Successful ITAM stands and falls with accurate data

// Compliance for the top 3 suppliers defined by METRO

// Valuable key figures as a basis for action for more than 30 METRO subsidiaries

// Complete transparency of all essential data for example, inventory levels

Metro_4c

Successful ITAM stands and falls with accurate data

In a holistic IT Asset Management (ITAM) project, METRO AG successfully implemented Raynet’s Technology Asset Inventory solution RayVentory and USU License Management to achieve complete transparency over its decentralized IT infrastructure, thus creating the basis for subsequently managing and optimizing its entire hardware and software portfolio sustainably and economically.

The customer
METRO AG is a listed international wholesale company headquartered in Düsseldorf. As the management holding company, METRO AG heads the group and focuses on the tasks of group management and the administration of METRO Wholesale. This company has a total of 678 stores in 24 different countries worldwide and also operates a delivery service in 10 other countries. Strong customer focus, networking and sustainability are central principles that guide METRO.

The challenge
To meet these principles, METRO faced the challenge of gaining complete transparency of all necessary IT assets. In addition to the hardware and software inventory, this also includes user and license data. These were previously gathered manually from a wide variety of systems and had to be validated in order to produce high-quality information.

Project information

Project: ITAM – conception and introduction
Branch: Wholesale food
Employees: > 97.000
Locations: 678 markets in 34 countries

About METRO AG

  • METRO is a partner that supports many small and medium-sized independent companies in the food industry
  • The METRO share is at € 10.50 (09.07.21)
  • More information: www.metroag.de/en

"Added to this was the fact that we have country-specific security requirements for the IT infrastructure, and these did not make data collection easy."

The solution and customer benefits
To get closer to the big goal of establishing a sustainable software asset management, Raynet’s Technology Asset Inventory solution RayVentory was implemented first.

“Before we started the project, the big question was how many devices actually existed in METRO’s IT landscape and where they were located. Based on this, we determined which devices were target of the inventory and who was responsible for these devices. This gave us a structure for the project and enabled us to plan the next steps.”

Christian Horstkötter, Senior IT Consultant der Raynet

These steps were the basis for creating a standardized, company-wide guideline together with those responsible for the project at METRO and, based on this, for carrying out a complete inventory.

Thanks to the flexible inventory technologies, the project team achieved significant results after a short time, and based on this, more than 60 customer-specific reports were created. The high level of automation and scalability of RayVentory was an advantage for those responsible. METRO now has complete transparency of all essential data –including, for example, inventory levels for each country, the entire Oracle inventory as well as cross-national insights into the inventory status of the company’s hardware and software.

Through the SaaS management integration in the Technology Asset Inventory solution, additional source systems from major manufacturers, such as Microsoft and Oracle, are connected in order to subsequently draw conclusions with regard to optimization opportunities. This important information is automatically transferred to USU License Management using RayVentory’s intelligent Smart Pull technology. This enables METRO to immediately identify unused licenses and optimize its portfolio.

The goal of achieving maximum data quality for effective data management was thus achieved and is the starting point for successful software asset management as well as holistic IT asset management.

The conclusion
It quickly becomes clear that such an extensive project requires intensive planning and detailed design. However, the results available to METRO at the halfway point of the IT asset management project show that this effort is worthwhile:

With RayVentory as a basis, the previously manually collected information and the data from various systems have been successively optimized and completed, resulting in valuable key figures. These are available to METRO as a basis for action for all METRO companies in over 30 countries as well as for many internal decisions in a central solution.

In the process, METRO was able to achieve compliance for their defined top 3 suppliers in order to be best prepared for future software audits. In the next steps, the existing inventory data will be enriched with end-of-life as well as daily updated vulnerability information. Thus, RayVentory enables METRO to perform a holistic risk assessment of all locations and countries.

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Technologies

RayVentory_2017_4c.png

Partner

SAMS Award 2021

For the excellent SAM project, METRO AG, together with its partners Raynet and USU Software AG, received the highly coveted and international SAMS DACH Award in the summer of 2021.

