We recently spoke with Desiree Weiss who is a SAP licensing specialist. She won the ‘Specialist/Consultant of the Year’ award at the 2020 ITAM Excellence Awards. Helpful, courteous, resourceful and tenacious are just some of the words Desiree’s clients use to describe her passion for all things SAP.
Desiree spoke with us for the Change Makers podcast series, which features ITAM leaders who share their stories to help elevate and progress the ITAM profession and inspire all of us who work in ITAM.
If you’d like to listen to the full Change Makers podcast (12 minutes) that features Desiree, it’s now available.
Here are a few things we spoke with Desiree about.
Is there a particular project you’ve really enjoyed being part of?
I really enjoyed working with my client who nominated me for the ITAM Excellence Award. I was brought in to help them with an audit. So, I started with them at the beginning looking into all the licenses, the entitlement, what could be optimized, getting to know the whole company as you have to interact with everyone and then helping them to prepare for the audit. It was an amazing experience. I enjoyed feeling, and being made to feel, like part of the company. It was also great to see how this experience helped the internal team develop. I am very proud to have been part of it.
How have you gained trust with your clients? How have you been successful in selling in your ideas and recommendations?
The most important thing is to deliver efficient and effective information. Clients need transparency and visibility into what they own and what they use. That is the prerequisite for all discussions and helps to build short, medium and long-term strategies.
How can a SAP customer ready themselves, prepare themselves, for an audit?
The first thing you should do is review the entitlement list. This is the base for every audit. Check and compare what’s in the contract with the entitlement list. It can easily happen that there is an error.
Then, run at least one, at least 6 months in advance, test measurement. If there is an increase in users, talk to the application responsible to understand why this happened. It could just be a peak. Also, look into the transactions…what the users are really doing. You can do this manually.
With all of this information, you can review your compliance state and take the respective actions before, a minimum three months before, an audit may happen, or the next measurement needs to be sent.
Do you think ITAM has shifted from a reactive activity to a more proactive one that delivers business value?
Yes, completely. For me, ITAM and ITSM are critical for any organisation. ITAM is a core and brings the business and the technical teams together and only when they are together, can you achieve the best things. What I believe, and what I have seen in the past years, is the more you bring and deliver, the more senior management and the C-level will focus on and appreciate the work you’re doing.
Other episodes in The Change Makers Podcast series:
- What problems do you want to solve? (19 minutes)
- What was ITAM called in the 1980s? (18 minutes)
- The parallel between mixed martial arts and ITAM (14 minutes)
- I love the ITAM journey I’m on (20 minutes)