13 ways IT asset management (ITAM) drives cost savings

Effective IT asset management (ITAM) helps organizations save money both in the short and long term, by eliminating existing wasted spend, minimizing future expenses, and avoiding regulatory fines.

In this article, we outline how an integrated IT asset and license management platform like Setyl can help you manage your IT spend and achieve immediate and lasting cost savings — ensuring your investment not only pays for itself, but also delivers a significant ROI.

How ITAM helps you reduce IT spend:

1. Cancel unused software licenses and applications
2. Don’t get locked into inactive subscriptions and price hikes
3. Promptly recover equipment from offboarding employees
4. Effectively retrieve licenses from departing employees
5. Avoid unnecessary asset purchases
6. Retrieve unused devices and equipment
7. Recover lost assets
8. Inform and optimize future IT spend decisions 
9. Identify and address spend drivers
10. Improve budget forecasting
11. Reduce the risk of compliance and regulatory fines
12. Avoid vendor software audit penalties
13. Free up your team’s time and boost productivity

But first, what is an integrated ITAM solution?

An integrated IT asset management (ITAM) solution connects seamlessly with your existing tech stack — from core systems such as Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, to MDM, RMM, IAM, SSO, IDP, accounting, HR and more tools.

These integrations consolidate all relevant information (hardware assets, software assets and licenses, users, spend and more) into one ITAM system, giving you complete visibility over IT and creating a centralized source of truth.

Such integrations also facilitate a quick implementation, allowing you to start realizing savings right away in the following ways:

1. Cancel unused software licenses and applications

Unsused software is a major drain on IT budgets for many companies. Recent research found that half (49.96%) of all installed software goes unused by employees, resulting in millions of dollars of wasted spend each year.

By effectively tracking all subscriptions and software licenses in a single platform, and mapping them to users, you can quickly identify any unused applications or excess licenses. These can be canceled to provide immediate reduction in IT costs. 

With Setyl, you can take this a step further by auditing actual license usage — not just allocation — to make sure you are only paying for what employees are actively using. Our automated surveys allow you to confirm directly with employees if a license is truly needed, while login auto-detection and imported data from third-party applications make it easy to verify usage.

2. Don’t get locked into inactive subscriptions and price hikes

Poor management of subscriptions and contract (auto-)renewals is a significant contributor to wasted IT spend. 

In contrast, effective IT asset management supports a proactive approach to contract management, ensuring you never miss another notice window and avoid getting locked into costly subscriptions you no longer need.

For example, Setyl’s visualized timeline provides a clear overview of notice periods and renewal dates, allowing you to plan ahead, have open discussions with stakeholders, and negotiate with vendors at the right time. This is supported by email alerts to nominated administrators and easy access to key information about the subscription, such as an introductory price that’s set to increase on renewal.

For instance, a Setyl customer was paying $2,500 per month for Adobe. When alerted to review the contract ahead of the auto-renewal, they discovered that their current introductory rate was set to increase to $4,250 in year two. Negotiation with the vendor secured them the original rate, saving the organization $1,750 per month — or $21,000 for the year.

3. Promptly recover equipment from offboarding employees

According to Capterra’s 2022 Employee Offboarding Survey, 71% of HR professionals have experienced situations where employees left the organization without returning company-owned equipment, such as a laptop or smartphone. On average, this resulted in a loss of $1,963’s worth of equipment per employee.

To ensure employees don’t walk away with your assets, the Setyl ITAM platform automatically initiates an offboarding workflow when a leave date is registered against an employee in your HR system.

This automation enables you to quickly plan for the retrieval of all assets assigned to that employee, from laptops and phones to headsets, monitors, and even loaned work-from-home furniture. You can then reallocate the recovered equipment, optimizing your resources and minimizing purchasing costs.

4. Effectively retrieve licenses from departing employees

The offboarding workflow also prompts you to recover or cancel licenses, subscriptions and even mobile phone contracts assigned to the departing employee, along with their associated costs.

