The extraordinary events of the last 12 months left many businesses reeling from the near catastrophic impact that COVID-19 has had on operations, workers and finances.

With technology and Digital Transformation becoming critical to the response, IT have been subject to unprecedented demand and – as with anything tested to its maximum capacity – the stresses will always highlight the weaknesses and gaps.

Encouragingly, the response by businesses appears to be technology investment, with recent research from Gartner indicating a global increase in IT spending of 8.4% in 2021 and Devices and Enterprise Software representing the greatest growth. This raises the further questions of how does IT now manage these new assets and hybrid environments; how does IT itself Digitally Transform to be able to have the agility, understanding and control that will be needed to meet the new business demand? 

In response, Certero, a leader and major innovator in the management of IT Hardware, Software and Cloud assets, offered these organizations as close to an off-the-shelf-solution as you could get. 

The Warrington-based business pioneered a new proposition for enterprises that would enable rapid, significant transformation to the way IT can ‘see’ IT assets, how they manage them and optimize their value as well as cost. Most importantly, businesses could gain the holistic view that’s always been missing. They can now unify asset data together and mine that information for greater intelligence, safer decision making, sustained measurement and understanding of IT. That insight then feeds into the continuing cycle of identifying and fulfilling opportunities to Digitally Transform and improve.

Certero already had the technology platform to do this, as they saw the pandemic as accelerating a change that was happening anyway, but this new package needed to be more than just the technology. 

Stretched IT departments need support in transitioning from the ‘old way’ to the new, and that is what Certero offered through a combination of technology and their in-house ITAM /SAM services team; an immediately beneficial, almost zero-overhead Digital Transformation proposition for IT to really get in control.

‘Digital Transformation’ can often be misinterpreted to describe simple ‘digitization’ such as replacing an existing task with a virtual alternative – for example shifting from recording transactions in a paper book to recording transactions in a computer via a spreadsheet. 

When in truth Digital Transformation is a process that fundamentally changes the way that businesses operate and engage with their markets. A Digital Transformation strategy epitomizes being analytical, opportunistic and leveraging the power of modern technology in multiple ways; automating manual processes, deriving insights and intelligence from data and removing the old bottlenecks in processes that slow businesses down and prevent them from growing and engaging in new markets.

The benefits are clear and measurable. Higher productivity, leaner operational efficiency, increased readiness, agility and scalability – five principles that couldn’t be more valuable to businesses in these turbulent times. 

So, for IT, having clear asset management information, knowledge and insight is essential and was extremely difficult to attain through the old approach of running a combination of overlapping ITAM/SAM solutions; each offering an incomplete view of assets and each with its own data essentially in a silo. 

Certero has the power to fix this and packaged within the ‘Digital Transformation Edition’ delivered as SaaS, are five of Certero’s products that perform the following, all within a single platform solution and UI:

• IT Hardware Asset Management across all Windows, Mac, Linux, zLinux and Unix platforms

• Software Asset Management covering all Wintel vendors including Microsoft & Adobe

• Mobile Device & Application Management covering iOS & Android

• Self-Service App Store for automating the request / delivery of Wintel applications for users

• Self-Service Password Reset Solution, for Windows & Mac OS

Due to the advanced architecture that powers Certero’s unified ‘platform’, all of the products work optimally and holistically together as one single solution as it’s been purposefully created this way and not simply acquired and re-branded, which is the norm amongst vendors. This means that uniquely with Certero, scaling up capability or simply selecting the features you need is a case of ‘switching on’ the capability you require and it just works – further removing the old overheads of increasing scope.

The big benefit that really is unprecedented however, is Certero’s architecture meaning that each product contributes to one consolidated data source within the solution by default. This makes incredibly powerful information readily available and ‘live’, with no hassles or complex integrations required. For IT departments, they can rid themselves of the ‘legacy technology debt’ as moving functions onto the single platform decreases more and more noise and inefficiency. This provides a business with the insights and intelligence that powers greater productivity and; further Digital Transformation improvement. 

As standard all of Certero’s products share the same user interface, therefore reducing the time needed for training, so once a user is upskilled on one product they will know exactly how to navigate the others. What’s more once an individual is confident using the products Certero enables them to customize their Dashboards and Reporting tool specifically to their preferences.  

There’s also the increased security. As a business, Certero technology and services are fully ISO27001 Certified, the international standard that lays out the specifications for implementing IT systems. Security is end-to-end, so there are no gaps.

Certero’s Digital Transformation Edition doesn’t just help to manage Business IT Assets everywhere, it also includes solutions to automate and improve operations such as the time-consuming password reset and software request / delivery processes. Through Self-Service Password Reset and the inclusion of an ‘enterprise app-store’, these solutions – still on the single platform – have proven to dramatically reduce calls to the Service Desk and open up the availability of Service to end users, 24/7.

Additional products such as for optimizing Datacenter licensing with IBM, Oracle and SAP and Certero’s SaaS and Cloud management solutions are also available if required, furthering the potential to simply ‘manage everything, everywhere’ in one solution.

Certero are committed to supporting each business they work with through the transition process onto the new platform, providing training, PMO and technical support. The team work tirelessly to neutralize any commercial or time pressures, ensuring a smoothly managed process with minimal impact to business’ operations.

John Lunt, CEO at Certero, spoke about his desire to help businesses as they take this monumental step, “We don’t see 2020 as an outlier, we plainly see it as an accelerator for change that was always coming. More and more businesses are seeing the value and the necessity for Digital Transformation and we want to help with that transition.”

He continued, “At Certero we’re devoted to helping our clients achieve Digital Transformation for the betterment of their businesses. And we’ll support them every step of the way from our initial consultations right the way through to once the solution has been implemented and we can offer our ongoing support.”