Scottish & Newcastle
“When it comes to software licensing, keeping track of what you own is business critical - as a significant cost base. We've helped S&N consolidate its agreements with Microsoft saving money and removing the headache of compliance through a framwork agreement. ”
Optimising the software estate to drive out unecessary costs became a key priority for Scottish & Newcastle, the national brewer, as a result of a dynamic acquisition strategy. Specifically, integrating processes and systems to fast realise the benefits of growth; and centralising software purchasing.
Every region within the organisation had its own software licensing arrangement with Microsoft. This not only increased the administrative burden, but also created an unacceptable audit trail and S&N was failing to reap the benefits of economies of scale.
SCC was asked to set up a centralised global licensing agreement with Microsoft - as one of its Gold accredited partners - ensuring no legal risk in the process. This involved identifying which applications were deployed where and how, across the entire estate. With this valuable software intelligence, SCC was able to interpret and transform that data into practical opportunities to optimise licences and reduce the overall software spend.
Submitting proposals to both S&N and Microsoft, a new framework has been established that has optimised performance and spend for all global licensing agreements between the two organisations. Benefits to S&N of utilising SCC's software solutions have included:
- Immediate cash savings of up to 25%
- 100% accurate, real-time application identification and usage pattern analysis on a world wide basis
- Built-in license intelligence and vendor recognition
- ISO 19770-1 and ITIL v3 experienced software asset management expert advice
“The real benefit was cost reduction, through the consolidation of our world wide licencing agreements with Microsoft, which also removed the pain and hassle factor of S&N's looking to achieve this.”Supply Relations Manager
