Software license management tracks what you own, what you use and what you owe. How to build a license position, avoid audit exposure, and stop paying for subscriptions nobody opens.
Software license management is the practice of knowing what software an organisation is entitled to use, what it actually uses, and whether those two numbers agree. Get it wrong in one direction and a vendor audit produces an unbudgeted bill; get it wrong in the other and you renew hundreds of seats nobody has opened in a year. Both failures come from the same gap: entitlements live in contracts and email, while usage lives in systems nobody reconciles against them.
Treat the joiner-mover-leaver process as part of software license management. Reclaiming seats when people leave or change role is the cheapest saving available, and it happens automatically only if someone builds it into offboarding.
Vendor audits are routine rather than personal, and the outcome depends on evidence. Keep entitlement documents together with the deployment data that supports your position, know your own numbers before responding, and answer precisely the question asked rather than volunteering a full estate export. Where the position is short, quantify it internally first — negotiating a purchase is usually cheaper than a compliance settlement, and it removes the leverage a surprise creates.
Ettex Sheets is a workable home for the position while the estate is measured in tens of products: one tab per vendor with entitlements and metrics, a usage tab refreshed from your admin consoles, and a position column that flags shortfalls and waste. Reviewed monthly against renewal dates, it turns license compliance into a maintained number rather than a scramble when an audit letter arrives.
Software asset management covers the whole lifecycle of software as an asset — request, purchase, deployment, retirement. License management is the compliance and cost part: entitlements versus use.
Quarterly for major vendors and always before a renewal or true-up date. Products with usage-based metrics deserve monthly attention.
Yes, though the risk shifts from compliance to waste: the vendor enforces limits automatically, so the money is lost to seats nobody uses rather than to audit penalties.
A contingent workforce covers contractors, freelancers, agency staff and consultants. How to see the whole picture, control the cost and classification risk, and decide what work should be contingent at all.
A skills gap analysis compares the skills a team needs with the skills it has. How to run one without it becoming a survey nobody trusts, and how to turn the result into training, hiring or redesigned roles.
Salary bands set the minimum, midpoint and maximum pay for each level of role. How to build salary bands from market data, how wide to make them, and how to handle people who fall outside their band.