Cynthia Farren Consulting: Leveraging industry knowledge to negotiate successful licensing and cloud agreements

To run a lean company, it is essentially important to effectively manage your technology spend. Through Software Asset Management (SAM), Cynthia Farren Consulting gives you just that, keeping their clients best interest in mind, the company represents all software licensing matters. With their knowledge of industry trends and volume of licensing agreements, they meet their client needs in a unique and experienced manner.

CIO Bulletin sat down with Cynthia Farren, President and Founder, in an interview 

Q. Why was Cynthia Farren Consulting born? What main points did you set out to solve?

The year was 1999; Microsoft had started selling volume agreements to companies with 250 or more computers. The only knowledge source for how to license your environment was either a reseller or the publisher, both of whom had a vested interest in selling as much as they could, not showing any creativity on how to optimize your licensing. Additionally, most companies didn’t have a Software Asset Management (SAM) role to help manage and optimize their software licensing expenditure, leading them to be frequently out of compliance, spending too much or both! The goal of Cynthia Farren Consulting was to provide an independent expert who could assist with processes, policies, people, expertise and the creativity to manage and optimize a company’s software assets.

Originally, I set out to help small companies who didn’t have internal resources, almost immediately though, our client base became a list of Fortune 500 world-wide enterprises. Just because a company has a Software Asset or Vendor Management team, doesn’t mean they have the expertise to have a favorable negotiation with Microsoft, respond to a vendor audit or address the process gaps within their program. By hiring the expertise of Cynthia Farren Consulting, we have helped some of the nation’s largest enterprises, augmenting their internal teams.

Today, enterprises are spending more on their cloud computing than in their traditional contracts. Helping enterprises realize that their SAM practice easily pivots to including best practices and spend management for their cloud assets has become a commonplace conversation. Too many people are relying on their IT organizations to manage their Cloud Spend without remembering that a cross-functional team is typically their best approach.

Q. Can you introduce us to your software licensing services? What are their key features?

Our key feature is flexibility. SAM and Microsoft licensing/negotiations are our strong suit. We have a number of affordably priced packaged services we provide in this arena butwe also service most of our customers under custom scoped, fixed price service statements.

Q. How does Software Asset Management apply in the world of cloud computing?

Unfortunately most enterprises rely on IT and Finance to control the costs of this environment, for example, Microsoft Azure, Goggle Cloud Compute, Amazon Web Services; the list goes on, overlooking the value of the SAM and licensing roles. Ensuring you have the right experts working together gives your team the ability to leverage historical asset values, control the cost management functionality and ensure the proper controls are in place to maintain corporate governance. You would be amazed at the number of companies that have a sunsetted server still conserving real time resources when a “buy as you go” model would make more sense.

Q. How do you differentiate your services compared to other consulting or advisory firms?

The list is long, but here are a few examples.

Overall, we don’t take on every potential customer. In most firms the partner sells the work and hands if off to a manager or analyst to perform, that’s not the case at Cynthia Farren Consulting. I am elbows deep in every engagement to ensure every client is getting the value of my 30 years of industry knowledge, this naturally limits the number of clients we will work with, but we would rather deliver superior results for a select number of clients than mediocre results for the masses.

As a boutique firm, we have less overhead which keeps our costs low. Additionally, by leveraging my knowledge we don’t have to charge customers for a lot of research time – we have the answers and know where to find it in the fine print to support our answers.  In our negotiations the typical ROI for a customer is well over 3,000%.

Our negotiations include the following,

• We customize our recommendations to target your needs. We don’t use cookie cutter solutions - if you don’t think that a vendor can spot those a mile off, you’re wrong.
• We negotiate appropriate agreement that meets your business needs while respecting the fact that in another 3 to 5 years you are going to be negotiating your agreement with that vendor again. CRM solutions typically ensure that there is a “collective memory” of your past dealings with your vendor. We know that the best agreements are ones that add value to both parties. We’re not cut-throat and short-sighted but instead work to foster your longer-term relationship with your vendors.

Software Asset Management services:

• We are tool agnostic. There are a lot of ways to work with your existing tools and utilize them without implementing another tool but we’re also happy to work with you to implement the right tool.
• We don’t provide a one-size fits all solution. We work with your team to find the key controls to strengthen your existing framework and provide the best documentation and training to support those controls.
• Additionally, our technical writers can provide your documentation in either minimal (DITA) or verbose format to meet the standards of your document management system.

Q. What’s the one thing you want Cynthia Farren Consulting to be known for?

Sustainability – the agreements we negotiate and the controls we help setup are operationally sound and built to stand the test of time with modest modifications to stay responsive to the changes in the world of software procurement and fulfillment.

Q. Where are you adding the most value to companies today?

I’d like to say across everything we do, but the reality is that this ties into the largest Vendor Spends in an organization. Typically, it is through our Cloud Spend management and Microsoft agreement renewal strategies that we’re able to have the largest financial benefit for our customers. After deducting our costs from the savings our customers have realized they are still averaging over 36% hard dollar savings.

Q. Is there anything else you would like companies to know?

Hiring an expert truly does save money and reduce risk when negotiating a vendor agreement. Our customers negotiate these agreements typically every 3 years – we do them monthly across a breadth of industries and complexity, let us work with your team for a better outcome. Additionally, get help to reduce your financial waste in Azure and other cloud environments, let your team focus on areas that require their specific expertise and leave the administrative pieces to us.

Short bio of Cynthia Farren

Cynthia Farren is President and founder of Cynthia Farren Consulting, a Software Asset Management consulting firm which services clients nationwide from offices in California. With over 30 years’ experience specializing in software licensing and software asset management (SAM), she is an expert in SAM practices. Since originally founding her firm in 1999, Cynthia has been a key contributor to the world of software licensing with her firm assisting clients of all sizes with audits, maturity assessments, negotiations, and contract reviews to reduce costs and manage risks. By staying current with the needs of her clients she has been successfully implementing cloud computing controls and Spend management into SAM programs and negotiations for almost 10 years.

“It is through our Cloud Spend management and Microsoft agreement renewal strategies, that we’re able to have the largest financial benefit for our customers.”