Corporate lay-offs? "Difficult" economy? Get ready for a software audit!

Your chances of being embroiled in a software non compliance—piracy—punitive audit are higher today than at any time in the history of copyright enforcement. Here's how it works: During difficult economic times, or when your company loses personnel, you are opening yourself up to a significantly higher probability of software license enforcement audit scrutiny. In fact, your chances of becoming involved in a software audit could geometrically increase by as much as double for every five employees you let go.

Do you think this perspective is all so much hot air? When you combine the aggressive “Whistle-Blower Reward Programs” fielded by the software publishers and their enforcement industry friends, your level of risk is increasing as the economy becomes ever more unstable. Read on to discover methods for keeping what little corporate money you have – in YOUR enterprise pockets – rather than continuing to pay out more and more to the software and copyright protected products industry players.

Real World – The software industry players have known for a long time that there is an enormous revenue stream to be had in conducting compliance audits – even against enterprises that have a “clean” compliance record. They've been siphoning enormous amounts of cash from their own customers while constantly attempting to ensure that the entire compliance assurance process is as difficult and poorly defined as possible via ever more incomprehensible licensing schemes.

If your enterprises uses any degree of technology, you are an easy audit target. Period. Full stop. Even if you are 100% ethical and careful in your systems controls.

The bottom line is that technology asset management isn't about how much you spend, it's about the value you receive for every single dollar that you invest. When you can very easily enhance the value you gain from your business technologies, while minimizing initial and ongoing costs AND minimizing related risks, these ideas become no-brainers.

The key is this: Every successful asset management initiative begins with the foundation framework established by proactive software asset management. We build on this relatively basic foundation to deliver genuine life cycle value for software, hardware, and related goods, services, and contractual agreements.

At The Institute, our focus is putting that value—that money—back in your pocket...and KEEPING it there. 

Consider the following:

• If / When you look honestly at the current (sad?) state of your country's economy, nearly every business is looking to cut expenses and increase ROI, you'll recognize that managing the technology portfolio is one the most easily value-added programs available to you,
• If / When you realize that, in part due to lower employee numbers in the so-called developed countries, local and global software sales are down,
• Your suppliers are aggressively hunting for additional revenue streams,
• For these people, compliance audits are VERY significant income opportunities,
• If / When you recognize that large numbers of people are discovering that with zero warning they're out of a job,
• And they are NOT happy with you,
• It's easy to sign into the anti-piracy sites to deliver up you and your company for an audit,
• If / When we remind you that the software industry players and their so-called software police / copyright cops are loudly publishing whistle-blower rewards of up to $1,000,000...
• Money for nothing...?
• One of the enforcement audit campaigns was even entitled “Don't Get Mad, Get Even”!
• Does this tell you ANYTHING about enforcement tactics?
• If / Then - In light of these realities, is it any surprise that your audit risk expands by an approximate factor of double for every five employees you upset?
• Oh, yeah... Did we mention that existing—and ethical—employees are also very willing to report your copyright violations?
• Did we also mention that small- to medium-sized businesses are the absolute favorite audit targets?
• Did we mention that American enterprises are carrying the majority of frequency in being audited for licensing issues? (Because American enterprises can “afford” to pay more in fines / penalties. BUT, this locus of focus is changing as other countries expand their use of high risk software products.)
• And last, but not least, did we mention that The Institute for Technology Asset Management is your portal to establishing and maintaining effective business processes that extract maximum value from your IT spending dollars while minimizing costs and risks?
• Did we mention that many of our solutions cost you NOTHING?
• Did we mention that our methodologies meet or exceed ANY existing standards for software portfolio management?
• Did we mention that our software asset management credential programs are substantially more comprehensive that anything currently on the market because they focus on practitioner competencies?

Fines and Penalties – The average cost of a single software piracy audit can—and frequently does—exceed $100,000—for even the smallest company (10 computers). To put this in more basic terms, think $3,000 to $5,000USD per computing device in typical settlement fines.

Invisible Value – The average company gains less than $1 in business value from every $14 it spends on technologies. Those same technologies expose the enterprise to enormous enforcement audit risks.

Here's why you need to be concerned: First of all, any business owner or manager should be well aware that former employees very frequently have an ax to grind.  According to research published by the software anti piracy enforcement industry, the majority of whistle-blowers are current or former technology workers or management-level personnel. Who, in your company, knows the most about the products loaded on every one of the computing devices you possess? In polite terms, these are the folks you need to manage. They're also NOT the ones who should be fully responsible for direct oversight of your technology assets.

Here's what you can do: The number one entry barrier to optimizing value in your corporate technology portfolio is to become honestly aware of the realities and issues. As long as your enterprise operates on theory and verbal assurances of compliance and effective life cycle management you will not be capable of delivering value. Theory does not contribute to the bottom line – only quantifiable factual evidence of both compliance and life cycle controls.

Enterprise management—at the highest level—must become aware of, and clearly support, close scrutiny of the entire life cycle of ALL technology-related investments. Failure to do so only perpetuates the existing ineffective practices and procedures. Interestingly enough, failure of upper management to actively support the initiative has statistically, and consistently, been the root cause of a majority of ineffective asset management initiatives.

NEXT: If you have any interest in reducing costs and risks, begin a serious technology asset management program right now—today. Your first step should be to stonewall the software enforcement industry auditors. Since audits are the most immediate and costly threat to any enterprise using today’s technologies, merely eliminating high risk software titles from your exposure field is an enormous step to ongoing savings and improved ROI.

The process is simple: Establish a trusted review team and ensure that all copyright protected products loaded on any computer—or electronic media—are fully and correctly licensed. This is all a matter of brain-work. Cost so far? Nothing but a little of your time. No new products or services to buy…

Do you want more? More details? More ideas? Let us know. The Institute for Technology Asset Management staff is ready and willing to help you learn to take back control of your IT investment dollars.