Over £1.7 billion is wasted every year in the UK on unused software and associated services.  This is primarily due to organisations paying for software that they are not using. 70% of IT professionals involved in renewal negotiations with software vendors do not have visibility of software usage, and therefore run the risk of buying software that they do not need.  So it’s very obvious that organizations need to know their software usage. With accurate software usage metering they could identify unused software and turn this into cash, which would then go straight back into their IT budget. But what about on the reverse side – the software publisher? Should they be interested in software usage?

From my point of view, the software publishers’ ability to track who is using their software, as well as when, how, and to what extent, is critically important. In the cloud, usage data is not only used for business intelligence, but is vital for supporting business critical processes, such as billing.

Software publishers that collect and analyse product usage data gain insight into how their products create value for customers, which allows for better positioning of offerings and more effective communication of product value to customers. By analysing usage data, publishers can segment their markets in more-sophisticated ways, customize product and service bundles that deliver greater value to each segment, and price those bundles to capture the most value.

Without this information, software publishers lack the insight they need to effectively drive product investment plans, packaging strategies, and make other critical business decisions. Research proves however, that collecting usage data is a struggle for most publishers, 68% are struggling with visibility into product usage data, and more than half (60%) are not collecting feature usage data, or information about end users (52%), and 51% have no ability to track entitlements.

At The Business Software Centre we specialise in software efficiency. Our software usage metering solution measures software usage by the minute for every user. It is quick and easy to conduct an assessment and provide your organisation with a tailored Software Efficiency Rating chart along with ways to save money, if you are not meeting benchmark efficiency levels.

 

Categories: News

1 Comment

Roger Smith · August 6, 2016 at 6:38 pm

What are the sourceIs) of your statistics?

Please cite and footnote.

— Over £1.7 billion is wasted every year in the UK on unused software and associated services.
— 70% of IT professionals involved in renewal negotiations with software vendors do not have visibility of software usage, and therefore run the risk of buying software that they do not need.
— Research proves however, that collecting usage data is a struggle for most publishers, 68% are struggling with visibility into product usage data, and more than half (60%) are not collecting feature usage data, or information about end users (52%), and 51% have no ability to track entitlements.

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