How to choose a PC Auditing Tool

First, decide "what is the objective of carrying out an audit of our PCs?". It may be that your initial objective is only to do one-off 'snap-shot' audit to enable a software licence reconciliation - perhaps to achieve FAST Certification. However, if you take a medium to long-term view you may find that other benefits can accrue from regular/on-going audits. Certainly, to achieve FAST Certification you will need to show that you have on-going processes to ensure that you have the correct number of software licences.

You may find it useful to review 'Auditing to Add Value' the article that we wrote for the FASTtalk Newsletter issue 5 1999 covering the benefits of auditing and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

One of the important things you need to consider is whether or not you have the resources to run the project in-house or whether you will need help from a third party. If you do need help it may range from one or two days on-site assistance to a full turnkey audit. Either way SAM Solutions TLC can help you.

When you have decided on your objectives take a look at the Basic Functions List and review the products you are considering against this and your objectives. If some features are 'missing' consider whether they are 'must have', 'nice to have' or 'not relevant'. You will also need to consider the cost and review this against your budget.

When you have a short-list of products, you will need to carry out an evaluation of each one. This is not always as easy as it may seem. If you were evaluating a new spread sheet package you would probably have a good idea of how it would work because you probably use Excel or 123 already and you would have a benchmark to measure against. Unfortunately, each audit tool tends to have it's own way of working and unless you already have experience of audit tools they are not necessarily very intuitive to use.

An easy way to reduce your short-list to just one or two products is to take advice from people (like us) who have spent years working with various tools and can help match your objectives to the most suitable tool(s).

At SAM Solutions TLC, we offer a 'telephone walk through' to help with the evaluation. This covers the initial setting up and running of an audit. This can save hours of your time and ensure that you are getting the best possible view of the product. After all, it would be wrong to dismiss what may be the best product simply because the installation instructions were not very clear or the manual was a .pdf file!

Try to use the same PCs during each evaluation, both to install the software and to run the audit. This way you will be able to compare 'apples with apples'. We recommend you create a table like the example here to help with the comparison. You will need to expand the table as it isn't complete, but it will give you a starting point.

If you need any help or advice in setting your objectives or evaluating software we will be pleased to provide it - and when you have completed the evaluation, why not review your conclusions with us?

We like to think that we can add value through our experience and there could just be one important factor that you have overlooked!