10 Essential SAM Benefits

Tired of tracking all your software assets with an Excel sheet?

We don’t blame you – tracking software data through Excel isn’t easy. You need to track software updates and new licenses, and keep the sheet updated on an ongoing basis.

Want an easy way out?

That’s where software asset management (SAM) comes in!

SAM tools can help you manage, control, and protect your company’s software assets all from one place.

But how can a SAM tool make the management of these assets easier and more effective?

In this article, we’ll cover 10 essential SAM benefits, and why they’re important for your business.

So, let’s get started!

Looking for a way to track your hardware, software, and virtual IT assets all in one tool? Check out the benefits of IT Asset Management!

10 Essential SAM Benefits

#1. Cost Savings and Optimization

Chances are, you’re overspending on software. According to the SaaS Statistics report, the average small-to-mid-sized company overspends around $135,000 on unused software licenses annually.

That’s usually:

• Software you’re buying, but not using
• Licenses you’re overpaying for
• Software you’re under-utilizing

Using a SAM tool allows you to easily keep track of your software spending and usage. You can use it to optimize your spend, and on average, save up to 30% of your software spending.

#2. Automate Onboarding and Offboarding

When you hire new employees, you need to make sure they get access to all the software they need. And the faster they get this access, the faster they can start being productive at their new job.

A SAM tool helps make your onboarding process both faster and more efficient. Whenever you get a new hire, all you have to do is get them on board the SAM platform, assign them to a department, and the tool will walk them through the process of getting access to all relevant software.

On the other side of the coin, SAM can also help with employee offboarding.

You want to make sure that all of your former employee accounts are deactivated, and they don’t have access to your systems. Otherwise, you increase the risk of data leakage, security breaches, and other types of company liabilities.

As with onboarding, a SAM tool ensures that your former employees are offboarded completely, leaving no room for error.

#3. Reduced Liability Risks

A SAM tool increases your chances of being compliant with all of your software licenses. This way, when a vendor puts you through a software audit, you can easily generate a compliance report that will have all the needed information.

Otherwise, gathering the software audit data and preparing the final report would take you several weeks and 1 or 2 employees (which costs you both time and money). At the same time, there’s also a chance for human error – you might miss some essential information, and that could lead you to failing the audit and getting fined.

#4. Budgeting

Another benefit of using a SAM tool is that it can help you plan your budgeting and compare it to your actual costs. This way you can understand whether your licensing needs can be covered by your budget.

You can also better plan your software purchases based on your budgetary requirements and generate reports that show your software spending by departments or apps.

#5. Reduced Security Risk

With a SAM tool in place, your network is less vulnerable to security risks. The software asset management system makes sure that all your software is configured properly.

This way you mitigate risk and protect your software from security breaches, malware, and viruses.

#6. License Tracking

A SAM tool can automatically detect new software that’s been added to the company’s network.

Then, the new software is added to the SAM tool, and you can see all the information related to it, like license type, vendor data, and license updates.

This way, you always have the latest information about your software and you can manage it all from one place.

Check out these 5+ Top SAM Processes that will help your business, including License Tracking!

#7. Software License Recycling

When an employee resigns, the licenses they were using are often not tracked efficiently (and sometimes they’re completely forgotten).

It’s easy to miss on such things since the software is intangible and you can’t keep track of it as easily as you’d track hardware, for example.

But when you have a SAM system in place, you can see all the old software licenses that are not being used.

This way, when a new employee comes on board, you can recycle this unused license and give it to them instead of purchasing a new one and adding excessive licenses to your inventory.

#8. “Best-Fit” Licensing

With a SAM tool, you understand your company’s software needs better, so you can buy only what you need.

It’s easier to figure out what license type fits best for your business needs, and once you do purchase it, it’s also easier to remain compliant with it.

#9. Volume Discounts

Another SAM benefit is that you better understand how many and what type of licenses you need. This way, you will make an informed decision whether to buy per-person, per-PC license, or aim for a volume license acquisition.

Once you know what you need, you can easily choose the option that fits your needs best and is cost-efficient.

#10. Foresee Future Software Needs

A software asset management system can help you plan your future needs better. You can understand what software you need and when you need it, instead of buying several software tools at once hoping that they’ll be useful.

Not sure if you’re getting the best out of your SAM tool? Make sure to follow these 7+ SAM best practices!

Manage Your Software Assets With Vendr

The market for SAM tools is huge and it might get confusing on how to choose the right SAM tool.

Not sure which one to pick? Check out our expert’s guide on how to pick the right SAM tool.

Vendr allows you to take advantage of the many SAM benefits including budgeting, managing licenses, optimizing their usage, minimizing your costs, and always keeping track of your compliance.

Some other key features that will make the software asset management a breeze are:

• Usage and spend tracking. Easily identify unused accounts and extra licenses (to cut on costs).
• Automated Discovery. Vendr automatically uncovers all your software assets and adds them to its database.
• Budget forecasts. Make budget forecasts and compare them to your actual spending.
• Employee workflows. Streamline onboarding and onboarding processes. Automatically assign software to new employees and disable ex-employee accounts.

Key Takeaways

Tracking software can be hard if you have to do it on your own. Luckily, with the help of a SAM tool, this task becomes much easier.

To quickly recap the article, some of the main SAM benefits are:

• Cost savings and optimization
• Automated employee workflows
• Reduced liability risks
• Budgeting
• Reduced security risk
• License tracking