5 Ways Lansweeper Helps with IT Cost Reductions
There's no sugarcoating the truth: we're heading toward a recession in 2022. All the signs are there, including a declining GDP combined with inflation and higher interest rates, lower employment rates and income.
According to HBR researchers, 17% of the 4,700 public companies "fared very badly" during previous recessions, either going bankrupt, reverting to private status or being acquired by larger, better performing companies. Yet 9% of the companies made lemons out of lemonade, increasing sales and profits by about 10%. How? They switched to survival mode and made smart financial decisions that paid off.
Today's businesses spend a significant portion of their revenue on information technology, and when costs related to IT equipment and operations get out of hand, it can really add up. That's why managing your technology assets effectively is so critical during a recession - for example, Gartner found that businesses can cut software costs by up to 30% with IT management best practices.
As organizations adopt new technologies and assets to support digital transformation initiatives, and as technology spending increases, solutions that enable comprehensive technology asset management - the next evolution in IT Asset Management (ITAM) - can offer significant and measurable IT cost reduction and optimization.
A New Approach to ITAM: Technology Asset Management
Technology Asset Management (TAI) transcends traditional ITAM by delivering data through advanced IT discovery and inventory capabilities to reliably support not only every IT scenario but also every business scenario. Cost optimization across the entire organization is the goal. This holistic approach makes it self-funding and offers substantial savings in the long run. To put this theory into practice, we have gathered 5 ways Lansweeper can help optimize strategies for IT cost reductions, each time illustrated by a real-life customer case. If you rather get straight down to business and know the potential ROI of a TAI investment, give our ROI calculator a try.
1. Eliminate Manual Processes
Historically, the process of tracking IT assets has been mostly manual, involving extensive spreadsheets with outdated network information and mapping. Manual processes lead to inaccurate reporting on device-specific hardware and unmanaged software, which not only complicates spend management, but can be disastrous to an organization's productivity, compliance, and, ultimately, their bottom line. A dedicated ITAM solution can eliminate costly manual processes with automatic scanning, alerting, and reporting features to increase accuracy and productivity.
Alexandr Chsherbov manages ArcelorMittal Temirtau plant's IT infrastructure, as well as that of the company's branch offices and mines. This includes roughly 5,000 PCs, 500 servers and a variety of operational technology (OT) systems used in the production facilities. Managing all of those assets efficiently was challenging with his previous solution, because discovery was slow and it didn't provide full coverage across the IT estate.
"The information would become outdated quickly, which was not only putting our organization at risk, but resulting in excessive operational overhead as we relied on manual processes to track and maintain accurate asset data," Chsherbov said. "We needed a more powerful tool that would automate asset management and enable us to optimize costs." Read the full case study
"Lansweeper helps us pinpoint and address opportunities to optimize costs and eliminate manual tasks, not only reducing operational overhead but making it easier to remediate issues that may have an impact on our organization's ability to operate efficiently."
Alexandr Chsherbov, IT Infrastructure Team Lead, ArcelorMittal Temirtau
2. Strengthen Cyber Security
Cyber Attacks and data breaches rose 15.1% in 2021 from the previous year, and over the next two years, social engineering and ransomware attacks will become increasingly sophisticated. During the second quarter of 2022 alone, internet users worldwide saw approximately 52 million data breaches. It comes down to this: you can't protect what you can't see. Forgotten or missed assets may be running outdated software or even malware, creating security vulnerabilities that can lead to huge financial losses and compromised data.
The vast majority of organizations don't have a complete or accurate Technology Asset Inventory - and therefore cannot possibly understand or protect the attack surface. Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) is essential in the modern enterprise, and Lansweeper enables effective CAASM by helping organizations understand the Attack Surface, minimize risk and strengthen its overall cybersecurity posture.
To combat this risk, Herman Miller implemented Lansweeper which increased visibility into its complex IT environment. The IT organization benefits from more than 100 custom Lansweeper reports that they use to keep the CIO informed at all times. Learn how they do it.
