California-based UST Global, a provider of end-to-end IT services and BPO solutions, has so far focussed primarily on global customers. However, it has now started eyeing Indian customers to extend its BPO, ERP and managed IT services market share. The company has already established its presence in three Indian locations. As a part of its goals, the company aims to create an internal environment in which every individual is fully committed to the highest standards of corporate governance. To achieve this, the company decided to conduct an assessment of its technology resources with a view to centralise its regional IT departments. For this purpose, UST Global has deployed Software Asset Management (SAM) along with KPMG. SAM will help UST Global to manage its software resources in a proper manner. Since the last two to three years, the company has shifted its focus to customers based in India and other South-East Asian countries.

Better management of software

As UST Global is into Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and other managed IT services, the company has to deal with lots of software. It is also very essential for the company to ensure that its software runs without any failure so that project deadlines can be met. Bharath Krishnaswamy, general manager (South East Asia), UST Global, explains, “We at UST are very open to new cultures and changes and it is our constant endeavour to remain in touch with all ITES industry developments. We deal with a wide variety of software on a daily basis as we run lots of ODCs (Offshore Development Centres). We work with few and selected customers and we prefer having a strong and in-depth relationship with those customers. In order to get a real time account of our software and to serve our customers better in today’s competitive environment, we have to treat our software as an asset. This also helps to maximise the company’s RoI”.

The company has 14 ODCs and serves customers from various countries. In order to cater to this diverse customer base, the company has to also maintain compliance standards as required by this entire range of customers. UST Global thought that an effective SAM programme will ensure lowest total cost for the organisation by helping it to avoid both over- and under-buying of software. Both these positions are expensive as over-buying leads to higher licensing cost and under-buying could lead to compliance risks. All these factors contributed to UST Global’s decision to deploy Microsoft’s SAM solution.

Collaborating with KPMG

Though UST Global was facing problems on the software management front, it was not in a position to analyse internal requirements and external options available. It then took help from KPMG and Microsoft, who had extended their consultancy to the company. Krishnaswamy says, “We were not able to analyse our key requirements though we felt that SAM was essential for us. As Microsoft is a partner, we decided to take their help along with KPMG. There was no doubt about the product quality of Microsoft and we had earlier been satisfied with their service level and support as well”.

Before executing the deployment process, the company prepared a deployment roadmap and sorted out issues likes optimisation and compliance requirements. The entire implementation took around three months and the cost involved in the pilot was around Rs 15 lakh. The SAM deployment has helped UST Global to determine what software it needs and what it doesn’t, this has indirectly led to cost savings for the company.

Reduction in software management cost

The company has been able to lower its software management cost by 8-9 percent per one million dollar project. Krishnaswamy opines, “The post-deployment scenario is quite impressive. Projects can be completed more efficiently and smoothly. SAM is helping us to provide a framework and guidelines for deriving maximum value out of investment in software assets. As far as RoI is concerned, we have not yet noticed any changes but we are looking at it very positively”. The deployment has helped the organisation to reduce software and operational costs by enabling the company to take control of its software assets and manage them more efficiently.

SAM is helping the organisation to take advantage of volume license discounts and to determine how to use software throughout the company in the most efficient way possible. The most notable improvement the company is seeing is in terms of getting real time information about its software assets. SMS and Remedy is used for tracking hardware and software deployments and an Active Directory that is constantly uploaded also helps. Currently, UST has more than 4,000 software products deployed. The company has implemented SAM in its Trivandrum centre and has plans lined up to deploy it across all centres in India and abroad.