It’s not just an IRS audit that organisations need to worry about. Increasingly, the auditor bears a familiar calling card – Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, Oracle and SAP to name a few. According to a recent Report, 63 per cent of enterprises were audited by their software vendors in the last 18-24 months to determine whether they were out of compliance with their software contracts. And the money (usually unbudgeted) extracted from companies as a result, stings. According to that report, 56 per cent of organisations end up writing checks to send the auditor on his way – and 21 per cent of the time, those true up payments are a million dollars or more.

What can CIO’s do to take the sting out of the auditor’s tail? Here’s a top 10 list:

1. Don’t boil the ocean

The 80 / 20 rule applies especially to software license management. There are usually a handful of software vendors who provide critical (and usually expensive) software for your organisation. Even within a given vendor’s software portfolio, it is generally a subset of their products that demand the majority of focus. So when setting up software license management processes, tools and systems – focus on the “high rollers”. The “me too” applications will can be addressed later.

SOURCE: abc.net.au