The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint …and how to be SAM Happy!

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The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint

According to industry analysts, Gartner, “through 2020, only 25% of enterprises will be satisfied that their SAM tools deliver on pre-purchase expectations of value”. Prepare your IT Asset Management for 2020, June 2018

It’s a pretty bold claim, a stark figure and potentially (if you’re a SAM manager) depressing reading.

It seems that many SAM tools users are finding themselves in what Gartner itself describes as the ‘trough of disillusionment’, sometimes known on other similar models as the ‘valley of despair’.

But why do so many organizations find themselves in this difficult situation?

There are potentially six common reasons:

1. Limited toolset competency

2. Low levels of automation

3. Legacy tools architecture

4. Lack of in-house skills (or service maturity)

5. Over-promising

6. Inability to prove value

Let’s look at each of these six in turn, and perhaps if you’ve not yet decided on a SAM tool – or you’re at the point where you’re ready to change – we can offer some advice, too.

The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint

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1. Limited Toolset Competencies

Most SAM tools on the market were born out of the need to inventory software on Windows devices.

With those beginnings, you probably won’t struggle to find a tool that’s reasonably competent at Wintel platform software discovery. But when your SAM program needs to include non-Windows devices (or even Windows devices that aren’t desktops) or you want to include new technology platforms like mobile and cloud, or you want to manage software publishers with more complex licensing metrics, a lot of those same tools come up short.

All SAM tools have their strengths and weaknesses. But the low satisfaction ratings demonstrate how important it is to make sure that you are selecting the right tool not only for the early-stage ‘low hanging fruit’ (like Microsoft Visio and Project license harvesting) of your SAM program, but your longer-term goals as well.

Top tips for SAM Happiness:

• Build a tool criteria based on short & long term goals

• Consider future technology adoption & needs

• Think about needs of other stakeholders across the business

The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint

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2. Low Levels of Automation

There’s a strong tie-in to Point 5 (to follow) here, but a common trend among SAM tool buyers is failing to really interrogate how good the candidate tool is at automating key workflows and tasks.

A tool that promises to automate your Microsoft compliance position but then forces you to export much of the data into a spreadsheet and then reimport it back into the tool after you’ve done all the hard sums isn’t really offering much in the way of useful automation. Similarly, if automating a license harvesting routine actually means setting up workflows in three different products, how likely are you to ever get round to doing it?

Much like the competency criteria that you need to develop for Point 1, you also need to have a decent idea of what workflows you’d want to automate and ideally how you’d like that to look.

Top Tips for SAM Happiness

• Build out a wish list of automation in advance

• Force vendors to prove claimed levels of automation before purchase

• Look for truly integrated modules & common architecture

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The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint

3. Legacy Tools Architecture

We often think SAM is a new discipline, yet we’ve been auditing IT assets since the early 2000s.

So it’s not surprising that a lot of the tools used by SAM and ITAM teams can trace their codebases back 10 years or more. In many cases, they haven’t really changed that much.

We’re now trying to manage multi-platform, multi-location and multi-vendor environments with tools that are essentially older (in most cases) than the cars we drive.

The legacy of SAM tools can have a dramatic effect on the customer experience, whether that’s in how the products are installed (many ‘platforms’ architecture still require you to stand up multiple servers and/or databases), how they collect and process data or how that data is presented back to users. This legacy architecture can also make it difficult and slow to perform upgrades, to adopt additional features or integrate modules.

Top Tips for SAM Happiness:

• Lookforasolutionbuiltusingmodernunifiedplatformarchitecture

• Scrutinize TCO claims for ongoing hardware & database requirements

• Choose an architecture that enables you to drive value quickly

The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint

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4. Lack of In-House Skills

A certain amount of frustration and disappointment with SAM tools must come from the users’ inability to get the most out of the technology, whether that’s down to a lack of technical competence or the licensing knowledge that’s required.

Having automation in the product should help, but no tool can automate 100% of the tasks and there’s still a distinct need for human expertise when it comes to Software Asset Management.

In-house skills can be complemented with services, either from the tools vendor, an associated service provider or an independent one. There are pros and cons for all three options and they should all be explored instead of simply assuming that buying the tool in isolation is an automatic path to SAM success.

Top Tips for SAM Happiness:

• Understand your own team skills & how the tool will complement these

• Work with a vendor that can address skills gaps

• Look for combined technology & services package

The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint

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5. Over-Promising

“Of course the tool does that”. We can’t escape the fact that over-promising has been rife in the SAM tools marketplace for some time now.

One piece of advice for when you’re dealing with SAM vendors and service providers is not to ask “if” they can do something but instead ask “how” they do it.

It’s one of the best tactics for cutting through sales bluster and getting to the real capabilities of the tool or service.

With 75% of SAM tools users close to the point of feeling that their tool doesn’t meet pre-purchase expectations of value, it has to mean that either the customer was unrealistic in their expectations or that they were over-sold by a provider more focused on taking their money than providing total customer satisfaction.

Top Tips for SAM Happiness:

• Ask “how” not “if”

• Demand detailed answers to use case questions

• Speak to other users of shortlisted tools!

The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint

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6. Inability to Prove Value

Make no mistake, it can be difficult to prove the value of the SAM program. This is especially true when the KPIs were not agreed at the outset. Knowing ahead of time what value you wanted to deliver is extremely important to proving what you have achieved.

Of course, you might have set those goals and then not been able to achieve them with the tools and resources you had at your disposal. In which case you’d have every right to be disappointed, as long as your expectations were realistic in the first place!

To prove value, your tool must make it possible to show performance against set goals. If you need to save money on specific vendors, your tool has to show this. If you want to track adoption, the tool must support it. Tools that focus only on generic data won’t help you prove value.

Top Tips for SAM Happiness:

• Define&communicateSAMgoals

• Choose a tool that can track & demonstrate goals

• Focus on ability to share information with key stakeholders

The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint

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Escaping - or avoiding - the valley of despair

There’s no one reason as to why three-quarters of organizations are feeling disappointed with their SAM tool purchase. It’s likely that if you find yourself in that situation, you can identify with several of the points highlighted previously.

If that’s you, and you want to escape the valley of despair, it’s time to decide whether to persevere with your incumbent tool(s) or whether it’s time to make a change, however uncomfortable that might be to admit.

If you haven’t yet made a SAM tool purchase, or are in the market for a new one, let Gartner’s research be a warning. Even the obvious-choice SAM tools are letting their customers down (they must be, the math doesn’t work any other way). It’s time to become super-critical about your tools selection criteria, to make sure you’ve carefully mapped-out your SAM goals and to team up with a provider that you trust to deliver satisfaction.

The top six reasons that SAM tools disappoint

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About certero The Unified SAM & ITAM Platform you can trust to deliver.

“With Certero, it’s just a better experience” It’s a real quote from a real Certero customer. Not a marketing gimmick.

It’s also a motto that everyone at Certero lives by, every day. Always ensuring that every single Certero customer feels that they made the right choice.

Certero helps customers around the world achieve their SAM, ITAM and ITOM goals. From creating visibility of all IT assets through the delivery of inventory and baseline projects, through to optimization of data center licensing for vendors like IBM and Oracle. Or from audit defense and compliance projects through to supporting digital transformation programs with data and insights about the adoption and consumption of technologies on-premises and in the cloud. Certero offers much more than basic inventory and license management capabilities, with integrated mobile device management, workflow automation, analytics, vulnerability management/patching, software distribution and user self-service functionality for application requests and password resets.

Rated #1 for Software Asset Management customer satisfaction on Gartner Peer Insights.