Don't Keep Your Successes Secret

I called this blog "ITAM Secrets" not because there are actually any secrets to success in IT Asset Management (there are not), but because we, as a community, seem to keep ourselves and what we do, secret.

This week, I met a gentleman in Telecom Expense Management.  This is a function much like what we do in Asset Management, focused on cost reduction.  We talked a long time about the industry and asset management since we're both in a field where the savings are obvious, but...

We know that management often doesn't really appreciate the function of asset management, or they take it for granted, or they assume that all their Service/Product managers are taking care of things.  The same thing seems true on the Telecom side.  I know from experience, before my architecture team started going through telecom bills line by line, we were just paying them, as though our telecom vendor was perfect and pure as the driven snow. They were, but we weren't smart enough to check up that things we no longer needed, were broken down and billing stopped.

I am guilty of failing to evangelize enough internally about what asset managers do, and the value we bring to the business.  Here's a secret I'll share -

DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE IN YOUR PROGRAM!

As part of the Communication and Education KPA (remember your IATAM training), we need to  understand "The success of an ITAM program strongly depends on how well the organization’s employees are educated and how well the program’s goals are communicated." [emphasis mine]

What I failed to understand adequately was that the program's goals need to be communicated, and communicated, and communicated again.  You can't overemphasize the value you're bringing to the business.  For example, here's stuff our team did, sometimes in partnership with others, but I can honestly say, that in our case, if Asset Management had not driven these things, I am confident they would not have happened:

• Saved over $1.5M annually by proactively managing maintenance renewals and cloud contracts
• Saved over $2M annually by managing end of lease terms on hardware, and extending the life of hardware, for example...
• Extended over 2000 desktop PCs by spending $100 on SSD upgrades, vice spending $800/machine on replacements.  Furthermore, benchmark testing showed the machines were just as fast under Windows 10, as the new would have been.
• Sought alternatives to purchasing Apple iPads from traditional resellers or Apple, saving over $200/machine
• Reharvested software licenses, saving half a million dollars in new software costs
• Proactively managed user accounts for web based services (of course, initially purchased outside IT) and reduced the number of needed licenses to save hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• Provided our employees with the opportunity to purchase end-of-business-life PC's, laptops, and tablets via partnership with our ITAD vendor.
• Partnered with that vendor and employees to donate hundreds of machines, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment to charities.
• Responded to audit inquiries and participated in vendor audits.  While we weren't a big target of software vendors for audits, I can proudly say, during my tenure as an IT Asset Manager, we never paid ONE CENT to a vendor as a result of an audit finding.

That, to me, is an impressive list, and it's just off the top of my head.  If you were given the opportunity to think about it and research it, you could likely come up with a plethora of impressive things you're accomplishing in asset management.  If your program is just getting started, you have so much low hanging fruit, you could likely save huge percentages for the IT budget.

As your program matures, the numbers will get less impressive, but as you expand your reach and your influence, you'll be able to impact projects when they begin.  Partnering with standards setting teams and architects to ensure the best technical solutions are matched with the best asset management solutions to ensure year over year costs are minimized.

Just don't keep this stuff a secret.  You have a compelling story to tell, so make Communication and Education an important part of that story.  Those of you within IT organizations, you are going to be one of the rare groups who does not cost the organization money.  You save it.  You will have tangible results.  Where development teams struggle to show what they have done has impacted bottom line numbers, you can point to actual, real, quantifiable savings, and say, "But for us, that doesn't happen."

I'm curious, those of you who do this well, please share with our community what you're doing, and how ITAM stays in the forefront of not just your CIO, but the business as a whole.