How Burns & McDonnell Leverages Digital Transformation for a Competitive Advantage
“LicenseAnalyzer helps us assess the cost of an application against our actual need for it. Thanks to comprehensive Open iT reports, management saved as much as 25% of the overall software spend on unutilized licenses alone.”
Highlights
- Burns & McDonnell needed to track the usage of 400+ engineering design applications.
- Among three different software asset management tools, Open iT LicenseAnalyzer was selected for its capability to meter a broad spectrum of licensing models and because of Open iT’s outstanding delivery and consultancy services.
- Comprehensive reports enabled management to save as much as 25% of the overall software spend by uncovering underutilized licenses.
- Using insights from Open iT, they quickly reduced leased license cost for Oil & Gas projects by more than $350K, when the industry recently experienced a downturn.
- By leveraging comprehensive data and normalized reporting, Burns & McDonnell has minimized license cost for project teams in a fast-changing industry.
Company and Business Overview
Burns & McDonnell is a 100% employee-owned group of companies that offers global professional construction services. With over 11,000 employees globally, consisting of engineers, construction professionals, architects, technologists, and scientists, Burns & McDonnell plans, designs, constructs, and manages projects for many different industries worldwide.
Business Challenges
As acquisitions were completed, Burns & McDonnell discovered many duplicate licenses which made it necessary to consolidate separate contracts into enterprise contracts. They needed accurate software usage data to be in a better position for negotiating software costs when contracts were renewed
At the enterprise level, employees shared the tools and entitlements. However, Burns & McDonnell wanted to have visibility on the software usage of each business line. One of their goals was to showback the software consumption costs to each business line. In order to do this, they needed to monitor different applications with various licensing models. These include named user licenses, subscriptions, SaaS solutions, and concurrent licenses from on-premise, private, and cloud hosted license managers located around the world.
The downturn in the Oil and Gas industry also forced them to reconsider their software spending as their O&G projects were put on hold. They realized the need to right-size their licenses and entitlements, especially during the renegotiation of their various licensing agreements.
Aside from these, they sought to streamline their software usage reporting process. They aimed to standardize their software usage reports regardless of vendor, technologies, or license types. In addition, they wanted to be able to generate all these reports using just one portal.
Whitepapers
Cost Allocation and IT Chargeback
The most efficient way to create more accountability and awareness of how IT resources are used is to implement a chargeback system.
Software Usage Monitoring and Optimization
Learn how usage monitoring in an E&P IT environment can be beneficial for many stakeholders.
Rising Use of Subscription and Pay-per-Use Software Licensing Models
Have a meaningful software usage metrics and tools to evaluate and plan appropriately prior to making new licensing decisions.
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