Australian SAM Partner SOS certified by KPMG

Best practice

Australian SAM Partner SOS certified by KPMG

Australian IT software asset management accolades don’t come along every week by and large, so good news this week comes from Filipa Preston who is CEO and founder of Software Optimisation Services, a boutique IT and Software Asset Management (SAM) consultancy practice.

Preston has become the first SAM practitioner “outside of Europe” to meet all of the requirements of KPMG’s SAM Expert Assessment, recognising her skills as an advanced SAM practitioner.

KPMG launched its SAM Expert Assessment service in order to attempt to provide employees of Microsoft Certified SAM Partners (Silver/Gold) an advanced assessment of their SAM skills. The assessment, which was carried out by KPMG’s software compliance team in Cologne, Germany, is based on the latest specifications from various internationally recognised SAM methodologies, certifications and frameworks (e.g. ITIL, MOF and COBIT), supplemented with training material for missing or inadequately covered areas of competence, e.g. IT solutions and project management.

Successful completion of the SAM Expert Assessment means that projects under Preston’s leadership at Software Optimisation Services should meet KPMG’s requirements to deliver quality software licence compliance.

Preston herself has described the “comprehensive and highly developed” process her firm follows in its audit services, saying that she is delighted that it has been validated by KPMG.

“As the first software asset management practitioner outside of Europe to achieve this validation, customers can be assured of a mature and sophisticated SAM service at Software Optimisation Services,” she said.

Piece of SAM action, for peace of mind

With corporate budgets under scrutiny and Forrester reporting that software asset management is on the rise, an increasing number of firms are said to be looking to SAM services as a means of reducing their annual software spend while gaining the additional peace of mind of knowing they are compliant if ever audited.

“Our non-negotiable standards for data integrity and quality sets us apart from the crowd and enables us to find those extra savings that others simply cannot. Our process [delivers] reductions in our clients’ software expenditure in every engagement, with each project delivering savings of at least half a million dollars and paying for themselves many times over within the first year,” comments Preston.

Software Optimisation Services (SOS) worked under a publicly stated goal to prove that IT and software asset management projects can do more than just pay for themselves, but be a significant profit centre for the organisation that showcase the positive impact of the CIO and their department to the wider business.

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