What’s Next for ITAM?

COVID-19 continues to disrupt lives and businesses, but ITAM must start looking beyond the immediate impact of COVID-19 on your organization and start looking at the impact COVID-19 is having on the economy. How much the world economy will decline is unknown and how long the decline will last is unknown, at least to this author. However, what is known are the plans that need to be made and put into immediate action.

Now is not the time to sit around waiting for someone to ask for help. Now is the time to take a proactive approach and find out what your ITAM program can do for your organization in the coming months. Do not get caught in the position of having to justify your ITAM program or ITAM staff. Too many ITAM programs were cut in the “Great Recession of 2008” because they were not ready to help, had not communicated their value, and did not have a plan to bring immediate value to their organization.

The strategy to cut costs needs to be developed by taking a holistic approach.

Hardware – what is the state of your technology refresh? Do you need to continue as planned or can it be delayed? Should it be delayed? Is your company’s head count going to be the same in the near future?

Software – what does your calendar look like regarding renewals and true-ups? Do the entitlements still align with the business needs? Are support levels still valid?

Cloud subscriptions – are the current subscription levels and counts still valid? Similar to hardware, what does the company’s head count look like in the near future? Are near term commitments and plans still valid?

Outsourcing – is it time to seriously consider or commit to moving internally provided IT services to the cloud? Outsourcing for the sole purpose of saving money can be a very risky move. However, the IT asset manager can help evaluate the options of moving insourced services to a vendor. Evaluation should include understanding the details of the internally provided services, the needs for those services, and the cost of providing the needed services by a cloud service provider.

Unfortunately, software audits are probably back. Not that they left. But history has shown when the economy declines software audits go up. The “Great Recession of 2008” did cause some challenges to the auditors because they were auditing companies that downsized significantly. If that downsizing occurs with this recession, the auditors, like the last recession, will adjust their strategies. ITAM should prepare for upcoming audits by:

Define the roles and responsibilities of the software audit response team. Include the executive sponsor, legal, finance, IT, IT security, vendor manager, and the software asset manager roles. Use the audit response team definition to educate the heads of the departments that will have to assign someone to the audit response roles.

Identify the top software titles based on spend and based on audit risk.

Conduct internal audits to test any assumptions and your organization’s readiness. Review your entitlements and your consumption to determine your licensing position.

Cyber security was a high priority in most organizations prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and will have to remain a high priority during and after. Cyber attacks have continued to increase at alarming rates during the crisis with the cyber criminals taking advantage of the crisis and the at-home work force. The last great recession did not have the cyber threats that organizations face today, allowing organizations to focus on cost cutting. But this time organizations will have to cut spending while still fund, and perhaps increase, cyber security budgets.

ITAM can support their organization’s cyber security initiatives in at least two ways: 1) identify opportunities to reduce spend on non-essential IT to help fund cyber security initiatives and 2) support cyber security controls as they relate to IT asset management. Practically every cyber security framework has at least two controls – accurate hardware inventory and accurate software inventory.

Lastly, continue to communicate to executive management and departments the value your ITAM program brings to the organization. Review your communication efforts and look for ways to improve. Educate other departments and leadership on how you can help. Be proactive!

In addition to the business benefits described above, review the following benefits that an ITAM program can bring:

IT asset re-use – report the money you have saved through redeployment of assets and demonstrate how this may be a critical time to leverage redeployment of unused assets. Consider conducting an electronic and physical inventory to achieve an accurate inventory of assets that can be redeployed.

IT budget review – look for where the spend is greatest and then assemble a team of experts to brainstorm how the budget can be reduced.

IT budget review, part two – cutting budgets should not be the only strategy during a down economy. Sometimes you have to spend money to save money. For example, is it more cost effective and accurate to conduct an inventory in-house or through a vendor with inventory expertise? Does your organization possess the talent inhouse to optimize your software license spend? Is now the best time to delay disposal of hardware assets or should you re-engage your disposal vendor?

IT budget review, part three – is there budget allocated to refresh IT assets? Does the refresh need to be delayed? What is the cost of delaying? What other IT asset related projects are on the near horizon that need to be re-examined for cost and benefit?

COVID-19 has impacted the way most businesses operate. This is an opportunity for ITAM to bring more value to the organization by applying the management skills that are characteristic of IT asset managers. The pandemic hasn’t ended, yet the repercussions are just starting.

If layoffs occur, then the offboarding process will be critical not only to ITAM but also to human resources, IT, and cyber security. If employees are coming back to the office from their home, then the reboarding process will be critical. Duplicate assets assigned to home users need to be retrieved, stipends terminated, disposal of software installed specifically to support the at home worker. For furloughed employees, then the onboarding process will need to address what happened to the assigned IT assets when they were furloughed and what needs to happen to the assets to prepare for the employee’s first day back to work.

The ITAM program is a core competency of any organization, of any size, and in any industry. Executive management just may not know it and it is the responsibility of you, the IT asset manager, to continuously promote the successes of your ITAM program.

Best regards,

Keith Rupnik