Getting ITAM Approved From Leadership: A Guide for IT Managers

How often do you hear your top leadership say, “It’s nice to have an ITAM tool, but is it necessary at this point?” 

Despite the growing need to strategically manage IT assets, IT managers like you often struggle to convince their leadership to invest in an IT asset management solution. 

Resistance to investment can stem from budget constraints, difficulty understanding departmental needs, frequent changes in the company’s vision, and significant concerns about return on investment (ROI). These challenges often make it difficult for IT managers to handle hidden costs, develop control over their IT assets, and resolve disruptions in IT operations. 

Providing an ROI map to your leadership can be one of the biggest challenges in convincing them to invest in an ITAM solution. 

But how do you meet their expectations and see your organizational IT landscape from their perspective? 

Understanding the investment in an ITAM tool from leadership’s perspective can help you get buy-in for one. Let’s help you get into their mindset and do that! 

Challenge #1: Increased skepticism over ROI

The need for smooth IT asset management remains unclear to leadership teams in some organizations, regardless of their size. Some reasons for this skepticism include:

• Increased operational expense: An ITAM tool is viewed more as an ongoing monthly expense than a strategic enabler. Without justifying its contribution to streamlining IT workflows and explaining its scope beyond its technical function, it can be challenging to convince the leadership team to buy one.
• Resource redistribution: Leadership views these strategic decisions as redistributing the current resources, including employees. For instance, if you are starting to use an ITAM tool, you and your team will need the required training to get started with the solution. This effort requires your office hours to onboard and fully implement the tool.  
• Past negative experiences: If IT teams before yours have failed to show a return on investment (ROI) for a previously used ITAM tool, then regaining leadership’s trust requires data-backed justifications and a promise to make the existing tool successful. This can be hard!

Fix #1: Reframe ITAM as a strategic investment, not an expense

Numbers always speak! You can build your case by gathering baseline data on how ITAM serves a strategic purpose, more than an operational one. The first step is identifying the exact requirements for an ITAM solution that caters to software and hardware asset management. 

Here’s how you can do that:

1. Uncover the costs of unused SaaS applications

SaaS sprawl in the form of undetected and underused SaaS platforms is a significant challenge for organizations grappling with budgetary constraints. 

In 2023, companies wasted $18 million on unused licenses, a 7% increase from the previous year. Most companies only use half of the software they pay for, a practice that goes unaccounted and disturbs the bottom line. Once highlighted, these purchases raise eyebrows amongst the leadership. 

With an ITAM tool, you can demonstrate how to save money on the SaaS front by: 

• Automating software discovery to identify software applications on your organization’s network and their usage. 
• Managing the use of the currently used software to assess their frequency and auditing how actively different features within a SaaS application are being used.
• Rigorously tracking SaaS renewals to avoid overpaying and missing out on payment deadlines. Efficient SaaS renewal management also optimizes the usage of currently used SaaS applications. 

2. Make a case for implementing license management

On average, unused software licenses cost small companies $2 million and large enterprises a staggering $127 million in wasted expenditure. Position ITAM as your key tool to avoid scenarios like this. 

• Analyze the ITAM tool’s value in terms of the revenue it can help generate for an organization. Determine by what percentage your organizational efficiency will likely increase by purchasing the ITAM tool. For instance, “Unused software costs $X and we can cut costs by Y% with an ITAM solution.”
• Make a case for using ITAM reporting tools to uncover shelfware—licenses that are purchased but never used. Demonstrate the value you can save by reallocating or terminating shelfware to reduce waste. 
• Build on the idea that doing something is better than doing nothing. Present current data to the leadership about how the organization is facing operational challenges and how unused licenses can be automatically tracked with an ITAM solution, leading to significant savings. 

Challenge #2: Lack of a strategic roadmap

Without a strategic IT plan, IT managers can find it nearly impossible to get investment for an ITAM tool. The absence of a roadmap will remind your leadership that you do not have an implementation plan for the ITAM tool to produce results. 

This includes the number of hours required for onboarding, the resources needed, the involvement of other departments, and how the subscription amount will vary with usage. The lack of a long-term vision for your tool leaves your efforts directionless and unclear about how the tool will help generate a guaranteed return on investment (ROI). 

A strategic roadmap signals ownership. It shows that the IT team has considered the tool’s implementation, scope, IT governance, and training plan. Leadership will likely reject and disapprove of an unstructured plan or one lacking sufficient ROI support. 

