Organisations are trying to keep up to date with ever-changing licensing rules and stay in control of their license position. At the same time, publishers attempt to (re)capture revenue on existing licenses, using audits as a method.
TIP #4 - July 2019: Having an Audit Defence Policy helps you stay in control of your license position and can even realise cost savings.
It pays off to treat a software audit as a serious financial risk. Being prepared and ready is critical, and by adopting the right strategy you can even achieve cost savings.
Softline Solutions strongly recommends to be compliant at all times and, in order to achieve this, you should have ITAM policies in place. Having a specific Audit Defence Policy in place provides a methodology to quickly and efficiently respond to Audit requests and manage them while staying in control.
Besides cost savings that can be realised, being in control regarding compliance contributes to a much lesser impact on an organisation when an Audit indeed takes place.
Part of the Softline Solutions Audit Run Book is the “Softline Solutions Nine Steps checklist”. This checklist is based on ISO-requirements and offers a helpful method to handle an external audit request. In nine activities, it describes how to react, prepare, respond, manage and close the audit. This document can be used to register internal processes on how a company should act.