5. Avoid unnecessary asset purchases

By providing complete visibility into your hardware asset inventory, an integrated IT asset management platform helps you to optimize asset reuse and avoid redundant purchases. 

You can quickly understand which assets you have, who has them, and where they are  located, as well as their current status and condition, ensuring you can make informed decisions about asset allocation and purchasing.

6. Retrieve unused devices and equipment

Similarly to Setyl’s license auditing capabilities, the platform allows you to audit the actual usage of physical assets, helping you to recover and reallocate unused equipment and prevent additional spending on new assets.

Automated asset surveys enable you to ask employees directly if they are in possession of (an) asset(s) they no longer need, while MDM and RMM integrations can help you identify registered assets that are not actively in use.

7. Recover lost assets

Having a process in place to recover lost equipment is another way to cut IT spend and prevent additional purchases.

In addition to improving asset inventory management, Setyl’s physical asset labels, combined with our Discreet Asset Recovery Service make it easy for the initial finder to return a lost device.

8. Inform and optimize future IT spend decisions 

Effective IT asset management helps you build a complete picture of your organization’s software and hardware, allowing you to make informed, strategic IT spend decisions that maximize your budget.

Use these insights into your IT landscape to proactively optimize spending, such as by:

• Identifying high-cost manufacturers and considering more budget-friendly alternatives.
• Pinpointing and canceling duplicate software, or applications with overlapping features, consolidating services under a single vendor.
• Opening negotiations with vendors from whom you purchase multiple applications or equipment to secure better pricing.
• Taking the time to consider more cost-effective alternatives ahead of contract renewals. 
• And much more.

9. Identify and address spend drivers

By recording all financial transactions within an ITAM platform like Setyl, you can visualize spending patterns through automatically generated IT spend reports.

These reports break down tech spend by department, location, legal entity and even individual employee, helping you to pinpoint spend drivers.

You can then investigate why certain areas of the organization have higher costs, initiate conversations between teams, and share effective cost-saving strategies that can be replicated across the business.

10. Improve budget forecasting

You can also use your spend data to create more accurate forecasts and allocate funds more effectively, helping to prevent unexpected expenses, support strategic growth, and ensure business continuity.

This includes using historical spending trends to inform planning, as well as taking into consideration asset value and depreciation data, to more accurately forecast cash flow for asset replacements.

11. Reduce the risk of compliance and regulatory fines

By acting as your comprehensive information asset register, as well as through dedicated IT safeguarding and compliance features, an integrated ITAM platform helps you mitigate security and non-compliance risks, avoiding costly fines and reputational damage.

Failure to meet standards such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 can also jeopardize current or future business opportunities, creating further business monetary losses.

Setyl features and functionalities that help you meet these standards include: 

• Shadow IT detection
• Compliant asset archiving workflows
• Comprehensive audit logs and change history
• Vendor due diligence workflows
• Demonstrable asset tracking processes
• And more

12. Avoid vendor software audit penalties

By effectively monitoring license usage, you can prevent heavy fines and potential legal consequences that may arise if a software vendor conducts an audit and determines that your organization is exceeding its license entitlement.

13. Free up your team’s time and boost productivity

One final benefit of IT asset management not to overlook is the time it saves your team. Time is money, and streamlining operations allows your team to focus on other priorities, driving business growth and/or reducing the need for additional headcount as your business grows.

The Setyl ITAM platform helps teams work more efficiently by providing a centralized platform and source of truth for asset management and increased automation — all within an easy-to-use platform that requires no specialist training.

While these are some of the key ways an integrated ITAM solution like Setyl can help you manage IT spend and save money, there are many more examples and case studies unique to individual companies. 

Speak to one of our specialists to discuss your specific IT spend goals and challenges, and how you can start making immediate savings.

Related resources

• Learn more about IT spend management and cost reduction with Setyl.
• Hear how Banked reduced SaaS spend by 25% with Setyl.
• Discover the crucial role of integrated ITAM in cybersecurity.