According to Wikipedia, “Teamwork is a joint action by two or more people or a group, in which each person contributes with different skills...to achieve common goals.” Companies are founded on teamwork but often employees get caught up in the day to day duties of their jobs and forget that they are an integral part of a team. This is especially true when employees are allowed to purchase their own software without accountability.   I am not suggesting that companies engage in team building exercises, retreats or motivational speakers to fix the problem.  What I am suggesting is that companies create their own Software Management Team.

In past blogs, I have emphasized the importance of centralizing software purchases.  Certainly this is important, but we must take a step back and look at the bigger picture.  Every company should have a Software Management Team in place.  Representatives from Information Technology, Accounting, Purchasing, Legal, Human Resources should be included.  The heads of individual business units should also be present.  Each of these departments has a stake in the game and should not be left out when managing a company’s software assets.

Once a company has designated at least one person from each of these departments to be part of the team, the team should convene and set goals and directives.  Each department will be individually responsible to the team.  Goals may vary within each company but definitely should include a software audit.  IT will likely be responsible for selection and deployment of the audit tool.  After the results are analyzed, Accounting may advise as to an appropriate budget for software purchases for each department. Department heads certainly will want to have input.  The Legal department should draft User Policies and Procedures for employees to follow.  And Human Resources will need to communicate the plan to company employees and take corrective action if necessary.

IT’s contributions to the team cannot be underemphasized.  IT will be a crucial member of the team tasked with conducting the audit, analyzing the results and making recommendations to the team.  IT also needs to analyze all relevant software licenses to make sure that the company is compliant with the terms of the licenses.  But IT cannot accomplish software compliance by themselves.  They need the help of the team and the backing of management to implement these objectives. 

Up to this point, we assumed that management is behind the idea of software compliance.  Often I will hear from IT personnel that complain that management is oblivious to software licensing.  Management may need to be persuaded that creating a Software Management Team is beneficial to the future well-being of the company.  The alternative could be a visit from the “software police.”  To emphasize the potential risk to the company, I would point to various examples of other companies that have paid huge fines because that had no Software Management Team or other plan in place for software compliance.