Longcroft School
With Licence Dashboard™, educational institutions of all sizes can take control of their software assets. Here's a look at the benefits reaped by Longcroft School
THE CHALLENGE
In all aspects of ICT, Longcroft School strives to adopt recommended best practices, ensuring that suggested processes and procedures are implemented and adhered to when appropriate. Thus, with software taking up an ever-increasing share of the school's ICT budget, it had become even more important to manage, control and protect software assets.
In addition to the budgetary challenges, there was also the pressure from software vendors to remain compliant with the terms of their software licence agreements. It was clear to Longcroft School, therefore, that what they needed was to have a greater understanding of their software licence position and to be able to track exactly what software they had deployed. Not only would this enable them to avoid unnecessary expenditure, it would also mean that they could safely say they were compliant!
THE SOLUTION
Having reviewed a number of different products and solutions, Longcroft School decided to utilise Licence Dashboard™ Schools Edition.
Until now, Licence Dashboard has been out of the reach of most schools due to its corporate price tag. Following increased demand and continued requests from education institutions, however, Licence Dashboard Ltd has now published a special edition allowing schools to acquire Europe's leading licence management tool at a more affordable price.
Not only that, Licence Dashboard Schools Edition also provides a trustworthy and reliable software licence support service that responds to the school's growing needs. Longcroft School felt this edition and the product's functionality would deliver a cost effective solution, which would fully align with the school's ICT objectives and financial commitments.
As experienced by most schools, managing software licences can be an extremely daunting task - one which schools are not particularly prepared for or trained to administer.
Longcroft School fully understands the importance of licensing - however they did not always have all the relevant information available prior to making a purchasing decision. This meant that the school could be subjected to the following risks:
- Purchasing incorrect licences
- Not purchasing enough licences
- Purchasing too many licences
With this in mind, therefore, the school wanted to ensure that all past purchases were added to a comprehensive licence inventory, thereby establishing a true and fair representation of the school's licence position.
To do this, the school employed the services of Software Asset Management specialists, Phoenix Software, to record and file all software licence evidence. Thereafter, Phoenix Software also verified the organisation's compliance position by implementing Licence Dashboard and Dashboard Discovery™.
Dashboard Discovery is designed to find hardware and installed software deployed across the network and is primarily used during the verification and compliance stages of a Software Asset Management (SAM) programme. This application connects seamlessly with Licence Dashboard and together, from a single interface, provides Longcroft School with complete visibility of its compliance status.
Without this comprehensive licence management tool, the function of managing Longcroft School's licences would have essentially become a manual process, one which would be prone to error, complacency and eventually lead to regression. Like Longcroft School, most schools end up using a number of spreadsheets to manage and track their entitlement. These documents become difficult to summarise, however, and make it almost impossible for Head Teachers and other staff to make informed decisions. Using Licence Dashboard removes this complexity and makes it simple for staff to manage, control and protect one of the school's most expensive ICT resources - software!
THE BENEFITS
Following the implementation of Licence Dashboard, Longcroft School can now effectively and automatically control the entire lifecycle of its software assets from purchase, to upgrade and beyond.
The school can now easily report on the following:
- What software it is allowed to install
- Determine how many licences have been allocated
- Verify how many licences are still available
- Be alerted to any maintenance renewals which are due
This unique product, and the support service offered by Phoenix Software, enables the school to manage the day-to-day licensing chores without having to employ the services of a software licensing expert. It also provides greater clarity, which puts the school in a much better negotiating position and promotes more informed purchasing decisions.
With its easy to-use interface, users such as Network Managers, Business Administrators, Head Teachers and all other authorised members of staff can gain access to software inventory, licence inventory and purchasing information at any time.
Using this information can ensure that all purchases of software are correctly specified and procured using the most cost effective agreements, while ensuring that all licence evidence is correctly recorded and loss of entitlement is significantly reduced. By continuing to aggregate the school's installation rights, more informed purchasing decisions can be made - thus reducing the risk of overspend. Gartner informs us that organisations which do not utilise this information during the purchasing stage overbuy software licences for 60% of their portfolio.
"After attending the East Riding Network Managers' meeting, I was introduced to Phoenix Software and they proposed the use of Licence Dashboard to manage the full lifecycle of our software and licences. After completing the implementation of Licence Dashboard and Dashboard Discovery, we are now in full control of one of our most expensive of IT resources - our software!"
Anne Day, IT Manager, Longcroft School
