing ever-expanding and diversifying IT ecosystems.
The rise of Cloud First strategies add another dimension to these growing challenges, presenting immediate threats of Cloud Sprawl, Shadow IT and Bill Shock. Combined with current global economic realities, all of these factors put greater pressure on organizations to control/reduce costs, improve IT governance and security, and ensure license compliance
Hardware and Software Asset Management can add considerable value to these objectives. As a result, ITAM and SAM is beginning to grab the attention of Senior Management and C-Suite Executives, who are starting to see it as critical to strategic projects such as Digital Transformation and Cloud Migration. This offers you a unique opportunity to prove your value to your organization, win stakeholder buy-in and drive your own ITAM and SAM program.
Win friends and influence people
In order to successfully drive your ITAM and SAM program, you have to identify your wider stakeholder groups up front and begin treating them like investors. Why? The decision whether or not to invest in you and your programs will likely be taken by multiple stakeholders and influenced by others. To secure that investment and get a seat at the top table, you need to ask yourself: ‘why would stakeholder X invest (or support) Hardware and Software Asset Management?’
Senior stakeholders, like investors, are concerned with three critical areas:
- Identifying and mitigating security and financial risks
- Controlling costs and optimization expenditure
- Accelerating business growth
To drive Hardware and Software Asset Management, you need to be able to win over your stakeholder groups by demonstrating how you add value in these key areas.
So, let us take a look at some common stakeholder groups. You may have more in your organization, or may be able to segment stakeholder groups into more granular value packages.
| Stakeholder group | How you add value |
| C-Suite | Enabling better governance and faster delivery of transformational change programs, such as Cloud First and Digital Business strategies. |
| Human Resources | Ensuring employee compliance with organizational policies and practices concerning security and litigation threats. Data can also be provided to support the on and off-boarding of employees, ensuring better management of hardware devices and re-harvesting of software licenses. |
| Procurement | Providing valuable insight and effective license positions improves procurement processes, reporting and budgeting. As a result, cost control and software license negotiations yield greater value. |
| Legal | Preparing the legal team with the data and insights needed for software vendor audits. A robust and comprehensive ITAM and SAM program produces and maintains evidence of compliance, protecting the organization from penalty fees. |
| Finance | Supporting budget planning and forecasting. Hardware and software requirements can be more accurately forecast and cross referenced against existing inventory, ensuring efficient use of IT assets and a tighter control of costs. Where required, finance teams can share IT costs across departments or business units. |
| IT | Providing simplified visibility of an increasingly complex IT ecosystem, by identifying exactly what hardware and software assets the organization has, where they are and who is using them. IT governance, procedures, upgrades and deployments become more easier and more efficient. |
Adding value with IT Hardware and Software Asset Management
To deliver value across the stakeholder groups within your organization and meet key ITAM and SAM objectives, you can follow the advice in these six stages:
| Stage | Advice |
| (1) Identify stakeholder requirements | Identify and talk to your stakeholder groups to find out what their requirements are, how you can support them and what success looks like. |
| (2) Develop an ITAM and SAM strategy | Develop your strategy, processes and reporting procedures around the delivery of your ITAM and SAM objectives, and value to your stakeholders. This includes identifying and evaluating solutions. |
| (3) Build a business case for your investment | Add measurable outcomes and metrics to your strategy that benefit your stakeholder groups, with anticipated ROI and cost saving calculations to show the long-term value of your plan. |
| (4) Pitch to your plan to your stakeholders | Turn your business case into a ‘pitch deck’, then present it to your stakeholder groups to win support and secure funding. |
| (5) Implement your solutions and strategies | After winning support and funding, deploy your solutions, automate your processes and implement your strategies, ensuring continuous delivery of data and insight into your stakeholder groups. |
| (6) Report ROI and added value | Regularly report on performance against your ROI forecast and break down your other key metrics by stakeholder groups, to demonstrate continuous delivery of value across your organization. |
So, in a nutshell, that is how you build a successful business case for Hardware and Software Asset Management. Know your stakeholders and how you can support them and add value to their objectives. This will ensure you win support for your strategy and business case.
If you need further help and advice on building a business case, speak to one of Certero’s experts today.
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