An integral part of software license management is ensuring the highest possible collection rate of purchased licenses and correctly mapping them to their respective parent contract and product use rights.

This task is supported by SmartTrack's "receiving inspection" function, which keeps track of all transactions, whether the data is imported from procurement systems or manually entered. In this step of the process purchase data are verified against the Aspera Master Catalog and automatically processed to extract relevant data for the license inventory. The catalog is a core part of the product, providing the link between license terms (PUR) and manufacturer part number (SKU) so that SmartTrack understands the dependencies between licenses purchased and software installed.

Any licenses that could not be processed due to faulty or missing information are reported and remain in receiving inspection until the problem is corrected. This ensures that faulty data is not transferred into the license inventory.

Under the managed service, License Clearing, Aspera offers personnel resources and infrastructure to validate the license imports, aiming to achieve the highest possible collection rate. Syntactic problems as well as detecting faulty/missing information, for example: SKU numbers, contract numbers, and organizational assignment, are all taken into consideration.

Matching and amending the content of the catalog to customer specific data and maintaining related downgrade matrices can also be included as part of this service.

In Detail   

License Clearing includes:

• Clearing of license reports that are imported to SmartTrack through an interface to the customer's designated procurement system or that of a reseller.
• Clearing of syntactic mistakes that don't follow the required data format.
• Clearing of missing and/or faulty information in the manufacturer's article number (SKU).
• Clearing of missing and/or faulty organizational information, such as cost centers and email addresses.
• Clearing of missing and/or faulty information in contracts.