Dear SAM
took part today in a webinar about asset economics.
Man, did I get disappointed. For a while now I’ve been looking for new information, seeking inspiration, etc.
I hoped I’ll get some ideas, and boy, did I ever?
I realized, yet again (will I ever learn?), that webinars are organized mostly to “sell” an agenda, unfortunately in most cases it regards rather old way of thinking (in my mind anyway), linear thinking or simply academic point of view on the issue at hand in order to resolve a man made, hands on, practical problem, in reality, now.
Let me bring up an old scenario here:
there’s been a group of people who with the help of Acrobat () were editing a form which regarded some standard application, you know like a visa application… Nothing fancy. Anyone who is used to use a word processor working in Acrobat, will find it painful and time-consuming to fill out predefined, many fields …
The group has done it this way for a while, let’s say 5 years. Let’s assume that the 50 people doing that task, let’s say each did this for 3 hours per day, 5 days a week, among their other tasks.
Upon a shallow investigation of the mentioned problem, I suggested digging up the original form. To my surprise, it was a word document.
It took 10 minutes to teach the person to fill out the form in Word, convert it to pdf, and file it.
In 30 min we completed (I was “Omnipresent” but did not interfere) all the forms of the day and the ones of co-workers (work equivalent of 3 hours each, for 2 people)
Do you see the savings?
Let’s assume that each of these people costs the company 50$ per hour doing this.
We have thereby reduced administrative costs from $187 500 to $31 250 and reduced the need for licenses to 1/6th, meaning from $1750 to $291
I’ll give you another…
170 copies of Illustrator at let’s be kind and say $250 a copy.
170 users adjusting technical drawings, few a day.
Looking at the frequency of use we got 30 – 45% of utilization per user.
Divided this into 2 groups:
those with around “30% utilization”
those with around “50% utilization”
now engaged leaders of said users to look at how to utilize these users accordingly, taking these two groups, and reorganizing tasks, so target per user was closer to 100% / utilization.
Managers did some “moving tasks” around which freed workforce resources to other tasks; while in groups of around “50% utilization”, instead of 2 users using Illustrator 1/2 day, it became 1 user focusing on these drawings all day.
Same with the next group although there you could get 1 user doing tasks of 3..
The result?
about 60% of “50% utilizers “ could be freed to do other tasks freeing also their licenses.
About 65% of “30% utilizers” could do the same, freeing 2 for each 3.
In terms of license alone, this means cost avoidance of around 60% of licenses that are not needed anymore.
This would mean 25k plus could be freed or saved had this been looked at before buying the licenses and was possible as of the change in procedures…
Software asset management is not only about assets, but also how they are used and indirectly why… Since we do see how things are being used, we can help managers of the users to realize this.
They, by optimizing “production” can help save tons of money, both avoiding spending the money on licenses that can be avoided being purchased, which saves an additional 12-20% in annual renewal cost, but also by freeing resources which are a cost in themselves.
We don’t have to travel full throttle all the time, all of us doing everything to a “just a little bit” degree. The question is just how to implement common-sense 😉
With thanks! Valuable information!
You argue like I do! Wow!