Local digital assets and document storage management company Metrofile has reported massive benefits from its use of asset management and tracking software, Centennial Discovery. The total ROI achieved by the organisation over a period of six months equates to almost R1 million on top of only a R150 000 total investment.
Metrofile partnered with Centennial local representative Bytes Technology Networks (BTN) for the course of the project, after initially having chosen Centennial as its software solution of choice without having had a dedicated implementation partner.
Arthur Bucas, IT Director at Metrofile, says: "There are a number of tools available in the market which can assist you in your software audits, but the trick is to use them completely to your advantage. Only once we brought on BTN as our technology and consulting partner did we start seeing the true benefits of our initial investment in the Centennial Discovery product."
The scope of the project covers all national Metrofile offices, a complete hardware inventory and workstation specification audit, as well as a list of software applications installed and usage patterns on the existing software to asses the exact licensing and hardware requirements of the enterprise on the whole.
Comments Nick Perkins, Sales Director at BTN: "We selected Centennial Discovery as our software asset management tool of preference due to the fact that it is technologically superior, it runs on a number of platforms, the data it collects is precise, but more importantly it provides clients with real return on investment. In a nutshell, it allows us to provide a complete software usage monitoring service to our clients."
With the assistance of BTN, Metrofile was able to establish the precise number of PCs in the company as well as the required software packages needed per PC. This total, centralised breakdown of the IT infrastructure allowed the company to decide which users could forego the use of certain applications and in turn let it streamline software usage across the enterprise.
On the hardware side, Metrofile was able to identify exactly which PCs needed upgrading to fit in with the enterprise-wide minimum system specifications, and the Centennial solution was even able to assist with migration paths for systems not entirely compatible with current business applications deployed.
By basing its refresh cycle and software licensing model on these exact numbers rather than the ballpark figures which IT budgeting processes are usually prey to, BTN was immediately able to drive down the software costs of the Metrofile refresh cycle by 45%, while continual monitoring of the IT assets will result in ongoing savings.
"Centennial Discovery has given us 100% control of our IT assets throughout the entire organisation, irrespective of region or department. The software has given us a clear understanding of exactly what we have running in our IT department. It identifies foreign bodies on the network, warns of unauthorised software use and assists in the physical tracking of networking assets right through the organisation. All of this with no headache in the implementation of the system, and due to its ease of use, very little training required," ends Bucas.
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