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"You have to run a marathon yourself, but it's great when you walk the path together and motivate each other! The collaboration with Ulf Vollmer and the colleagues at Raynet GmbH is truly unique - I'm pleased that we are working together to make the topic of ITAM "run" at Metro international and continue to drive us towards the future."

// Compliance for the top 3 suppliers defined by METRO

// Valuable key figures as a basis for action for more than 30 METRO subsidiaries

// Complete transparency of all essential data for example, inventory ratios levels

In a holistic IT Asset Management (ITAM) project, METRO AG successfully implemented Raynet’s Technology Asset Inventory solution RayVentory and USU License Management to achieve complete transparency over its decentralized IT infrastructure, thus creating the basis for subsequently managing and optimizing its entire hardware and software portfolio sustainably and economically.

The customer
METRO AG is a listed international wholesale company headquartered in Düsseldorf. As the management holding company, METRO AG heads the group and focuses on the tasks of group management and the administration of METRO Wholesale. This company has a total of 678 stores in 24 different countries worldwide and also operates a delivery service in 10 other countries. Strong customer focus, networking and sustainability are central principles that guide METRO.

The challenge

To meet these principles, METRO faced the challenge of gaining complete transparency of all necessary IT assets. In addition to the hardware and software inventory, this also includes user and license data. These were previously gathered manually from a wide variety of systems and had to be validated in order to produce high-quality information.

"Added to this was the fact that we have country-specific security requirements for the IT infrastructure, and these did not make data collection easy."

The solution and customer benefits
To get closer to the big goal of establishing a sustainable software asset management, Raynet’s Technology Asset Inventory solution RayVentory was implemented first.

“Before we started the project, the big question was how many devices actually existed in METRO’s IT landscape and where they were located. Based on this, we determined which devices were target of the inventory and who was responsible for these devices. This gave us a structure for the project and enabled us to plan the next steps.”

Christian Horstkötter, Senior IT Consultant der Raynet

These steps were the basis for creating a standardized, company-wide guideline together with those responsible for the project at METRO and, based on this, for carrying out a complete inventory.

Thanks to the flexible inventory technologies, the project team achieved significant results after a short time, and based on this, more than 60 customer-specific reports were created. The high level of automation and scalability of RayVentory was an advantage for those responsible. METRO now has complete transparency of all essential data –including, for example, inventory levels for each country, the entire Oracle inventory as well as cross-national insights into the inventory status of the company’s hardware and software.

Through the SaaS management integration in the Technology Asset Inventory solution, additional source systems from major manufacturers, such as Microsoft and Oracle, are connected in order to subsequently draw conclusions with regard to optimization opportunities. This important information is automatically transferred to USU License Management using RayVentory’s intelligent Smart Pull technology. This enables METRO to immediately identify unused licenses and optimize its portfolio.

The goal of achieving maximum data quality for effective data management was thus achieved and is the starting point for successful software asset management as well as holistic IT asset management.

The conclusion
It quickly becomes clear that such an extensive project requires intensive planning and detailed design. However, the results available to METRO at the halfway point of the IT asset management project show that this effort is worthwhile:

With RayVentory as a basis, the previously manually collected information and the data from various systems have been successively optimized and completed, resulting in valuable key figures. These are available to METRO as a basis for action for all METRO companies in over 30 countries as well as for many internal decisions in a central solution.

In the process, METRO was able to achieve compliance for their defined top 3 suppliers in order to be best prepared for future software audits. In the next steps, the existing inventory data will be enriched with end-of-life as well as daily updated vulnerability information. Thus, RayVentory enables METRO to perform a holistic risk assessment of all locations and countries.

"You have to run a marathon yourself, but it's great when you walk the path together and motivate each other! The collaboration with Ulf Vollmer and the colleagues at Raynet GmbH is truly unique - I'm pleased that we are working together to make the topic of ITAM "run" at Metro international and continue to drive us towards the future."

