When it comes to Autodesk® software licenses, no one is scratching their head more than the IT managers who are expected to juggle many tasks to be on the “good side” of various people – from executives to end-users.
On one side, the IT manager must be frugal and must be a hunter of opportunities to cut the costs of high-tag software.
However, if the IT managing professional does not supply the accurate amount of available inventory, then he or she may be facing a flood of email complaints from engineers and other end-users pointing to them as the cause of project delays.
To address the needs of many, the software application administrator works hard, long hours to keep a record of which applications are being used, by whom, and for how long.
Some would do this by pulling reports from the tools provided by the vendor.
But those tools are hardly enough to provide a clear picture of a software application’s true active usage.
On the other hand, there are a great number of IT managers that figure, “Hey, I have access to the data… so, I’ll just do this myself through spreadsheets.”
Unfortunately, concentrating on this time-consuming task could result to losing focus on other priorities.
This is not a hopeless situation, though. After all, the successful (and admired) IT manager is the one that finds viable solutions to the toughest challenges.
For some inspiration, or simply some direction, to this challenge, here is a list of five different reasons why you need an effective tool for metering the true active usage of your Autodesk software.
1. Complete Insight
An effective metering tool for Autodesk Software Usage licensing can provide a complete overview of the license usage across an entire enterprise.
This capability provides insight from the overall enterprise level all the way down to the individual user point.
With this insight, vital data on license usage can be displayed in real-time or historically through preferred web browsers for quick view or printed reports for budget meetings.
It can also be exported to regularly-used spreadsheets or integrated with preferred BI tools for further analysis.
This data on license usage is complete with key details of every user in the environment, displaying their dates, times, location, and even email contact for streamlined communication.
2. Complete Communication and Alerts
A tool specifically designed for metering Autodesk applications should be able to distinguish different license agreements, such as network or concurrent, single-user or named-user, and the emerging token licensing model.
Since each license agreement requires different managing guidelines, it is important for the administrator to effectively (and promptly) communicate with users and other managers of the current status and availability of Autodesk software inventory.
The tool should allow the administrator to set special configurations that will help detect and alert users, as well as managers, of excessive number of licenses being used by a single user or checked out licenses that are left idle for way too long.
The communication feature can also be used to share regular usage reports that management will want to see.
3. Complete Analysis Reporting
Aside from producing reports on real-time data or historical data, this tool should go a step further by allowing the administrators to fully customize an advanced web-based interface.
If one of the popular BI tools is used regularly to the point where the administrator has a preference to it, then the administrator should be able to export the data to the preferred BI tool.
Having access to customizable reports, or reports from the template library, is important to head IT administrators who want to be ready to work with their CFO or Finance Manager to validate the current inventory and specially to prepare next year’s budget for their IT software spending.
4. Complete Data for Chargeback
Let’s say a finance officer goes to the IT manager requiring the information to allocate costs to specific departments or divisions throughout the entire enterprise environment.
How is the IT manager supposed to prepare all this information for Finance using manual methods? This can be a tedious, difficult task; not to mention that Finance is requesting this report by the end of the day!
Fortunately, a powerful metering tool makes it fast and easy to generate customizable reports of these Autodesk applications that should show important data on the usage of specific products, applications, features, even to the host name or username.
Once the data is aggregated, then the IT manager can use this tool to create easy-to-understand graphs and charts to share this very afternoon. On to the next task!
5. Complete Analysis for Annual Budgeting
It is not exactly a crystal ball, but an advanced Autodesk software metering tool has the capability to help successful software application administrators to attain a better position in vendor negotiations based on true active usage data, simulate different license agreements, and even forecast usage.
Cutting needless spending is important to any company, so this tool should allow the administrator to provide accurate and reliable inputs on the number of software licenses required to run projects smoothly without sacrificing productivity due to lack of inventory.
Since Autodesk licensing models are ever changing, it is important to have the timeless capacity to simulate different license agreements to discover areas of saving opportunities.
Whether a company is using token licenses or moving to the cloud, the IT asset manager can produce the data in reports to be used in negotiations and to forecast future usage.
Perhaps that same company is experiencing growth and needs to make sure that their newly hired engineers will have the right number of Autodesk software inventory.
With a powerful Autodesk metering tool, the software asset manager will be able to handle this task with ease.
What’s next?
Get started with a demonstration of Analyzer for Autodesk® in your environment.
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