Do you know how many Microsoft 365 licenses you have as opposed to how many you actually need? Do you have any idea how much money you’re wasting on unused, under-used, or expired licenses?
Managing Office licenses for a large organization can quickly become a daunting task, especially for enterprises with hundreds - or even thousands - of employees. Many of the M365 licenses owned by most companies aren’t even being used, yet they are still paying for them. In determining M365 licenses overspend, CoreView analyzed over 5 million users and found that 40% of Microsoft 365 licenses are unassigned, inactive, or oversized. That’s about 30% of an entire Microsoft 365 subscription wasted!
IT administrators need to be able to easily optimize M365 licenses to ensure that all users are equipped with the right level of functionality. New licenses should only be added when they are needed, and at the right size and level. But in an organization with so many employees spread across so many different locations - especially since the global pandemic - license management can be extremely hard and time-consuming.
Here are six ways CoreView helps to make Microsoft license management easy.
One of the biggest complaints we hear from customers is that reporting on their license usage is too challenging and takes up too much time.
Did you know that it takes a typical in-house licenses manager approximately 12 hours a month to produce licensing reports?
CoreView makes it much faster and easier to automatically run license reports with built-in reporting tools that are more detailed and more accurate than standard M365 reports. Our reporting drills down to show not only what licenses are assigned to what users, but also if those users are optimizing their use. That helps to make sure licenses aren’t oversized for the role of the user and can help you drive the overall adoption of M365.
Having hundreds or thousands of Microsoft 365 licenses that reside in one IT department is not the most efficient way to manage your subscription. It’s better to divvy up the licenses and distribute them out to individual departments.
Creating designated licenses pools allows you to delegate responsibility to specific department managers who are much closer to the ground and have better knowledge of who’s using certain applications. By assigning a specific number of licenses to various business units, you can easily set hard limits on how many license scan be distributed. If the manager requires more than were originally allotted, they can request additional licenses from the IT department or recycle inactive ones from within their own pool.
Pool licensing gives the central IT department complete control over which licenses are distributed and who pays for them while requiring department managers to do their part in controlling wasteful spending.
Do you know how many inactive accounts you currently have in your Microsoft 365 instance?
CoreView’s Consumption Dashboard actively monitors M365 user activity to help you identify inactive accounts through a prescriptive process. When inactive accounts are found, they can be reclaimed and used for new employees as needed.
This is especially helpful for large organizations with hundreds of different business units spread across different geographical locations.
Another way to promote responsible and fiscal accountability for licenses management at the department level is by setting up an internal IT chargeback program.
Having the direct Microsoft 365 license model assigned to individual accounts provides straightforward one-to-one mapping for associated costs that can be billed monthly to different business units. This helps department managers stay on top of their chargebacks and manage their budgets more efficiently.
By distributing more of the licenses responsibly out to individual departments and managers, it frees up time for the central IT department to focus on other projects and efficiencies.
Having the most up-to-date user data is crucial when making decisions about whether to buy or cancel Microsoft licenses.
CoreView’s CoreSuite gives you visibility across your entire organization in one single pane of glass. This information can be segmented into regions, departments, business units, or however else you wish to see it.
Another way CoreView uses data to help you manage licenses is by tracking actual applications and workload use to determine if more feature-rich apps that require a higher and more costly M365 licensing tier are being used. If not, they can be eliminated.
The money you save from eliminating unused or underused M365 licenses can be used for otherIT investments, such as security or training employees on how to use Microsoft applications to their fullest capacity. This can have a domino effect on cost savings!
Increased security means fewer corporate dollars spent dealing with costly security breaches. Investing in employee training can lead to more efficiencies, happier employees, and less turnover.
The small savings you can gain from properly managing Microsoft licenses can lead to big improvement sin the overall culture of your company.
Given the fact that Microsoft 365 is usually an organization’s largest software expenditure, it’s vitally important to optimize every single aspect of the solution. That starts with proper license management.
The whole point of having an efficient M365 license management program is to control IT costs while ensuring that users are getting the most bang for the company’s bucks when using the applications. Knowing which users are using the products, which licenses have expired, and what tier levels are needed per department are all key aspects of a successful licensing program.
CoreView makes it easy for you to drive Microsoft 365 administrator efficiency in your organization. If you’re ready to simplify license reporting and visibility across your M365 environment, we can help! Why not schedule a CoreView 365 License Management Health Check right now, to see if you’re wasting money on unused and inactive licenses?