Maximize ROI through effective software license management

In today’s economic uncertainty, software license management is necessary for companies looking to cut back on spending and maximizing ROI. 

However, optimization isn’t simply cutting unused app licenses. It’s also about driving digital adoption of the software you already have in order to get more value from your digital investments.

By monitoring and managing usage of software licenses, businesses can optimize their investments, remain compliant with licensing agreements, and avoid costly penalties. They can also confidently navigate the changing economic landscape while maintaining their competitive edge.

In this article, we’ll break down what you need to know about software license management and how it can help enterprises weather economic uncertainty.

All about software licensing management

Software license management is an important process for achieving the right balance between the cost of purchasing software and the convenience and effectiveness of its use. 

The process of software license management involves: 

• Managing and tracking licenses owned by your business.  
• Maintaining a clear understanding of licenses used across your organization. 
• Understand what types of license models and licenses are being used. 
• Ensuring compliance with licensing agreements.

This ensures compliance with software licensing agreements to avoid litigation and penalties, tracks usage by license managers to optimize renewals and cancellations, and identifies the software in use and no longer used. This process also assists in license audits, resources management, and budgeting.

Effective software license management is an ongoing process that ensures cost optimization, reduces risks, and improves productivity by identifying underused or unused licenses and reallocating them elsewhere in the organization.

What are software license management tools?

Software license management tools are specialized programs that help businesses manage and track their licenses. These tools provide a central repository for all licenses, making it easy to have software license managers track usage and ensure compliance.

There are numerous software license management tools that cater to different organizational sizes and purposes. Choosing the right one depends on the specific needs and requirements of your organization, licensing model, software deployment, the scale of software usage, the number of users, and the nature of software consumption. 

Depending on whether you need a cloud-based solution or an on-premises solution, the cost, features, and usability will vary.

Benefits of software license management

Using a software license management tool provides numerous benefits for businesses. One of the most important benefits of a software license management system is cost savings. By centralizing and optimizing software licenses, businesses can save on unnecessary purchases and optimize license usage, making informed decisions about all their software licenses and investments.

Software license management tools help in software license compliance by maintaining accurate records, and compliance reports that provide a clear understanding of software usage and compliance, helping businesses avoid costly legal fines and penalties. 

By identifying underused licenses, organizations can optimize software renewal and cancellation decisions, reallocate licenses or reduce them to match the actual software usage rate, which leads to a better ROI.

Reduce costs, increase profits with software asset management

Effective software license management helps businesses reduce costs by avoiding unnecessary software purchases and optimizing license usage. By understanding software utilization and usage patterns, you can make informed decisions about software investments, reducing costs and maximizing value.

Asset management, which includes effective software license management, IT and asset management software tracking, and software analytics, can help increase the ROI on software and optimize the entire IT investment lifecycle. 

By tracking usage of all hardware and software assets, including managing software licenses and subscriptions, you can optimize your business’s tech infrastructure, avoid unnecessary subscriptions, and reduce redundant software.

Benefits and features of software license management

Software license management tools offer numerous benefits to businesses, including standardized software deployment, optimized licensing, and centralized license management for software vendors. 

This is important because it helps ensure compliance with licensing contracts, reduce costs due to over-licensing or under-licensing, and make sure that the right licenses are being used in the right places. 

Additionally, software license management enables visibility into usage trends and gives a better understanding of when software needs to be upgraded or downgraded. 

With these benefits in mind, it is easy to see why software license management is becoming an increasingly important part of IT strategies worldwide. Additionally, utilizing software license management can help organizations realize cost savings by helping them buy the right number and type of licenses they need while avoiding penalties. 

Furthermore, with better visibility into their usage trends, your business can pinpoint opportunities to improve adoption of applications, ensuring investments fulfill their original promise of value.

Consequences of bad license management

Failure to manage software licenses effectively can result in a range of negative consequences, including wasted money on unnecessary software purchases, legal fines and penalties, and loss of reputation for your business. 

Moreover, without proper software license management in place, you may be ill-equipped to launch updates and new versions of software products. This can erase the advantages that come with having access to the latest features and bug fixes.

Finally, lack of visibility into usage trends or even knowing which applications are in use could lead to inefficient licensing decisions, resulting in wasted budgets.

By implementing a comprehensive software license management strategy, you can avoid these potential pitfalls and maximize investments. With the right processes and tools for software license monitoring in place, you can ensure that you have the correct number of licenses for the applications users need — no more, no less. 

This helps prevent overspending and ensures users have access to the latest version of their applications. Additionally, software license management can provide businesses with insights into usage trends and inform decisions about which applications to invest in for the future or which applications require additional measures to improve adoption.

Challenges in software license management

Effective software vendor license management requires collaboration across multiple departments within an organization, including IT, procurement, and legal. Ensuring effective communication and coordination between these departments is essential.

However, optimizing your digital investments can’t happen without visibility. You need to see all of the apps you are running, who is using them, and how. Without this, you don’t know where to start.

Software license tracking and management tools can be complex to implement and manage, requiring specialized expertise and technical know-how. It’s essential to have the right resources in place to successfully implement and utilize software license management tools.

Digital adoption plays a crucial role in this equation. By promoting digital adoption within your organization, you can ensure that employees are effectively using software license management tools, reducing the risk of non-compliance, and optimizing your digital investments. Therefore, it’s critical to prioritize and invest in digital adoption as a core part of your software license compliance and management strategy.

An all-in-one license management software

Looking for a way to monitor app usage data and drive adoption of your digital investments?

WalkMe Discovery is our cloud-based platform that allows you to see all applications running in your organization, even ones you might not know about. Plus, you can see who is using them and how – on the application, department, and user level. 

But that’s not all – the platform is purpose-built to not just show you data, but to drive adoption, making it the only platform you’ll need to truly maximize your software investments. 

The best part? WalkMe Discovery is FREE for the first 200 qualifying customers.

Learn more about Discovery.