Bank group cuts out software duplication

HBOS Financial Services has saved hundreds of thousands of pounds by getting a better grip on its software licensing.

The group - which includes Clerical Medical Financial Services, Clerical Medical International and Halifax Financial Services - is using activesam asset management software from Monactive to ensure it doesn't buy more licences than necessary.

IT procurement manager at HBOS FS, Christine Robertson, said executives realised that software contracts were not being centrally managed and maintained.

She said: "We also needed to develop and implement software procurement processes for the business to follow."

Software contracts were mainly managed by business areas and not IT. Robertson added: "There was no clear understanding of the annual ongoing costs for support and maintenance across the group.

"To enable us to purchase effectively, rationalise products/suppliers and control costs/risks, we needed to understand the software deployed and the use of it across our whole estate of approx 6,000 desktops and notebooks."

So far the activesam agents have been rolled out to 2,900 desktops at the group's Bristol and Clevedon locations, followed by a further 2,100 agents to Aylesbury, 200 to Halifax Financial Services in Leeds and 600 agents to Clerical Medical International based in Europe and Hong Kong.

Robertson said: "It's really paid off. We've saved hundreds of thousands of pounds. We hardly purchase any new software now because we reuse it when staff leave or move onto other projects. We know how many licences we have and how many are being used.

"Many companies who do not use an asset management tool purchase far more software than they really need. Once you are licence compliant there is very little purchasing - the focus is more on asset management. It's definitely saved cost in a big way and we can deliver the software to the user quicker as there is no need to wait until a purchase order is raised."

HBOS FS is also starting to upgrade to Windows XP and activesam will become part of the standard desktop and laptop build. And the software is helping in the migration process to make sure that users get the software they need - rather than the software that they might want, because activesam can measure application usage.

She said: "We are currently upgrading our Microsoft platform and it was important that we used the opportunity to rationalise software. If users tell us they need to retain access to licensable software then we are able to challenge that."

The upgrade programme can also access details of all the software on each desktop and can use this to ensure that post-upgrade the same functionality is available.

Robertson added: "We're going to be doing a lot more work [using activesam] in the future. We are making more use of the functionality of the tool, doing hardware asset management as well as software and we're starting to use it to provide metrics for our Support Services."