Maintaining Proper Licensing

As more and more companies increasingly depend upon a plethora of software applications in order to conduct their daily business operations, the challenge to maintain the proper licensing for all these various software products increases as well. 

In this post we will discuss why it is important to keep accurate software licensing records, along with offering some tips on how to effectively manage them.

Why Review?

Many organizations might assume they have a problem with under-licensing rather than over-licensing, but that is not necessarily the case.  On average, when a licensing audit is performed, over-licensing is more of an issue, with companies actually only using 35-38% of the software they are regularly paying for.  This means a company that decides to stay on top of maintaining accurate licensing records could easily save over 65% on their licensing costs, which is a significant savings for any company.

Of course, there are still some instances where organizations are under-licensed and this can cost extra as well.  Companies who do not keep accurate software licensing records thereby allowing their licenses to expire, often will have to pay significantly more to get their expired licenses renewed.

Licensing Tips

For larger organizations, licensing maintenance  tasks for an entire company would be too much for one person.  In these cases, assigning one or more individuals per department is more effective.  Smaller organizations face a different challenge.  They most likely do not have the resources to designate one individual with the task of creating an effective licensing maintenance system.  In these cases, smaller organizations could benefit from outsourcing the task to an IT support company that has the resources and the expertise to properly maintain licensing records.

Whatever route a company decides to take, those in charge of licensing maintenance need to keep thorough records on all licensing, including door entry and security systems, creative teams software, along with back-up and antivirus products as well.

Summary

By keeping accurate software licensing records, companies can avoid paying fines for non-compliance, it ensures the use of legitimate software only, and roots out any questionable software that should not be on company servers, PCs or mobile devices.

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