Case Study
Global insurance company increases savings and business unit buy-in with Flexera solutions
At a glance
This global insurance company partnered with Flexera to gain greater visibility and cost savings. They moved from on-premises FlexNet Manager Suite to Flexera One IT Visibility and ITAM. As a result, they’ve driven down technical debt by 30% and are able to report on license compliance with total confidence.
We built the following case study around an in-depth interview with the anonymous company’s Software Asset Manager and gratefully attribute all quotes to that individual.
The challenge
What have been the biggest obstacles facing your software asset management practice?
“The biggest challenge in our organization was getting a handle on our entire software portfolio, which was kind of a manual process initially. Additionally, there was a need for more visibility and real-time data around effective license positions, which really was what brought us to the business case.”
The solution
How did you select Flexera and which of our solutions do you use? How was the implementation process?
“Eventually, we looked at three different vendors, including Flexera and Apptio. We performed a typical ROI by looking at capabilities, ease of use and the cost at a high level. We did some standard weighting on what we liked about each one and which one we like best, and we ended up choosing Flexera.
We started with Flexera FlexNet Manager Suite (FNMS). Our primary goal was to get our entire software portfolio (entitlements) loaded in, the agent deployed and visibility into all deployed software. Initially, this was for distributed systems only. Eventually, we added in all end user devices; this equaled approximately 18,000 endpoints and 2,200 servers. The next step and acquisition that we made was for Data Platform, from which we have since moved to Flexera One IT Visibility. We bought Data Platform to get more control over our tech debt.
Eventually, we decided to move from on-premises FNMS and Data Platform to Flexera One ITAM and IT Visibility. Moving to Flexera One from on-premises was easy and we got great support from Flexera. It was virtually seamless and a great experience. Because it’s a cloud solution, it also requires less technical effort on our end. We recently got Flexera One SaaS Manager, too, and I think its true benefit will be in those user-based type SaaS agreements where we can help the application owner understand usage better and drive down the required quantities.”
We’re really happy with the Data Platform/ Flexera One IT Visibility implementation. Flexera gives us good control and insight into our larger Tier-1 vendors and can calculate effective license positions for them in real time.”
The result
What impact did our solutions have on your organization and what problems did they solve? What’s your current relationship with Flexera like?
“We’re really happy with the Data Platform/Flexera One IT Visibility implementation. Flexera gives us good control and insight into our larger Tier-1 vendors and can calculate effective license positions for them in real time. It’s super important that we don’t lose that sight, particularly in a world where we’re constantly migrating our infrastructure and making moves to the cloud. We were able to drive down deployed software on our distributed and end-user systems quite significantly. We drove down our technical debt by 30% overall, which surpassed our goal. With ITAM, we can track the number of licenses that we have and report these correctly, helping us to maintain compliance.”
Highlight
Drove down overall technical debt by 30%
Highlight
Insight gained into the products and the level of deployment, and all the detail about the contracts and terms and renewal dates
“We export some data out of Flexera and into Quickbase, which we’re now starting to convert to Power BI for reporting purposes. We send Flexera data to almost everybody in IT and finance, as well as application owners, which can be developers or architecture teams. We send it to almost everybody. We have insight into the products and the level of deployment, and we have all the detail about the contracts and terms and renewal dates. Team members can see across the organization things that they wouldn’t typically. Otherwise, they’d have insight into only their own little pieces of the pie.
So really, all of IT and, in some cases, business units outside of IT, will come to us about products and usage. We’re able to provide them with the information as well. We can say, ‘Look, out of all these software licenses, we can show that we’re compliant for this greater than 90%, etc.’ That’s how we monitor the success, and we couldn’t do it without Flexera One ITAM. We have business units looking to do more with the data. When we showed the FinOps group what we’re doing, they said, ‘You don’t know how happy you’ve just made us.’ I like that we get that kind of feedback from other business units that we support.
We’re getting great support from Flexera. The solution did everything we expected it to do. As a business partner, I couldn’t be happier with Flexera as a company. I’m enthusiastic about Flexera as a company and the product as a whole.”