Fix #2: Connect ITAM outcomes with business goals

One way to assess how ITAM can help yield revenue is by signing up for its free trial. Most SaaS-based companies offer free trials to their customers so they can evaluate the tool’s functionality. 

Taking the free trial enables you to gather data points, screenshots from the tool, and assess how it aligns with the company’s goals. After you sign up for the tool, here’s what you can do: 

1. Leverage the already existing numbers

ODEK Technologies reports that using an ITAM tool helped them improve their operational efficiency by approximately 60%. You can benefit from these numbers to advocate for your case! 

Here’s how: 

• Go through the ITAM platform’s success stories, find resources relevant to your industry, and present them to your leadership to prove how others have benefited from the ITAM.
• Relate each story to your organizational workflows and find similarities in their challenges, and they overcame those.
• Many ITAM vendors offer ROI calculators that estimate cost savings based on asset volume and organizational size. Run these with your inputs and include the results in your proposal.

2. Document time savings and workflow implementations

Once you opt for a tool’s free trial, use and study it in depth to understand its usage. Your personal experience and self-reflection can help you analyze how cloud-based IT asset management can help you quantify waste in your IT space.

• Get help from the ITAM vendor’s sales and customer support to learn the tool in detail and analyze whether it best suits your IT needs. Explore other options if one tool does not meet your long-term organizational goals. 
• While using the system, see if you can track the relevant KPIs e.g. asset utilization or MTTR numbers required for your organization. Analyze the tool’s dashboard in detail to know the metrics it can help you track. 
• Take screenshots or export sample dashboards and reports from the tool. These visuals help leadership understand the tool’s interface, reporting capabilities, and real-time visibility that can later help you make intelligent business decisions regarding IT.

3. Identify cost reduction opportunities

The best way to convince your leadership is to identify opportunities for cost reduction and enhanced IT transparency. 

• An ITAM tool can help you save costs by increasing visibility into your software licenses. Populate your tool with software licences you use to see how it can help you track and monitor their optimal usage while saving costs. 
• Run audits on your existing software asset data to get the number of unused licenses and whether you can cancel their subscriptions to save costs. 
• Other departments, including IT, procurement, and finance, should be involved in assessing the tool’s scope and how it can be used collaboratively to make smarter IT purchasing decisions. 

4. Plan for phased implementation of the ITAM tool

Make a plan for implementing the tool plan in the long run. Buying an ITAM tool isn’t just about buying a new tool right away; it’s about making sure that it’s being used correctly by the right people and using the right data. 

• Start with a roll-out program i.e., implementing the tool within a specific department to see how efficiently it can cater to its requirements. 
• Gradually train department-specific users on the tool’s relevant features.
• Import all hardware and software systems into the ITAM tool to start tracking them all under one roof and create a high visibility dashboards for all the departments. 
• Leverage insights from the tool to improve IT budget forecasting and vendor negotiations. 
• Audit the tool regularly to see how efficiently it’s working for all the departments. 

Challenge #3: Visibility gaps in the SaaS environment

With continuous and drastic changes in the SaaS ecosystem, leadership can miss leading trends in technology, causing visibility gaps. Leadership might not know how specific trends impact their IT workflows, creating gaps that can only be filled with ITAM. 

For instance, with the dynamic shift to remote work, the chances of missing devices have also increased, as it can be challenging to track which device has been allotted to which employee. This increases the risk of device theft and adds to wasted spend. 

According to a Forrester study, 51% of businesses report experiencing data breaches due to lost laptops. This can potentially bloat your costs from security threats and associated legal penalties as well. 

Fix #3: Establish the need for visibility being essential to hybrid/remote employee management 

Gone are the days when spreadsheets were trending! Developing a strong asset IT asset control requires following strict security protocols and automating device tracking to prevent losing IT devices altogether. 

It’s tricky to achieve this level of real-time visibility with spreadsheets that can help reduce time and leverage data from various sources. 

Here’s what you can do to convince your leadership to invest in cloud-based IT asset management: 

1. Gather data about lost or stolen devices

If you have many employees working remotely or in hybrid work environments and have instances of lost devices, collect device data to support your case for an ITAM solution. 

