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Read our guide to managing a software license compliance audit: https://www.anglepoint.com/ebooks/man...

First things first—you and your organization need to understand how to identify when you are about to be or are already being audited. It’s helpful to understand the basis and the facts about a software publisher audit to provide some further context.

Make no mistake—the typical software publisher audit is not really about license compliance. Software audits are a sophisticated negotiation tactic to get you as an organization to pay more money. Don’t believe me? When was the last time you received a statement following an audit formally certifying your license compliance? Likely you received a notification that the audit had concluded, but nothing more.

Now that we’re on the same page about the context for an audit, hopefully we can help you recognize other aspects you might not have focused on in the past. You’ll notice that audits will happen more often than not around fiscal quarter and year end sales cycles, and around major contractual events. If you have a software publisher with a 3-year contract cycle, for example, you can expect some increased audit activity in advance of those larger 3-year contract renewals.

Best practice here is twofold—first you need to have identified who your key software publishers are. We recommend analyzing your software spend and risk on an annual basis to make sure you are focusing where you need to be. Second, for this list of key software publishers, you need to understand what your major contractual events are and where they fit on your corporate calendar. You need to make sure you are managing them proactively and have trustworthy data AHEAD of major contract events, and that will also help you be better prepared to respond if you receive an audit notification.

You might not always know when you are being audited or when a publisher is attempting to put you under a level of scrutiny relative to license compliance. And this is by design. The first phase will be a contact from the software publisher, but this might be formal or informal and can come from multiple contact points in your organization.