Case Study: Argos Audit Defence Strategies & ITAM industry collaboration

Argos, one of the UK’s most successful and well recognized retail brands

Argos Audit Defence: In this video Danny Begg, SAM technical specialist at Argos, shares his approach to defending and managing software audit requests.

Danny also makes the case for more collaboration and networking amongst ITAM industry peers to share more information about software audits.

Through sharing intel and collaboration organizations can reduce their risk of non-compliance and increase their maturity. Kudos to Danny for sharing his approaches. If you would like to share your approach to ITAM with the ITAM Review community please consider our 2017 call for speakers to drop us a line to discuss options.

Danny covers the four major components to his audit management process: pre-audit, initiation, audit defence and negotiation. Let us know how this compares to your approach to managing audits.

Argos at a glance:

• Argos is a British catalogue retailer founded 1972
• 740 Stores
• Owned by Sainsbury’s Plc
• One of the most successful and well recognized retail brands in the UK

“Argos is the UK’s leading digital retailer, offering more than 33,000 products through www.argos.co.uk, its growing mobile channels, stores, over the telephone and uniquely, through Argos TV. Argos continues to be the UK’s largest high street retailer online with over 430 million website visits annually. Argos serves around 130 million customers a year through its network of 740 stores. In the financial year to February 2012, Argos sales were £3.9 billion and it employed some 31,000 people across the business.” Source.

Argos Audit Defence Strategies – topics covered:

• The value of the ITAM community sharing strategies
• Risk mitigation
• Risk Acceptance
• Audit Planning
• Vendor Management and Priority Vendors
• Proactive Audit Defence
• Audit Start
• Audit Checklist / playbook
• Strategies and legal positioning
• Audit response team structure
• Negotiation Strategies
• Concession Strategies
• Audit Timelines
• Audit completion and managing the vendor relationship

Thanks to Danny for taking the time to share his view and approaches, I hope you find it useful.

Useful Links: 

• Audit Defence Checklist – Nice to have, negotiable or non-negotiable terms
• How to segment and prioritize vendors and suppliers
• Campaign for Clear Licensing : Software Audit Code of Conduct