Provident Financial saves £350,000 by deploying licence management tool

Loans provider says it was concerned it was overspending on software licences

Loans provider Provident Financial has implemented Business Continuity Services' Software Organiser to manage the software licences for its 3,500 desktops, which it says will save the company at least £350,000 in licensing fees.

Peter Sloane, IT manager at Provident Financial, told Computing he was concerned that IT departments often pay excess on unnecessary licencing, and that Provident did not want to do the same, especially as it has a software estate valued in excess of £20m.

"New people come and people go, and new pieces of software come in, so it is a constant management process.

"We were able to review our licence position and realise that, in some cases, we've overbought in the past," he said.

The company currently employees 11 people on its service management team who are responsible for licence compliance.

Sloane says the company used a LanDesk audit discovery tool to search the company's PCs, systems and servers for all the products that are licenced and then transferred the data to Software Organiser.

"LanDesk provides two primary data sets – the discovery data and the licensing entitlement data, which comes from volume licence agreements, procurement systems and historical licencing data. Business Continuity Services brings those two data sets together to allow the software compliance optimisation to take place," said Andy Fisher, business development director at BCS.

Sloane said that approximately 49,700 licences were uploaded onto Software Organiser within the first six months, and that although the installation was fast the process of using the software will be ongoing.

"The software ensures that Provident does not spend unnecessary money on licensing. It means we can redeploy licences easily and we have already saved a minimum of £350,000. It also means we are compliant from a legal perspective, which is of upmost importance," he said.