Soft-Aid Services Overview

Our IT Asset Management (ITAM) consulting services are integrated and address the full lifecycle of managing hardware and software assets. 

We draw from subject matter expertise and experience in software licensing, ITAM best practices, and ITAM tools. We have a track record of project management success that helps customers ensure that critical business issues related to software are addressed:

• Reduce legal and financial risks related to software license compliance.
• Optimize software purchasing.
• Reduce Software Asset Management costs.
• Ensure effective use and control of software assets.
• Improve IT efficiency and enable strategic planning related to software.

Download: an Overview of Software Asset Management

You can use individual services or integrate them to develop a complete ITAM program.  This chart has a logical ordering of our services:

Soft-Aid's services are are available on a one-time consulting basis or as managed outsourced services.

Software License Position Analysis

Eliminate legal and financial risks from improperly licensed software and uncover potential savings. Our License Position Analysis service identifies both unlicensed and underutilized software that can be redeployed in your organization: where needed, we can offer the use of an auto-discovery tool to inventory your software and hardware. Likewise, we can help with license compliance audit response and mitigation efforts. We have a particular focus on Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe and other Commercial-Off-the-Shelf software.

Download the solution brief

Software Asset Management Practices Maturity Assessment ("SAM Health Check")

Are you wondering what is the state of your SAM practices and how you compare to peers? We will analyze and benchmark your current ITAM practices and compare them to industry-recognized frameworks and standards (e.g. ISO 19770-1 and ITIL SAM/Service Management). Deliverables include a roadmap for improvement that makes your IT Asset Management program run more efficiently. Provides the foundation for building a business case for ITAM improvement, garnering project funding and approvals, and measuring improvements.

Download the solution brief

Build a Business Case for ITAM Improvements

Once your ITAM risk profile and areas for improvement have been identified, many customers employ our services to help build a business case to secure funding and approvals and map out a future project plan. This is typically done through a series of workshops where we work with stakeholders and walk through a systematic approach to building and presenting your ITAM project business case.

Download the solution brief (to be added)

Selection, Implementation and Optimization of IT Asset Management Tools

Ensure that you have the right ITAM Tools that maximizes your investment. We can help customers evaluateand select a tool that meets their business and service needs. We can also assist with architecting implementations, ensuring that they conform to best practices and workflows, and configuring/deploying them for best use.

Download the solution brief

Software Asset Management Training and Employee Awareness

Communicate the importance of addressing regulatory and license compliance risks by following effective SAM practices. Our Software Asset Management Training and Employee Awareness service is the most efficient way to ensure that key SAM personnel and end users understand their software asset management roles and responsibilities and are able to fulfill them.

Download the solution brief

SAM Program Design: Implement the Right SAM Policies, Processes, and Procedures

Implement the right SAM policies, processes, and procedures. Via on-site workshops that are interractive and engaging, we identify the current state of your ITAM capabilities and practices. We work with stakeholders to redesign workflows and key processes and ensure that the "to-be" state of ITAM processes is properly implemented, both meeting defined objectives and having measurable returns. This service builds on a SAM assessment and ensures that your ITAM program aligns with industry best practice frameworks and standards such as the ITIL SAM Best Practice Framework and ISO 19770-1 SAM Process Standard.

Download the solution brief

Software Deployment Readiness Assessment

Deploy new software, such as Microsoft Windows 7 or Office 2010, with confidence. A complete way to assess your degree of software standardization. This service helps ensure that upgrade paths and costs as well as dependencies between software are actively considered in your software deployment plans.

Download the solution brief

Software Contract Management

Ensure that software and hardware/lease contracts are consolidated and captured in a contract management system. We can review existing contract terms and identify areas for improvement. We can help ensure that contract entitlements are being used. We can assess existing contracts, review and help negotiate new contracts including maintenance renewals, and develop and implement a program that proactively manages ITAM contracts on an ongoing basis.

Download the solution brief

Software License Management

Eliminate legal and financial risks from improper software licensing. Optimize software purchasing. Receive an in-depth assessment of your current license management practices and guidance on creating an integrated and automated system to capture and manage software licenses.

Download the solution brief

Configuring Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager™ 2007/2012 for IT Asset Management

Ensure that you make effective use of the IT Asset Management capabilities in Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager 2007/2012(ConfigMgr/SCCM): such as asset Intelligence, software usage monitoring, dashboards, standard and custom reporting, and license reconciliation. Learn how to integrate SCCM with third party IT Asset Management tools including Microsoft Service Manager 2010.

For more information on Soft-Aid's book entitled IT Asset Management Bible for Microsoft Configuration Manager 2007/2012 (SCCM), click here

IT Financial Asset Management

We can help put in place the right processes to manage ITAM budgeting, accounting and charging requirements. We can hlp identify actionable financial information that helps monitor performance and control IT spending.

Our services help you effectively manage the entire scope of ITAM investments and strategic decision making across the entire IT investment portfolio. We help you gain visibillity into all the demands placed on the IT organization (proposals, application enhancements, requests for change) - every type of demand and how it impacts services, lines of business, etc.

Additional capabilities of our IT financial management services include the ability to: provide total cost of ownership for each ITAM business service that IT supports. Chargeback for usage as required. Provide a structured ability to place a value on each business service, which will help determine which new projects should receive scarce investment capital and which services cost more to support then their actual value. Track all IT investments and operational activities against budgets, with the ability to analyze this information in multiple ways. Comply with certain regulatory demands (including license usage compliance). Improve the prediction of actual costs for new projects based on historical TCO experience. Provide the right level of information to review vendor strengths. Allowing IT to review existing vendors based on cost, reliability, delivery, support, etc.

Download the solution brief (to be Added).

Configuration Management

Desired configuration management in Configuration Manager 2007 allows you to assess the compliance of computers with regard to a number of configurations, such as whether the correct Microsoft Windows operating system versions are installed and configured appropriately, whether all required applications are installed and configured correctly, whether optional applications are configured appropriately, and whether prohibited applications are installed. Additionally, you can check for compliance with software updates and security settings.
Compliance is evaluated by defining a configuration baseline that contains the configuration items you want to monitor and rules that define how they should be defined for compliance. Configuration baselines can be imported from the Web as Best Practices, or defined within Configuration Manager, or defined externally and then imported into Configuration Manager.

Download the solution brief (to be Added).

Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) with a focus on ITAM Projects/Initiatives

Gain a view across your ITAM projects and programs. The focus is on making sure standards and methodologies are used across the enterprise and managing the execution of projects to ensure they are delivered on time and on budget. The organization is not yet performing objective decision making using criteria such as business value, NPV, ROI, and other metrics to rank projects and programs to align with business objectives and schedule work.

Download the solution brief (to be Added).