• Track down the number of IT assets your organization has lost due to employee theft and report the value of those devices. Experiment on your preferred IT tool and how those devices can be tracked, including their check-out and check-in dates for employees.
• Using the ITAM tool, install discovery agents on a couple of IT devices, preferably ones used by the employees, to show how they can be automatically and even remotely tracked. 
• If employees use their devices, you can show the leadership how the IT team can ensure mobile device management through security measures, including data encryption and compliance. 
• Report KPIs like unused software licenses to report how automation can help better manage organizational resources. 
• Assess how your organization can save time in onboarding and offboarding, and create records for employee and device tracking. 

2. Track asset lifecycle stages 

Leadership is particularly interested in knowing how efficiently and effectively an IT device can be used to maximize its use and ROI. 

• Populate your trial ITAM account with the most important IT devices in your inventory and track their lifecycles to report to leadership. For enhanced reporting, track associated KPIs like asset utilization, maintenance costs, and software expiry. 
• Automate depreciation tracking on a few IT assets to show how the system can help track depreciation without hiring a dedicated financial resource. 
• For software, you can enable alerts for license expiry or warranties to ensure you never miss out on a deadline. This way, you can justify to your leadership how staying on top of your SaaS renewals and subscriptions can help save your budget from paying for unnecessary subscriptions and improve your SaaS spending. 

Challenge #4: Investment in risk reduction to achieve compliance

For the leadership, achieving compliance serves more of an operational function and is often seen as something that needs to be checked off the list like a task. They may initially seem reluctant to invest in ITAM tools that focus on compliance audits or regulatory adherence, as they might not be seen as priorities. However, they fail to realize that organizations failing to comply with regulations are at risk of paying thousands of dollars as a penalty fee.

For instance, 56% of software audits cost businesses extra, owing to underlicensing in the past. In such scenarios, compliance becomes an operational and strategic risk as using unauthorized or underlicensed software can jeopardize an organization’s security. The inability to track the use of software licenses can support non-compliance in the long run; employees may continue to use expired software or pirated versions if they are not checked. 

Fix #4: Promote ITAM as a proactive safeguard against non-compliance and security breaches

Industries like healthcare and construction have strict data privacy regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA, which must be followed. An ITAM platform must be promoted as a strategic tool for complying with these regulations by offering clear, time-stamped audit trails. For instance, in case of a security breach, an ITAM tool can help track the device and its last owner for accountability. 

As an IT manager, you can position the tool you are aiming to buy like this:

1. Stay audit-ready and secure data

Imagine digging through hundreds of sheets to compile data on your IT devices and emailing staff to find out who uses what software while your audit is due the next day! While leadership may not realize how crucial these situations can be, you must present them with data-driven strategies to avoid such situations and convey the importance of SaaS compliance. 

• Automate data entry and enter all software details into your software asset management tool to keep track of license and device use. Show the data to your leadership in a consolidated form and report the number of hours your organization can save with automated data entry. 
• Compare your existing data privacy practices with those you can implement using the ITAM system, and how it can help prevent data breaches better. 96% of IT leaders see internal data breaches as a major concern; leverage such numbers and relate them to your leadership concerns to address their pain points through an ITAM tool. 
• You can use the system to maintain an audit trail while you experiment and provide leadership with a comprehensive trail to show when certain software was installed, a device logged into from an unknown network, and the user who used a specific software and device. 

2. Flag instances of shadow IT and use of unauthorized software

Shadow IT refers to the use of unapproved and unsolicited software that remains hidden from IT leaders. Unidentified software poses compliance risks as it can make company devices more vulnerable to malware attacks.

From 2021 to 2023, 85% of companies worldwide experienced some form of security breach, with 11% attributed to the rapid adoption of unauthorized software. Kaspersky, a cybersecurity company, reports that shadow IT has become a major concern due to the various types of workforce: hybrid, remote, and on-site. Using an ITAM tool, you can communicate to your leaders how lacking an ITAM strategy in a sprawling software environment can cost you even more.

• Detect software that is not registered on your organization’s network and block an employee’s access to it. 
• Experiment with your ITAM tool to normalize different versions of the same software so you have a fair idea of how many varieties of the same software you use. This will improve your visibility and remove alert fatigue 
• Determine the install count of each software being used across the organization. Highlight any anomalies detected to the leadership to show how instances of shadow IT and resulting security vulnerabilities can be mitigated through automated detection of unauthorized software. 

