Old cliche: “When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s easy to forget your goal is to drain the swamp”

The same could be said of an enterprise IT Asset Management project…

There are a lot of alligators between “where we are today” and “saved money and improved compliance.” You’ll recognize them by their large sharp teeth and foul breath:

• sponsorship / budget / relative priority problems
• people / process / buy-in by the stakeholders problems
• tool / technical challenges
• and all the infinite varieties of other little nasty things that can derail your grand plan

So let’s do a quick re-focus: What’s the goal of ITAM? How will you know that your swamp is now drained, and you can get to work on your lovely shopping center or golf course?

Typical answers are things like “save money” and “prove or improve compliance.” Maybe your project charter goes into more detail, including something like “estimated first-year cost avoidance for software licensing of $1.4 million.”

So, to continue stretching my swamp analogy (or is it a metaphor? I always get those confused), how do you prove to your bosses that the swamp is now dry and ready for the bulldozers?

If I may suggest: that, my friend, is your REAL goal: “prove to the boss that we did it successfully, here are the results, and here’s what to do next.”

So here are some ideas on how to do that (HINT: I see many companies that don’t do these… ever)

1. Audit. Sure you built a great system, where robust tools and solid, efficient processes combine smoothly, all of your data is always up-to-date, and any manager anywhere can instantly get the correct useful answer to the questions “what do we have, where is it, what’s been happening to it, and how much has all of that cost so far?”

Right? Well… prove it. Get with your corporate audit team and start checking the actual data. Follow audit standards and issue an audit report. Does your (expensive) ITAM thing actually work? Hint… if this part makes you blink and say “no way buddy” then maybe we should talk?

2. Reconcile. Here’s a big way to miss out on the ROI - don’t ever reconcile the software and hardware discovery against the asset database information.

I tell you, it’s amazing to me how many companies have a decent set of discovery tools, an adequate ITAM solution… but they NEVER have reconciled the two. Trust me - there are ALWAYS gaps. Usually big ones. Why don’t more people do the reconciliation? Simple - it’s a lot of tedious work. Can’t do it automatically - someone has to look at reports and clear up the discrepancies. But… especially with software licenses - this is where the big money is hiding.

3. Report. Sure, you need to issue detailed reports on items 1 and 2 above, but this often-overlooked deliverable is about “reporting” in general.

Here’s what happens: you do the ITAM project, you work with all the stakeholders, gather requirements, elicit opinions, build a great system, get it up and running, it’s chugging along, capturing and relating all of this great data about assets and costs and labor and service… and nobody ever looks at it. Opportunities pass by because nobody knows about them.

Instead, you should have a continuous improvement program, with all of your stakeholders. Asking (and getting answers to) questions like: “what are our actual metrics vs SLA’s?” “how much have we spent year-to-date on this type of asset, versus last year?” “what percentage of our pc’s had hard disk failures?” ” how long does it take to get a new hire fully operational?” and so on.

4. Act on the information. USE THE DATA… that’s why you paid all the money for ITAM in the first place!

Change your vendors because the evidence supports it - not because Susie is a cuter sales rep than Jim.

Get your extra headcount approved because you can PROVE that it will improve the company’s ability to open new stores faster - not because “we’re really busy and need more help.”

Tell the CFO “don’t worry about software audits because we audit our compliance every quarter and we always come out with less than 5% error” - not “don’t worry about audits, we’re pretty sure we’re ok.”

Do you get my drift? Ok? Great… go DO IT.

till next time

Scott Braden

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