Maksymilian was born and bred in Poland. When he was starting to think about challenging himself with a new job opportunity, by luck or pure chance, Prime Engineering Poland found him. He embraced the opportunity with open arms and today he is part of our high-skilled team as a Software Licence Manager.

Technology makes him smile, but swimming does not fall behind. If he has to choose between the sea or the mountains, the water always wins. Meet him and find out how has been swimming with Prime Engineering in this sea of development.

 

To someone who does not know what it is like to work on Software License Management, describe us one of your days.

I usually start by checking my email and teams because I get a lot of questions on how to license a particular software, how many licenses we own, and if we have available licenses to distribute. I also contact suppliers and producers to ask some questions about products whenever something is unclear, or whenever we want to know more about discounts to buy a product.

Then I go to our ticketing system and check if there are any tickets to buy a license. After this is done, the next step is the accounting system, where I purchase orders or check invoices. Part of my job is also renewing support for software we already own and use, so we can say this is the typical “paperwork” I have to do. If there’s time, I also search for information on producer’s websites about how software is licensed and its prices, trying to find the optimal way for the company to buy licenses without overpaying.

How do you manage your daily workload? Is there a specific process you follow?

There are three sources of daily workload for me: email/teams, ticketing system, and accounting system. I start by checking them in this exact order every day, from most urgent to less urgent. The most time-consuming part is searching for information or contracts in our archives.

IT investment in software keeps increasing as companies leverage new tools to grow their businesses. Tell us about the key benefits of SLM for organizations.

Software Licenses Management (SLM) has many pros. First, you have 95%+ of your data in one place (devices, software, licenses, cloud), and professional SLM tools have already defined all license metrics within them. These tools make it easier to assign licenses and see the possibilities for each manufacturer. Thus, they allow you to have automatically calculated compliance which comprises the number of licenses you provided and how many you are using across the organisation.

With SLM, you can define a warning whenever you are running out of licenses or out of subscriptions or have the information that a certain product has reached its end of life. For a license manager, an SLM tool is the most wanted and needed tool for their work.

Why is license compliance so important?

Every major producer (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP) has the option to do an audit in your company, and if you are not license compliant, you must buy the missing licenses and pay fines. There can also be audits from external companies that can have the same results. If you are trying to create a positive image for your company, don’t forget that the software you use helps your company to grow, since it can improve your products.

What is your advice to those starting a career in SLM today?

Learn about top manufacturers/producers (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, VMware): how they are licensing their products, what kind of agreements they have, as well as their most common products that almost every company uses. You should also speak English (it’s mostly necessary to write emails) since most small companies don’t translate their websites, and the agreements and terms of use are often in English.

Knowledge of some of the most popular Snow License Management Tools (ServiceNow, Snow Software, Flexera) would be a great asset since it is a must tool for larger companies. Organisational skills are also essential because you can have a lot of tasks at work. In License Management you will need to search for information in agreements and archives, and it is usually very time-consuming to find the specific information that you need. Last but not least, some knowledge about IT software and how it works can also be a plus.

Do you have a passion project outside of work?

I have three little kids so right now I postponed everything because I don’t have enough time. But when they grow, I hope to go back to swimming, playing video games and watching movies (blockbusters), the three things that I usually spend my free time on.