Wisdom Australia 2019: ITAM and stakeholder engagement

This is the Sixth “speaker spotlight” article for Wisdom Australia 2019 – a chance for you to see some of the wonderful speakers and sessions we’ve got in store for you this November in Melbourne.
If you’ve not yet registered, go and do it now – https://marketplace.itassetmanagement.net/event/itam-review-annual-conference-2019-australia/ …then come back and read this article 😁

I spoke to Miriam Redding, Director at Navigate Clear, about her session at Wisdom Australia.

Miriam Redding, Director, Navigate Clear

What is your session called?

Engaging Stakeholders.

What is your session about?

This session is about working with stakeholders across an organisation to deliver our key objectives. We’ll cover some examples of stakeholder engagement in various circumstances. We’ll discuss how to offer benefits to multiple areas of the business while achieving our key outcomes. We will also work through examples in groups to gain new ideas from our colleagues in ITAM.

How did you get started in ITAM?

During a break from teaching in special education, I began a job in IT. I found IT endlessly fascinating with many areas to explore and learn. My interest in ITAM was born from a clear need to simplify unnecessarily complicated information for end-users.

How would you describe what your company does?

Navigate Clear is an independent software advisory firm, with a focus on IBM licensing expertise. With over a decade of working with IBM licensing and IBM tools, such as ILMT and BigFix, Navigate Clear are able to assist in several ways.

What’s your favourite part of the job?

I love working with people. I am passionate about enabling clients to make informed decisions. Often licensing is filled with confusing, overly technical or burdensome detail. I enjoy simplifying that detail down to key takeaways.

What topics should delegates ask you about in Melbourne?

Anything IBM licensing related – there are many topics such as ILMT or Flex licensing, changes in Maximo etc. I provide regular proactive reporting for many clients so I’m interested in discussing the best way to report on all IBM software or any challenges you have.
I’m happy to talk all things related to Software Asset Management as it’s a topic I spend a lot of time on.

What one thing would improve the ITAM industry?

I would simplify reporting, namely discovery. Ideally via working across vendors to consolidate metrics and improved tagging. In my opinion, if a vendor would like to penalise for unpaid software, they should ensure it has an accurate software tag that meets standards that can be measured by multiple sources, thus easily enabling clients to understand usage. Simplified metrics and reporting would save vendors and clients time and money and enable us all to focus on core business.

What’s your favourite movie?

Tough question! I’ll go with ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’.

Engaging with stakeholders is always a key topic, something we see reflected in our user surveys each year. If you can come away from Wisdom 2019 with some tips for effectively engaging your stakeholders, that’s definitely a good thing!

IBM Training

Miriam is also running our IBM Licensing training day on November 19th – you can see more info and book on here – https://marketplace.itassetmanagement.net/event/2019-ibm-licensing-training-course-melbourne-australia-november/