"The volume of different software applications became difficult to manage," Sacre observes. "We did our best but we were always exposed in a sense. We have grown by acquisition and the licensing situation in the companies we acquire is often in a bad state. We usually merge the businesses and then straighten out the -licensing afterwards."

Sacre says that software companies overcomplicate their licensing regimes, citing the more than 400 ways of licensing a Microsoft product. Hiring a consultancy helped John Brown Group understand how to interface with suppliers, according to Sacre, and shaved its software budget by 20 per cent annually. "Manufacturers are quite scary, hence the panic buying and fear factor," he maintains.

(SLC) has been bolstering its software asset management efforts over the past four years with impressive returns on investment. Back in 2004, the company installed Software Organiser, a licence management database program, and a software audit tool called Centennial Discovery.

The organisation, which manages loans and grants to students in higher education, also subscribed to FAST. "FAST have been a tremendous help to us, advising and guiding us through the accreditation process," says Theresa Kilpatrick, software licensing manager at SLC.

As a public body SLC has a statutory duty to comply with licensing terms. However, since investing in audit and compliance tools the organisation made a saving of £85,000 during its first year of FAST accreditation and has since benefited to the tune of about £50,000 annually.