"Lansweeper delivers detailed information about a security incident in minutes, providing incredible time savings and helping us to minimize or eliminate potential damage."
Kristopher Russo, Information Security Analyst Architect, Herman Miller
3. Streamline Reporting
Lansweeper's ability to easily access relevant data reduces reporting hassles and eliminates human error, as well. Time spent on compiling detailed reports for business units or regulatory bodies, and retrieving data for security investigations is drastically reduced, giving IT staff more time to spend on other mission-critical activities.
At Radisson, individual IT teams at each of the hotels had been using Lansweeper to discover and make inventories of their IT assets. However, at the global level, a holistic view of the entire IT estate was lacking. "Every time we needed information from the hotels, we'd have to reach out to them individually, and they would submit the data in various formats such as Excel spreadsheets, which are error-prone and inefficient, " said Ben Vrijsen, Manager IT Field Services EMEA at Radisson, "That made it difficult to consolidate the data to view and analyze it holistically." Read the entire case study.
"The time and cost savings we realize from using Lansweeper Cloud to collect and consolidate all technology asset data across all our properties is substantial. We gain unprecedented insights that help us optimize IT spend and performance across the enterprise."
Ben Vrijsen, Manager IT Field Services EMEA at Radisson
4. Be Prepared for Audits
To maximize ROI from enterprise software agreements, knowing exactly how many licenses you are using is essential for reporting - otherwise, you may end up paying for unused licenses. What's more, in today's hybrid workplace, many industry analysts believe auditing activities will increase. It's critical to be prepared ahead of time by maintaining an up-to-date inventory in the event of a surprise audit. Lansweeper continuously and automatically scans your environment, so you always have a complete and accurate inventory at your fingertips. Lansweeper also reveals whether you're missing licenses and helps to mitigate the risk of incurring fines while predicting the costs of becoming fully compliant.
After Greenyard started using Lansweeper, the IT team discovered 400 more licenses of Microsoft than were needed, due to people leaving the company and local IT teams neglecting to disable machines or eliminate licenses. What's more, Lansweeper uncovered a number of servers that had been sitting idle, wasting resources. "With Lansweeper providing a complete and accurate inventory of our software and hardware assets, we can identify wasteful practices and renegotiate license agreements to optimize IT costs," Luc Verbist, CIO at Greenyard said. Read the full case study.
"With Lansweeper, we now have a 100% clear view on what we have running across all of our sites. This insight and visibility has been instrumental in helping the company eliminate waste and optimize costs." d."
Luc Verbist, CIO, Greenyard
5. Maximize Infrastructure Visibility
Tracking the lifecycle of IT assets provides CIOs and IT professionals with critical data for financial, inventory, contractual and risk-management strategies. A solution that has ITAM as a core functionality can automatically and accurately update IT Inventories which, in turn, helps decision-makers understand workflows and determine which assets need to be purchased, redistributed or discontinued. Since ITAM tools keep track of each transaction and the networks, devices and users involved, it also allows system administrators more time for high-level analysis, and helps to identify and reduce the impact of fraud.
Cerner Corporation uses Lansweeper to gain insight into not only the number of assets in the environments they manage, but required patches, updates, fixes, and other necessary maintenance tasks, helping to better allocate staffing and control costs. Read the case study.
"I knew Lansweeper would provide us with the data about installed systems and software, so we would be able to manage IT costs and ensure our clients are getting maximum value from their infrastructure."
Phil Blankenstein, IT Manager, Cerner Corporation
Learn How the ROI of TAI Can Offset Losses During a Recession
While we can't control global events that impact our economic stability, we can control internal costs - and managing your technology estate effectively is a great place to begin. If approached holistically, TAI offers insights and strategies for improving inefficiencies and productivity across the entire organization, helping to optimize investments and cut unnecessary spending.
Interested in learning what ROI Lansweeper can deliver for your organization? See for yourself with a free trial today.
