With a number of people involved in the process of specifying and implementing software, who has the expertise and the responsibility to make sure the company stays in compliance and avoids significant financial risk?

Consider the following:

The End User: A sales rep tells the end user all about the functions and the value a certain software product provides.  Most often, the licensing limitations are not discussed. The individual decides to make the purchase, and at some point, the publisher or service providers supply contracts that specify a subset of the terms and conditions for the product.

The Purchasing Department often just negotiates a better price and signs the contracts.

The Legal Department ensures all required contracts are in place; however, they may not be aware of the technical use rights associated with the product or exactly how it will be used within the organization.

The End User assigns a technician to install the software. The technician is rarely aware of the specific licensing agreements for that product or the rules around its deployment.  His or her main goal is to get the product working within the allocated time and budget.

Over time many things change, including the hardware, the software release levels, the people who are using the software, and the licensing rules (the acceptance of which does not always require a signature). Therefore, what might have been compliant in 2018 may no longer be compliant in 2020.

Given the above, what should you do?

Asking the right people the right questions will go a long way toward understanding what data needs to be tracked and creating an awareness of the information that needs to be shared between and among different departments. 

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