Challenge #5: Justifying the ITAM buy-in amongst other priorities 

Leadership can be highly skeptical of your purchase, especially when other projects require an investment simultaneously. IT budgets are tight, and leadership is willing to invest in initiatives that can bring them a higher ROI. 

ITAM usually competes with projects involving cybersecurity, patch management, and more customer-facing initiatives. Spending on ITAM might take a backseat as leadership might not be convinced that the sole tracking of IT assets can bring their organization a notable amount of revenue. 

These challenges are exacerbated further by:

• Leadership focuses on short-term wins, i.e., investing in solutions that can help increase revenue faster and show immediate results. This focus usually stems from an overall unstructured investment approach driven by short-term goals and a lack of organizational vision. 
• There is also a lack of awareness about the implications of inadequate IT asset management in terms of increased costs, SaaS sprawl, inefficient IT infrastructure, and shadow IT. This can be based on the assumption that “ITAM is only IT’s concern.”
• Leadership might not be fully aware of the trends in the IT industry, something as simple as the impact of tariffs on the IT industry, and how ITAM can help mitigate it. Plus, ITAM is usually viewed in siloes—as an independent practice that does not involve other IT practices and departments. These factors make them unaware of the impact quality SaaS license management and improved SaaS compliance can bring for them. 

Fix #5: Break the information silos 

Creating a bridge between the impact of ITAM and the leadership concerns is instrumental to debunking the myth that “ITAM is just for IT teams; it doesn’t affect the business.” Active implementation of ITAM despite your leadership’s focus on other projects requires expanding and proving its scope beyond IT. 

1. Involve other departments 

The use of ITAM impacts IT and has a profound impact on departments like HR. A lack of visibility into your current IT landscape can leave your HR clueless about the number of devices available that can be allocated to new hires.

According to Capterra, 71% of HR workers report that at least one employee did not return their IT device, either laptop or smartphone, while leaving the organization. Hence, ITAM is equally important when employees leave an organization. 

To prove the scope of ITAM beyond IT, you can:

• Get previous numbers from other departments that have lost IT devices to employees or external factors, adding to the costs. Make your case with real data from within the company.
• Highlight the challenges other departments face due to a lack of IT asset tracking and how an ITAM tool can help improve workflows across departments. For instance, HR can benefit from the onboarding/offboarding features of an ITAM tool, finance from the automated calculation of taxes and depreciation of hardware devices, and procurement gets visibility into asset lifecycles and vendor performance. Even legal and compliance teams can achieve compliance by ensuring that the IT devices are properly decommissioned and wiped when employees leave. 
• Highlight delays and communication problems faced by other departments. For instance, duplicate software purchases are due to unawareness of the current use of the software. 

2. Build a shared dashboard for all stakeholders

Demonstrating your leadership on how each department can benefit from the ITAM tool by emphasizing its relevance across the organization. Using your ITAM solution, you can create an intuitive, KPI-driven dashboard that allows relevant stakeholders to see how various segments of the organization are allocated IT devices. 

• Enable KPIs on the dashboard, such as asset utilization, last check-in/checkout, latest events that signify who was allotted what device last, and maintenance updates, so stakeholders know asset availability. 
• Give your stakeholders a clear understanding of IT resource distribution so finance and HR departments can better plan procurement, hiring, and budgeting. 

Here’s a list of some suggested ITAM KPIs you can enable on your dashboard for enhanced visibility and streamlined IT asset management. 

Adapt to the changing IT ecosystem with more innovative SaaS management 

Every organization uses several SaaS products, but whether they use and track them efficiently is the real question. The inability to smartly manage a broad portfolio of IT assets and software puts IT managers like you in the limelight. While the leadership may remain unaware of the daily challenges you face in managing that diverse portfolio, it’s recommended that you devise ways to automate IT asset management. Convincing the leadership to adopt SaaS-based solutions, like an IT asset management software, is difficult but not impossible.

All your leadership is looking for is a solution to help the organization lower costs and structure your workflows for a higher return. Try understanding the mindset of your C-suite to look for value propositions in the solution that address compliance, security risks, cost savings, SaaS discovery, improve your IT infrastructure, and, most importantly, help generate a higher ROI not just for IT but for the company. 

Now is the time to stop justifying ITAM as a line item and start presenting it as a critical lever for business success.