The emergence of the cloud and the accessibility of Software as a Service (SaaS) has introduced a nearly endless amount of new software services for organizations. Think about customer service software, sales platforms, and customer relationship management software. There are about a hundred pop-up bots you can install on your website these days!

Now imagine every department signing up for these services without your IT department knowing about them. This is called Shadow IT. It’s when the software in the company isn’t tracked properly.

Considering IT is ultimately responsible for the IT assets within the company, this is bad. Software expenses usually go under the IT budget. However, unknown expenses are rather difficult to budget, forecast, and track.

Other downfalls of shadow IT are 1) the possibility of duplicating software licenses, 2) not being in control of the software purchases within the organization and 3) ultimately upsetting your CEO when he asks about the costs related to the software assets within the company.

The Solution

Within your IT processes, there should be a request portal. For example, VIZOR, a comprehensive ITAM, SAM, and Service Desk solution, has one as shown below.

The platform can be securely accessed by every employee or manager.

The simple layout clearly displays the available software that the company already invests in. Similarly, the catalog can show specific software relevant to the logged-in employee’s job. For example, an accountant would only see the accounting software.

The employee simply clicks on the one he or she needs, and a form will pop up.

In this case, he or she will only need to fill out the Required By Date and the Required By Time. Press finish to submit the request.

Super easy, right? Well, there’s more!

The Software Request Portal in VIZOR

VIZOR allows IT to determine whether or not employees can request new software. By simply making it an option in the catalog, this can include software that is not on the list. Employees would then request the new software in a similar fashion (with a form).

VIZOR allows you to customize the request forms if you need more information.

After a request is approved, VIZOR automatically creates a ticket. (This is only possible if you also have the ServiceDesk Module.)

VIZOR can also trigger complex approval processes.

Then, VIZOR summarizes expenses in a report that is easy to present to your team, department managers and upper management.

(Let us know if you want us to go into more details about anything listed above.)

So, do you need a Request Portal for Licenses?

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Why not just send an email to request software?” That is a valid question so here are 6 reasons a request portal is a hundred times better:

1. The request is already categorized in the solution. This makes it much easier for IT to address.
2. The requests are managed in one location AND within a solution that IT already uses to manage other IT-related tasks
3. A solution like VIZOR sets off the approval process automatically, reducing your time chasing after people with emails
4. Listing the available software licenses available helps IT reach economies of scale and reduce the possibility of duplicating licenses
5. Insight into company costs within the company, without any hassle
6. IT automatically sees who requested the license and what department it is for. This makes it easy for them to contact them with any questions and for budgeting

What are your thoughts on request portals? Do you already have one? Is it on your wish list but there’s no budget?