For businesses with offices in different parts of the world, managing software licences across the company can be time-consuming. Fortunately, solutions are available to optimise IT software and streamline your licensing needs.

Managing software licences is one of those costly, time-consuming business processes that just will not go away, no matter how hard you wish.

Most businesses understand the importance of licence management but don't have a process to optimise the process. The end result, in many cases, is that businesses without any tangible licence optimisation strategy wind up spending too much money – and time - on managing software licences.

Software licensing issues tend to be highlighted and exacerbated at key times of change for the business, such as when staff move on and licences need to be transferred, or when the business expands and more user licences are required.

Stop and consider how widespread and costly the impact of licence management on your business:

• Finance is frantically trying to work out how many licences are being used and costs to maintain
• The IT department is running licence reports to check compliance while buying add-ons and trying to share licences between different parts of the company
• HR is trying to coordinate employee information with finance and IT to make sure expensive licences are not lying around unused

It is estimated that companies waste more than a third of their software spend, costing tens of billions of dollars a year in unused software that has either been forgotten or simply mismanaged.

Software licence optimisation

Making sure your business gets the most out of its investment in software licences is the key to licence optimisation. Too many businesses, particularly those with branches and subsidiaries, may have active software licences in a sector that are overlooked and unused. Optimisation means analysing and managing all software licences to reduce this wastage.

It is important to understand that there is more to managing your business’s software licences than simply making sure you legally comply with the licensing requirements. It’s just as important to make sure your company is getting full value out of the investment.

Simplifying your licensing processes for efficiency and lower costs

It is clear that there are substantial cost and efficiency gains to be achieved by procuring, distributing and billing software licences to subsidiaries and other company entities under a single agreement.

Singtel’s SPADE Portal (Software Procurement and Distribution for Enterprise) enables users to achieve optimal IT resource planning. It's focused on single-agreement licensing strategies with the ability to cost out to different entities under a Master Service Agreement.

SPADE is targeted at mid to large enterprises that need to distribute and charge back Office 365 licences to different billing entities or geographical locations.

Singtel’s SPADE portal can achieve business efficiency and reduce costs by:

• allowing you to transfer licences among entities
• supports centralised & decentralised procurement and billing
• delegating rights to the respective departments to purchase software when they need it
• Fully integrated with Microsoft Admin Portal to view purchased licences and assign users in real-time.

SPADE is available for customers and organisations that need to manage large volumes of Office 365 licences across multiple entities or geographical locations. To find out more, visit our SPADE product page or get in touch with us. 

Summary:

• Optimising software licences delivers efficiencies and cost savings
• Singtel’s SPADE portal gives business the opportunity to consolidate their licences and extract maximum value from their software investment
• A coherent licence management strategy also frees up resources in finance, IT and HR
• Split billing means business can better manage profit and loss statements
• Departments can purchase software when they require it without going through IT and finance