SAM Managed Service

It is time for a SAM reinvention.

Software estates are bigger, more complex, and more expensive than ever. Traditional SAM models focus on backward-looking compliance checks and data collection, primarily for the biggest vendors.

But that’s not enough. Without deep visibility across cloud environments and tail-spend, organisations waste millions on unused, under-negotiated, or poorly governed software.

Audits and renewals still bring financial risk and operational disruption, while siloes between SAM and procurement functions result in missed savings opportunities and the chance to make real commercial impact.

It's time to think differently about SAM.

Livingstone's flexible SAM Managed Service

Livingstone’s SAM Managed Service transforms traditional software asset management into software investment management—where every decision is informed, every contract is optimised, and every pound is accounted for.

The service is impartial, independent, and bespoke to each customer. We work with your SAM tooling or use our in-house developed Software Investment Management platform Acuity, to gain data-driven insights at scale. We overlay our human-powered, publisher-specific expertise to deliver continuous visibility, optimisation, and risk reduction across your entire software estate.

The outcome?

Increased savings.
Reduced risk.
Better collaboration between departments.
Commercial impact that gets noticed.

Flexible approach based on software type

There is no one size fits all. Your software types all require different levels of effort. We adapt our methodology to cover them all:

Traditional: Think Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, SAP. These mega vendors come with complex licensing, high audit risk,
and hybrid deployments.
Cloud-native: SaaS-first vendors like ServiceNow, Adobe, and more. These have less risk and usage is usually able to be measured via a publisher provided portal. But there’s high potential for cost leakage.
Tail-spend: The long tail of smaller or niche software vendors. This is a world of lots of contracts, with low spend that add up to millions, but it’s often overlooked.

A focus on commercial impact to drive value

We constantly look for opportunities to optimise across all areas of the software estate:

Mega-vendor focused specialist services provide additional savings opportunities utilizing complex forecasting, demand, and optimized BOM techniques, with contract negotiation experts
Ongoing SaaS user profiling and optimization create in-flight savings, while tail-spend management ensures a tight grip on renewals
We help create process, policy, governance across departments to break down silos so that savings opportunities don't fall between the cracks.

Results that pack a commercial punch

While the results we achieve vary by client as each service is bespoke to their needs, outcomes we've achieved include:

Average savings of 38% on our optimisation and negotiation
Up to 80% cost savings compared to traditional SAM tool investments, with equal or better compliance and optimisation outcomes
$1.4bn in Microsoft savings identified in 2024
£493M in risk uncovered, £90M in savings opportunities identified in the 12 months from April 2024 for traditional software vendor ELPs
$4.8M in tail spend saved for a technology company