Companies with a tight IT budget should seriously think about getting software asset management (SAM) to take unnecessary stress out of their job, according to an IT director.

Based in Austin, Texas, specialist from Dynamic Solutions Will McManus stated that IT audits could be a major hurdle for businesses and required bosses to keep their software licences up to date and easily accessed by inspectors.

He explained that his company once had to root through a number of filing cabinets for hours to patch fragmented information together - something that SAM could have achieved easily.

"It was a very onerous process, not just for IT but also for accounting and other departments. If we had just been more proactive in the beginning, we could have avoided the whole thing," Mr McManus said of the situation.

The Business Software Alliance believes that SAM is the best way for companies to get the most out of their software, with any unnecessary programs identified to save the organisation money straight away.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.