{"id":6591,"date":"2021-04-13T14:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T12:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/?p=6591"},"modified":"2021-04-13T14:00:15","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T12:00:15","slug":"the-five-tenets-of-quality-itam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/the-five-tenets-of-quality-itam\/","title":{"rendered":"The five tenets of quality ITAM"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

At the end of last year we looked at some of ITAM\u2019s failings. This time we explore how to improve ITAM.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Eric<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Eric Chiu<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe the IT asset management (ITAM) and software asset management (SAM) community can be\u00a0empowered to deliver truly valuable services\u00a0to organisations around the world by addressing these challenges head on. To that end, I propose a set of five principles, or tenets, which I call #QualityITAM, the industry should pursue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SAP has recognised that customers will face challenges and costs when they upgrade to S\/4 Hana. It has set out a roadmap to simplify integration, in a bid to lower the transition cost of moving from ECC to the S\/4 platform. This infographic shows why most SAP users have positive impressions of SAP S\/4Hana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Value ITAM:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m a strong believer that above all, any\u00a0ITAM investment\u00a0must deliver value. A piece of \u201csoulless\u201d effective licence position (ELP) reporting delivers no value; neither does a piece of generic advice that is not actionable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Licensing experts should go beyond delivering just findings and instead provide actionable advice that is aligned to a business\u2019s priorities and realities. I believe that only when we work with our stakeholders or clients to influence change, the value of ITAM and SAM can truly be realised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Fair ITAM: <\/strong>Service providers should focus on cultivating strategic and long-term relationships instead of short-term gains. Service costs should always be aligned with the value we deliver instead of demand-driven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should be constantly innovating on\u00a0more efficient service delivery\u00a0methods and investing in technology automation, so that we can increase our clients\u2019 ROI without compromising our quality principle, and expand ITAM\u2019s reach to smaller businesses that are historically \u201cpriced out\u201d of the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Supportive ITAM:\u00a0<\/strong>Data availability is possibly the biggest risk factor in any\u00a0ITAM or SAM programme. We should closely collaborate with the relevant internal teams of an organisation and understand their needs or challenges in retrieving complete and accurate data, whether caused by technical barriers or resource constraints. Our industry needs to keep innovating on more efficient and non-intrusive methods of data collection to support data quality and completeness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, the nature of SAM produces tremendous amounts of valuable structured data. We should be generous in searching out all possible uses of this data to support finance, security or any other team in an organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Trusted ITAM: <\/strong>Businesses need to be able to trust our numbers. Important business and technology decisions will be made based on our work in ITAM and therefore, it should be our absolute priority to ensure we as an industry deliver accurate, complete audit-proof information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cComputer says so\u201d simply shouldn\u2019t be enough to satisfy our trained eyes. To build and retain stakeholders trust in our work, we as an industry need to be relentlessly focused on quality and make sure there is no place in the market for untrustworthy actors \u2013 independent assessments and industry certification can well be a worthy start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Sustainable ITAM: <\/strong>ITAM and SAM can be a valuable business function, but in its current form it only gets the love it deserves. We are in a vicious cycle of falling service costs and diminishing quality. We need to start changing the paradigm and perception of ITAM and make it a sustainable value-add to business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I therefore advocate a strategic and sponsored approach towards ITAM investment designed with strong governance in mind. In my experience, tactical SAM activities driven by licence audit or renewal pains are valuable, but usually unsustainable. We should understand that ITAM can only be sustainable when people, skills, technology and processes are unified under a stakeholder-endorsed governance framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Change is never easy, but broken ITAM is no longer affordable, if it ever was. I\u2019m certain that I\u2019m not alone in recognising our industry\u2019s challenges, and hope the particular issues I spelled out will echo with my colleagues in the ITAM and SAM community.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While #QualityITAM reflects my years of experience working with ITAM and SAM, and many of my strong beliefs, it\u2019s certainly far from complete, nor is it perfect. However, even if this creates only a baseline for wider and more in-depth debates, I believe we\u2019re one step closer to a successful change in our industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, the recognition of a problem is the first step in solving it, so together I believe we can make ITAM and SAM a truly powerful value proposition to all businesses worldwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>At the end of last year we looked at some of ITAM\u2019s failings. This time we explore how to improve ITAM. By Eric Chiu I believe the IT asset management (ITAM) and software asset management (SAM) community can be\u00a0empowered to deliver truly valuable services\u00a0to organisations around the world by addressing these challenges head on. To that end, I propose a<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4,30,3,243,240,244,239,51,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cio-resources","category-datacenter-news","category-expert-advise-and-opinion","category-industry-news-and-expert-advise","category-it-asset-management-itam","category-second-user-software","category-software-asset-management-sam","category-software-licensing","category-tech-acronyms-and-initialisms","category-tech-definitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6592,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591\/revisions\/6592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}