Digital Asset Management How Can it Help Your Company?

Digital Asset Management How Can it Help Your Company?

If your company deploys software licenses on it’s various computer systems, having a system to track and manage those licenses is critical. Investing in digital asset management is often the best way to avoid fees and legal fines associated with software ownership.

What is Digital Asset Management?

Digital asset management solutions come equipped with various software license management tools to help businesses organize the software deployed on their systems. They allow businesses to view and understand the licenses they hold, which is a useful when negotiating new contracts and seeking new software.

Asset management allows companies to see what licenses are being underused and which are working well so they can clean up and optimize their systems. They also inform policies surrounding the documentation and deployment of existing software licenses and the acquisition of new ones.

Software asset management solutions usually combine IT processes, purchasing procedures and policies and various technological tools like software inventory systems. Most of them also include a human element:

What do Software Licensing Advisers Do?

Access to a software licensing adviser may be included in your digital asset management package. Advisers keep companies in compliance with software agreements as well as industry and government regulations, allowing companies to protect themselves from financial liability and noncompliance risk. Fines for these issues can cost companies millions of dollars.

Advisers can also reduce the risk of being found non-compliant during software vendor audits, which are becoming increasingly frequent. Microsoft is the current top issuer of software audits for its second year in a row. In a survey, 58% of respondents reported Microsoft audits within the last year. Microsoft licensing compliance audits can be expensive, with a majority of survey respondents reporting fees from $100,000-$1 million.

Whether or not your company uses Microsoft licenses, it’s crucial to have a software management system in place to avoid unpleasant financial surprises.