Modern business practices entail leveraging stockpiles of data to enhance customer experience. Big data also helps streamline internal processes. Fortunately, many software solutions help small businesses analyze the data.
Grand View Research notes that more than 46% of small businesses use a business software tool as part of their core strategy. However, how do you streamline the process of using any software tool in your business? You might want to consider software license management.
But what is license management? Simply put, this process involves tracking and documenting uses a particular software technology. As a vendor, you can evaluate whether users are leveraging the software license appropriately and as per the agreed terms.
Here are five benefits of using license management software.
1. Enforce the End User License Agreement
How do you manage your software licenses? A simple error can cause great harm, resulting in losses. Sometimes, it’s hard to keep up with the end-user license agreement due to regular software updates. This can result in wrong usage.
However, with license management software, you can ensure every user is up-to-date with the contract agreement. This mitigates the risks that may emanate from misusing the product.
2. Manage Your Software Asset Effectively
Implementing license management in your business gives you a more in-depth insight into every purchased license. For instance, you can tell how the software license benefits your startup—do end-users leverage it effectively? Should you dispose of it if there is no ROI?
Getting answers to these questions helps you determine whether you should update the license. You can also decide to invest in a new license altogether. This means you can come up with an effective license pool to streamline workflows in your IT department.
3. Enhance Compliance and Mitigate Risks
Innovative license management software allows you to perform a compliance audit across your IT business tools. This way, you can note all the tools currently in use. You’ll also define your entitlements allotted to every software application.
However, the compliance audit is not a one-time reassurance. You have to employ software licensing management continuously to mitigate any compliance risks that may arise in the future. Click here to learn more about optimizing your licensing management for risk mitigations.
4. Align License Management With Software Asset Management Program
Software license management (SLM) solutions are closely affiliated with software asset management programs (SAM). SLM ensures that you don’t operate on over or under-licensed business tools. On the other hand, SAM gears toward optimizing the tools and deployments.
Aligning SLM and SAM gives better insights into entitlement inventory and consumption (EIC). This ensures you’re up-to-date with license optimization and compliance risk areas.
5. Relatively Affordable
Investing in license management is something that pays off as long as your business uses software products. The costs of non-compliance risks also outweigh your initial investment.
Not to forget, getting your license revoked because of wrong usage can interrupt business operations.
License Management Is More Important Than Ever
Software usage is more prevalent than ever in many businesses. We also live in an era where migration from on-premises to the cloud is inevitable. License management solution ensures your business benefits wholly from its robust IT infrastructure.
Read other articles on this site for more information on integrating license management into your business plan.
