The “P” for People makes or breaks successful ITAM strategies

While ITAM processes, tools and technologies are crucial for ITAM value creation, the unavailability of adequate ITAM talent can be a roadblock to achieve your ITAM goals. Do you have enough People to realise your ITAM strategy?

Over the last years, we have always focussed on the fact that successful ITAM strategies depend on people, process and technology. It is a well-known secret that all three elements need to be in sync to actually allow organisations to grow their ITAM maturity and realise their yearly strategic goals. However, it is important to keep in mind that while ITAM processes, tools and technologies are surely crucial for ITAM value creation, People has always been a very important part of ITAM strategies.

With that in mind, it is not a surprise that more and more organisations perceive the unavailability of adequate ITAM talent as the main roadblock to achieve ITAM goals. Recent surveys by Deloitte show that 35% of the interviewed organisations are looking at ways to increase their FTE count to realise their ITAM strategy.

Especially when you look at the challenges of finding and hiring ITAM talent, it is crucial to make informed and realistic decisions when building or expanding your ITAM team. So, before you define the required number of FTE, and definitely before you create a job profile, it is crucial to determine the investments and expected results of the "future state" scenario in your strategic ITAM plan:

• Strategic scope for ITAM for the coming years;
• Understanding measures and costs for the realisation of the strategic ITAM plan:
  • costs and roles of internal staff
  • possible gaps in the number of FTE
  • any external hiring costs

Based on the outcome of your internal analysis, you can define how the “P” for People needs to be filled in for your specific needs and create a job description. When doing so, make sure you do not throw every task related to ITAM onto one job description. Be reasonable. Do not create a job description that would in fact require take a whole team to deliver. And ask for advice from experts that are actually in ITAM to make sure the job description is relevant and realistic.

Now you can define your recruitment strategy for ITAM resources. Are you looking for permanent FTE on your payroll to build a full specialist team? Or are you looking at ways that allow you to scale up and down when the strategy demands it? Do you require capable specialists with a guaranteed flexibility and quality? Or do you want to “grow your own specialists?” These are important questions you need to answer for yourself!

When looking at the options at hand to find knowledgeable resources, many organisations look at the options provided by third-party business advisers, consultants, or managed services providers. Based on recent surveys:

• Two third of organisations facing issues regarding consistent business processes use external specialists to assist them.
• Around 20% of organisations use external assistance, either through managed services or hiring a specific external specialist for a number of hours per week, for the (technical) maintenance of their ITAM tooling.
• A quarter of organisations use external consultants for vendor specific licensing expertise that is not available in-house.
• 20% of organisations hire temporary consultants to provide strategic support on the transformation of ITAM teams.

Softline can help you define your “P”!

On all topics regarding the “P” for people, Softline can be your trusted partner:

• We can help you with the strategic scoping of your ITAM strategy.
• We can outline the different scenarios to realise your ITAM strategy.
• We can offer you input for your decision-making process, providing calculations for each of the different scenarios for building your ITAM team, to meet your strategic goals.
• We can create the job profiles for the roles you want to fill.
• We can offer you temporary staff to fill specific specialist roles for any chosen period of time, to ensure no time is wasted while you recruit the new team-members.
• We can offer you managed services for specific activities you decide to outsource.
• We can help you with specific knowledge and skills on demand, which allows you to scale up and down when needed.