Surviving A Software License Audit

Just when you thought you had mapped out your Sourcing & Vendor Management activity for 2012, along comes one of your key software suppliers with a request to do an audit of your software usage. Are you ready? Prepared? Do you know how you'll handle it? Do you know how to minimize your financial and compliance exposure?

An increasing number of our clients are being audited and are requesting advice from Forrester about how to prepare for an audit and how to manage one if it happens. Of course, it's every supplier's right to do an audit in order to protect their IP and to ensure your actual usage is compliant with your contracted rights. But it does seem that in the current tough economic conditions, many suppliers are invoking the audit clause as a way of digging into how you're using their products in order to seek out either noncompliance or a deeper understanding of your organization. Either way, they are looking to uncover additional revenue opportunities.

In this webinar, we share the tips and tactics that our clients have used to successfully prepare for an audit prior to the supplier's audit team coming on site, as well as how to manage and control an audit once it's started in order to minimize financial and compliance exposure. We illustrate an in-depth breakdown of the eight steps of the process with use cases of IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle software audits.

Agenda:

• Identifying And Understanding The Sources Of Audit Problems
• Be Prepared — What To Do Before An Audit Request Arrives
• The Supplier's Audit Team Has Just Arrived In The Lobby — How To Manage And Control The Audit To Your Advantage
• Q&A/Peer Discussion

Vendors mentioned: IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle.