New tools to help organisations navigate the digital supply chain
Global platform SoftwareONE finds a digitised supply chain has become necessary for building business efficiency.
Cloud technology is driving change across multiple industries simultaneously. Cloud technology itself is moving at quickly, and changing the way organisations adapt to the way they buy and manage software.
SoftwareONE country leader, Marilyn Moodley, says navigating multiple systems, processes, and software licence agreements presents a significant challenge. Software is one of the largest expenses for many organisations. And the buying, optimising, and management of that software requires the right balance between tools, digitisation, processes, and expertise to work together to reduce costs and the administrative burden on IT and procurement teams.
"The growing number of enterprise applications means IT procurement and asset managers are under increasing pressure to deliver efficiencies and cost savings, while improving user experience through faster response times and automation strategies," says Moodley.
"Taking into account the resources required to manage licences and user requests, ensure compliance, and manage spend, organisations are constantly looking for ways to eliminate unnecessary IT costs and optimise contracts across their software and cloud portfolios.
IT Procurement functions need to evolve into connected, efficient, and digitised operations to address business demands more rapidly and effectively. SoftwareONE says a software digital supply chain is created through a seamless, integrated set of systems and activities across the software lifecycle. And these goals are supported through automating and expediting the purchase of approved products in a portfolio.
"Ineffective software procurement processes pose compliance challenges, as businesses don't have on-demand access to the right information regarding their licence entitlements and contract use rights, such as any applicable geographic restrictions or their renewal options," says Moodley.
"Establishing a system of records that hold trustworthy software entitlements and contracts data, combined with insights - analytics is one of the largest challenges facing organisations today, and a lack of an effective digital supply chain makes that even harder to accomplish.
"Missing renewal deadlines due to lack of visibility and monitoring is not only detrimental to productivity, it also leaves little time to prepare for contract negotiations," she says.
SoftwareONE says its digital supply chain service, powered by the PyraCloud platform, solves a multitude of challenges by providing organisations with the right mix of tools, automated workflows, and experts to align software purchases to business requirements. It says the new service allows customers to easily and effectively acquire software licences and cloud subscriptions, view the entire on-premises and cloud software estate, manage contracts, track, control, and predict cloud spend across multiple providers and identify cost-saving opportunities across the entire software estate.
"In addition to improved efficiencies, cost savings, and overall end-user experience, an effective digital supply chain embeds automation by eliminating time-consuming manual tasks and ensuring the right software is in the hands of the right user at the right time," says SoftwareONE.
