Managing Publisher Audit

Auditing is a legitimate right of the software publisher. An audit is intended to monitor the conditions of use of software. A “compliance audit” consists of verifying the consistency between contractually defined user authorizations (licenses and rights) and the actual usage of the software.

How to minimize the impact of license audits?

In the event of an audit, we first help the customer create a safe framework for the audit. What is the scope? Does the vendor agree with your entitlements list? Can the vendor provide a detailed description of metrics as an appendix to the audit protocol?

We help perform a data collection and a compliance analysis in parallel or ahead of that conducted by the auditor, so as not to fuel unnecessary conflicts with erroneous data. We anticipate situations where unclear advice, unintentional mistakes, or false positive elements could threaten your company.

As need be, we provide a well-argued and comprehensive counter-report, taking into account favorable clauses that your company may have signed as well as unfavorable clauses that were not presented to your company for approval.

Thanks to our tools, we know how to optimize your allocations, reduce your risks and thus minimize or even eliminate the financial impact of the audit. We take the same approach to all publishers and products.

The Following Services Are Included in Our Engagements

	Vendor specific experts – our Audit team has either worked at the vendor or at a big auditing firm for many years auditing software from that vendor
	Data collection done from your tools as much as possible
	Industry leading tools for license calculation and normalization – whether developed in house or third party, we’ve vetted these tools in our practice to make data collection easier for you
	Review of all software contracts related to that software publisher to make sure we have the full history and understand your contractual rights
	Data experts – most companies have findings against them in software audits because they don’t’ have the right data – we love data and we make sure it’s ready for the auditors
	Team Members – Our experts become part of your team – we don’t get paid by the software vendors or auditors – we become one of you and our goal is the same as yours, save you money
	Training and back up documentation – everything we do is documented and we train you on what we did so that you can do it yourself the next time

Our Services for Managing a publisher audit

SAMWORX offers a complete service to help organizations prevent and manage software license audits. This type of service is often called “counter-audit” or “audit defence”

Risk anticipation: Software license audit prevention plan

We help our clients anticipate potential audits through Publisher Audit Prevention Plans, intended to understand the client’s context, identify triggering factors and assess audit risks over the coming year. We conduct mock audits and remediation plans in order to make you audit-ready.

Deliverable: Annual prevention plan for software audits

Risk anticipation: Audit protocol preparation

Upon receipt of the audit letter, we help you leverage your legitimate rights to a fair and balanced audit process. Audit protocols bring a valuable framework to all parties and reduce the risk of an audit report creating false representation.

Deliverable: Advice during audit protocol negotiation and appendix creation (scope, reference documents, metrics).

Risk anticipation: Compliance analysis and remediation

Upon receipt of the audit letter, the purchasing and IT teams need to analyse the compliance situation and initiate remedial actions before sending data to the publisher. The objective is to conduct a compliance analysis in order to identify non-compliance and reduce this as much as possible before allowing the auditor in.

Deliverable: Inventory of purchases and acquisitions, inventory of facilities and usage, compliance position and financial risk assessment, optimization and remediation plan.

Support with managing the audit and managing the relationship with the publisher or auditor

How should you respond after receiving an audit letter? Who should be in contact with the auditor? When should you send the data? What are your rights and those of the auditor? How can you make sure that you are not making a mistake and that the publisher’s claim is justified? SAMWORX’s experts support you at each stage of a license audit, answer your questions and train your teams.

Deliverable: Ongoing advice (emails, presentations, letters, etc.)

Counter-audit report

Our experts analyze the audit reports. We detect negotiation levers, possible errors or approximate calculations, and legal “vagueness” that can be used to your advantage. With this information, we establish a counter-audit report that you can present to the publisher. A strong counter-audit report puts you in a very powerful position.

Deliverable: Counter-audit report and associated explanations

Settlement support

Our experts help you orient yourself. We help you convince your top management to buy licenses that are really missing, and not to sign up for bolt-on deals that the vendor may be promoting but that have nothing to do with your real needs.

We also help you show the vendor that your legal team has a strong case and that the vendor will be unlikely to win in a court of law.

Our experts help you weigh the interest of buying beneficial and recent technology from the vendor (score card solutions) together with older products for which usage has grown beyond your real entitlements, as a commercial lever.

We help you analyse vendor quotations, vendor settlements contracts, strange or new clauses, URLs, and enhanced duties and limitations for your company in the future.

Deliverable: Advice on products and settlements negotiation. Business cases. Arguments against invalid audit claims. Managerial meetings. Advice on new offers, and documentation of settlements.