Software Licensing Contract Analysis and Optimization Service
This service provides expert analysis of your software licensing contracts, in order to identify and unlock any additional value within your contracts that’s not currently being achieved and help you safely navigate business changes.
When would I need this Service?
Software licensing is a significant and increasing expense for organizations and there are many reasons why you may want to bring in expert resource to clarify your license contracts and guide you to a point of optimum value:
Contract Renewals
Mitigate risk and avoid wasting investment in software you don’t need, by clarifying what licenses you have, use, could use and precisely what you need to buy.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Identify potential risks and mitigation costs, optimize incumbent license entitlement and redefine strategy as business changes shape.
Value Optimization
Make the most of the investments you’ve already made. Align licensing strategy to business need and make cost-free improvements.
Due Diligence
Broaden the understanding of software licensing contracts beyond individual stakeholders. Align processes and timelines to meet contractual obligations.
If you are unable to answer the below questions, you should consider a Software Licensing Contract Analysis and Optimization Service:
The Importance of Contract Analysis
Volume Licensing Agreements (VLAs) are notoriously complex. Negotiating and renewing licensing contracts can be a challenging and risky proposition, with the risk of audits and the tendency for businesses to over-spend because they are under-informed during the negotiation and procurement process.
As much as 30% of on-premises software and 50% of SaaS investments go untouched, and businesses rarely fully-utilize the full extent of the usage rights and benefits within agreements, that can add value to your investments.
The Certero Software Licensing Contract Analysis and Optimization Service is designed to provide the clarity you require and to expertly guide you, to make sure you’re able to manage and change from an informed and stress-free position of strength.
This service will help you to understand the 6 keystones of your software licensing strategy:
- What do we already have?
- What do we actually use?
- What’s available that we’re not fully exploiting?
- What do we need?
- What is our best strategy?
- What option should we buy?
In addition, the service includes highlighting any time-lines and processes that you must adhere to under existing T&Cs, such as contracted termination periods or automatic renewals.
Service Deliverables
- Expert contractual analysis of your historic licensing agreements with the vendor, in order to fully understand what beneficial entitlement exists that can be leveraged to add future value.
- Identification of any present or potential legal and financial compliance risks to your organization.
- Expert analysis into your licensing contracts, identifying and communicating additional benefits that are not being exploited.
- Advice and guidance on your optimal software licensing strategy, understanding the business need, growth, transformation and trajectory.
- Clear advice and guidance on your Software Licensing procurement options if needed, entirely independent of the vendor or their reseller channels – you are free to negotiate the best deal for your true requirement.
How Do We Do It?
Provision the Certero Technology
We will provision you a secure instance of the Certero Unified Platform as a SaaS solution, fully supported and maintained for you by Certero.
Discovery & Inventory
Fully discover and inventory your IT infrastructure, using the Certero solution. This can be agent or agent-less as preferred and captures a complete, centralized view.
Clarity on License Entitlements
Collate, cleanse, verify and upload license entitlement data you provide for the specific vendor in scope, importing it into the Certero Unified Platform.
Contract Analysis
Analyse your contract, amendments, and addendums, outlining any possible recommendations for improvement.
Creating the Effective License Position and Optimization Report
Using the inventory data and license entitlement information, our consultants work in the Certero solution to create the Effective License Position and explain your compliance risks, the mitigation steps you can take, and potential optimization opportunities.
Contract and Negotiation Recommendations
Our SAM consultants will provide recommendations specific to your existing contract to support your renewal discussions. We’ll also offer some negotiation advice and guidance ahead of the meeting with the software vendor.
What is a Technology-Led Service?
Put simply, it’s utilizing the very best automated ITAM & SAM technology within a services framework, to provide faster and higher-value outputs. That means you can access immediate expertise, resource and capability, all delivered efficiently, directly by Certero.
Rapid Time to Value
You need to get an accurate view of whether you are gaining true value from your current software investments. Our architectural advantage means we can provide our SaaS solution in just a couple of hours and provide visibility in a matter of days, reducing the time to takes to get informed.
Accurate and Reliable Data
At Certero, we don’t place the responsibility of discovering your IT estate on you. Instead, we use our own tried and tested technology to capture a complete inventory of your IT landscape, as we know that we can trust the accuracy and integrity of the data.
Business Benefits
Enable Cost Reduction and Avoidance
Understand the impact of potential risks and exposures
Maximize the value of existing investments
Understand contract restrictions and processes
Full visibility of your nominated vendor software
Who Are Your Key Stakeholders?
Financial Managers – This service will reduce cost and optimize investments.
Strategic IT leadership – Your software capability will either empower or hold back your transformation, so future strategy must be aligned to the business.
Finance and Procurement – knowledge of your precise requirement frees-up procurement to negotiate the best possible deal, without being tied to any incentivised partners or resellers.
IT intelligence resulting from Software Asset Management touches so many areas of a business, informing ITAM, SAM, Security, Service Desk and Operations teams with live, complete visibility over infrastructure.
The Benefits of Technology-Led Services
- You can cover Vendors that you may not have internal expertise with, expanding your understanding of both your risk exposures and your cost avoidance possibilities.
- Your internal SAM function will be able to provide invaluable, accurate data to operational functions around your business, as risks identified could be around security, as well as contractual obligations and re-negotiations.
- Technology-Led Services are designed to fit closer to your needs as they progress, so after the initial service delivery, you can simply purchase our Product(s), bolt-on additional services, or upgrade to one of our excellent Managed services options without the need to start over.
- A trusted and highly secure partner – Certero’s global operations are certified to the internationally recognized ISO27001 standard for Information Security Management, for mutual security and peace of mind.
- An Enterprise-class vendor: Certero’s proven partnership approach means working as an extension of your team.
- You’ll be joining the happiest customers in the industry. Real-word customer reviews, independently verified by Gartner’s Peer Insights rate experiences with Certero higher than any other major SAM vendor – and across every review category.
