A best practice guide for successful ITAM Governance

Author: Chris Gough, Chief Strategy Officer, Livingstone Group

IT Asset Management (ITAM) governance is a key part of overall corporate governance programs, and helps organizations protect against a variety of corporate risks, from commercial and legal to reputational and security. It empowers organizations to switch from being reactive to proactive in their risk mitigation while also playing a crucial part in producing the maximum value from software and cloud assets during their lifecycle.

Indeed, good ITAM governance plays just as important a role as the ITAM procurement and optimization best practices we advocate at Livingstone Group. IT and procurement teams are under immense pressure to deliver corporate strategy and organization-wide cost savings, an ITAM governance strategy can help provide a framework of best practices and controls.

To help ITAM leaders move forward with a secure and structured ITAM governance strategy, we have compiled a ‘Best Practice ITAM Lifecycle Governance Guide’. In the guide we look at:

• The importance of ITAM governance – We take you through the risks, from audits to increased costs, as well as the benefits of good ITAM governance, including improved control of vendor relationships and asset accountability.
• The business case for ITAM governance – At Livingstone, we know that implementing a comprehensive ITAM strategy requires a lot of hard work, internal communication and collaboration, and the ability to demonstrate ROI. But it is possible – you just have to know where to look.
• ITAM governance best practice – Aligning people, process and technology through an established framework and standardized policies is key to achieving secure and compliant ITAM governance. We share our best practices, from bringing in senior level sponsorship, to connecting challenges and goals, to recognizing the important role data and technology play.
• Building an ITAM framework – Having a sold structure and standardized approach in place will help to get a good ITAM governance program off the ground. Understanding the relevance of Trustworthy Data to Lifecycle and Optimization is key to achieving the best strategic outcomes. In this section, we take you through these key aspects as well as several other important considerations you’ll need to ensure a successfully delivered ITAM governance strategy.
• The future of ITAM governance – Corporate governance objectives are changing, reacting to industry innovation, regulatory compliance and world economic events, and as a result, risks are changing too. We take you through what we believe to be future ITAM objectives as well as the future ITAM risks to look out for.

Our ‘Best Practice ITAM Lifecycle Governance Guide’ delves into more detail on each of the above points. It is designed to help ITAM teams successfully navigate ITAM governance with the right people, processes and framework in place so that they remain secure, compliant and can deliver the best outcomes from their ITAM investments.

You can download the full FREE eGuide here to see more on IT procurement best practices, or contact one of Livingstone’s team of experts for more information.

There is also a series of webinars that will accompany this topic available to view here.

About the Author:

Chris Gough, Chief Strategy Officer, Livingstone Group

Chris has worked in the IT Industry for over 20 years, starting as a consultant he then took on more senior practice management roles, focusing on networking, security, data centre and unified communications and in recent years specialising in data centre optimisation and particularly in software licensing. Having worked with large enterprise organisations, Chris understands the challenges faced in data centre licensing and the lack of expertise in the marketplace.

Having founded the Derive Logic business until its acquisition by the Carlyle Group in April 2019, Chris is now on the senior executive board for the world’s largest independent IT Transformation Assurance and Software/Cloud Risk Management business, Livingstone Group.