In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, companies are re-evaluating the needed commercial engineering and R&D tools. Many teams are returning back to the office, but the future is still unclear.
Teams do know they now need to move even quicker in their decision making processes to survive. The working environments are becoming increasingly fluid with staggered works shifts (with social distancing mandates) and quickly changing priorities.
- Is your organization prepared for these changes?
- Do the engineers receive value from their tools they are using?
- Can they do their day-to-day jobs successfully?
- Do you have the needed tools in place to be able to oversee how the engineering teams are using expensive engineering assets?
Productivity of the engineering teams is becoming increasingly critical. Often times under Shadow IT, teams may be using engineering software differently in different teams, countries, and business units.
While some teams try to develop and run ad hoc, custom internal scripts to monitor licenses, our solution has been used by many companies large and small over the last decade. We have customized our tool to ensure our customers are successful with managing their engineering assets and utilization rates. Using an engineering license monitoring helps companies improve productivity without slowing down innovation.
Here are a few suggestions:
- Don’t over-complicate reports. Using a well-developed license monitoring tool will help you more efficiently manage resource without pulling away from other essential tasks.
- Make it easy for users and managers to look at reports and receive alerts.
- By monitoring usage and asset management, leadership can make better educated decisions.
Using license monitoring tools can also spark conversations to help determine trends, look at heat maps among other factors. Don’t simply assume that you know what your team needs better than they do. Be open to conversations.
In these challenging times, there is a need to consolidate and renegotiate engineering software contracts and agreements. License monitoring solutions can help engineers engage in collaborative conversations with internal teams, vendors and partners helping to develop smart, strategic and cost-effective agreements.
IT can also help engineering departments make decisions when they may have more or less staff. Many managers are currently having conversations about the expense of technology and if there is a better way to save resources.
Companies will need to better anticipate and adapt to the needs of the engineering teams. An agile organization must remain flexible while controlling risk. The past few months have tested us like never before. With collaboration and having the helpful information, companies can move forward. Contact our experts today for a free 30-day trial to assess your engineering licenses.