HxGN EAM (formerly Infor EAM) is a configurable enterprise asset management platform. The solution was acquired by Hexagon from Infor in late 2021.
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Snow License Manager
Score 5.0 out of 10
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Snow License Manager enables organizations to gain an accurate view of software usage and entitlements. Organizations can then dynamically reconcile these findings against license entitlements to optimize their IT environments and be audit-ready. HOW IT WORKS Snow License Manager is the central hub for the Snow Software Asset Management platform, providing a unified view of installed software, SaaS, cloud resources and hardware. With Snow License Manager, usage data is…
EAM is a very capable application without necessarily making it a complex tool to use. The nice thing with EAM is that, thanks to its configuration capabilities, it can be implemented in a multi-stage manner where users can start simple and then later (and over time) expand the usage as they learn or better understand its full potential.
I have said at a number of events that I have attended, where other suppliers have shown their latest and greatest new thing, it is the fundamentals that need to work, and need to work well, and this is what Snow License Manager does. It does not take a team of 100 staff to get the tool working or to keep the tool functioning, it works and is stable out of the box. We have learnt that putting the right processes in at the start means that Snow License Manager can do what it has been designed to do and what we have paid for it to do. Audits from vendors now days are relatively simple actions, with the Snow License Manager doing it's job we can quickly run a report and know exactly what our position is and then act accordingly, quick, simple and accurate data at your finger tips, as long as you put the work in to enter the license details etc. If Snow License Manager could invent a robot to go around the business and find all these bits of paper for us then that would be perfect.
Snow License Manager is an integrated part of our Licensing Compliance software solution. It does help us manage current license needs and actual license usage, as well as inventory shadow IT usage. The nice side effect of being able to see hardware specifications and keeping track of hardware usage by users is a bonus!
EAM is overall simple to use, especially since the UI and individual forms can be configured per user group with simple clicks by a system administrator.
We currently have the on-premise solution, which is very good indeed. If we were starting working with Snow now, we'd probably select the Atlas (SaaS) managed platform. This would reduce/remove work required to keep the Snow servers up-to-date with Windows and software updates.
The user support is better than average when comparing it to other software vendors we use. Normally they reply very quickly, but there is also a tendency to even reply too fast without fully analyzing or understanding the whole underlying problem. However, when we ask support to escalate something to the development team, this is done quickly as well.
Is is easy to find information on their support site or to enter a support ticket. The response times are usually under a day and they don't hesitate to get into direct contact with you to solve the current issue.
HxGN EAM is relatively comparable. Much of the software solutions for large enterprise businesses offer relatively comparable features and functionality. For example, integration with our organization's asset management strategy. The set-up of the asset management is organization-specific depending on the type of assets. At our organization, it was primarily equipment and buildings. HxGN EAM stacked up well against the other major solutions such as SAP EAM, IBM Maximo, etc. It may be best to include it as part of the options assessed for a solution to consider.
The deciding factor for the decision makers was the combination of license management and utilization statistics. Our desktop people wanted the utilization and reporting to be very granular and close to real time. Snow was purchased because they promoted their real time utilization in addition to the license management, alerting and reporting. To my knowledge, only Snow was given a proof of concept before the decision was made.
Infor EAM works as well as the data contained. Management has to be dedicated to a change in culture and everyone must buy into this.
Infor EAM is very useful in exposing shoddy maintenance practices, or poor reaction to required maintenance. A company cannot be afraid to let the system work for them, and take the necessary actions to improve maintenance practices to prolong the life of their investments.
The only negative, is as mentioned above, Infor has the capabilities with KPIs and custom reports to easily identify unacceptable maintenance practices.