Project information

Project: ITAM – Conception and introduction
Branch: Wholesale food
Employees: > 97.000
Locations: 678 stores in 34 countries

About METRO AG

  • METRO is a partner to the many small and medium-sized independent companies in the food industry
  • The METRO share is at € 10.50 (July 9, 2021)
  • More information: www.metroag.de/en

Technologies

RayVentory_2017_4c

Partner

SAMS Award 2021

For the excellent SAM project, METRO AG, together with its partners Raynet and USU Software AG, received the highly coveted and international SAMS DACH Award in the summer of 2021.

Share this post

Successful ITAM stands and falls with accurate data

// Compliance for the top 3 suppliers defined by METRO

// Valuable key figures as a basis for action for more than 30 METRO subsidiaries

// Complete transparency of all essential data for example, inventory levels

In a holistic IT Asset Management (ITAM) project, METRO AG successfully implemented Raynet’s Technology Asset Inventory solution RayVentory and USU License Management to achieve complete transparency over its decentralized IT infrastructure, thus creating the basis for subsequently managing and optimizing its entire hardware and software portfolio sustainably and economically.

The customer
METRO AG is a listed international wholesale company headquartered in Düsseldorf. As the management holding company, METRO AG heads the group and focuses on the tasks of group management and the administration of METRO Wholesale. This company has a total of 678 stores in 24 different countries worldwide and also operates a delivery service in 10 other countries. Strong customer focus, networking and sustainability are central principles that guide METRO.

The challenge

To meet these principles, METRO faced the challenge of gaining complete transparency of all necessary IT assets. In addition to the hardware and software inventory, this also includes user and license data. These were previously gathered manually from a wide variety of systems and had to be validated in order to produce high-quality information.

"Added to this was the fact that we have country-specific security requirements for the IT infrastructure, and these did not make data collection easy."

The solution and customer benefits
To get closer to the big goal of establishing a sustainable software asset management, Raynet’s Technology Asset Inventory solution RayVentory was implemented first.

“Before we started the project, the big question was how many devices actually existed in METRO’s IT landscape and where they were located. Based on this, we determined which devices were target of the inventory and who was responsible for these devices. This gave us a structure for the project and enabled us to plan the next steps.”

Christian Horstkötter, Senior IT Consultant der Raynet

These steps were the basis for creating a standardized, company-wide guideline together with those responsible for the project at METRO and, based on this, for carrying out a complete inventory.

Thanks to the flexible inventory technologies, the project team achieved significant results after a short time, and based on this, more than 60 customer-specific reports were created. The high level of automation and scalability of RayVentory was an advantage for those responsible. METRO now has complete transparency of all essential data –including, for example, inventory levels for each country, the entire Oracle inventory as well as cross-national insights into the inventory status of the company’s hardware and software.

Through the SaaS management integration in the Technology Asset Inventory solution, additional source systems from major manufacturers, such as Microsoft and Oracle, are connected in order to subsequently draw conclusions with regard to optimization opportunities. This important information is automatically transferred to USU License Management using RayVentory’s intelligent Smart Pull technology. This enables METRO to immediately identify unused licenses and optimize its portfolio.

The goal of achieving maximum data quality for effective data management was thus achieved and is the starting point for successful software asset management as well as holistic IT asset management.

The conclusion
It quickly becomes clear that such an extensive project requires intensive planning and detailed design. However, the results available to METRO at the halfway point of the IT asset management project show that this effort is worthwhile:

With RayVentory as a basis, the previously manually collected information and the data from various systems have been successively optimized and completed, resulting in valuable key figures. These are available to METRO as a basis for action for all METRO companies in over 30 countries as well as for many internal decisions in a central solution.

In the process, METRO was able to achieve compliance for their defined top 3 suppliers in order to be best prepared for future software audits. In the next steps, the existing inventory data will be enriched with end-of-life as well as daily updated vulnerability information. Thus, RayVentory enables METRO to perform a holistic risk assessment of all locations and countries.

"You have to run a marathon yourself, but it's great when you walk the path together and motivate each other! The collaboration with Ulf Vollmer and the colleagues at Raynet GmbH is truly unique - I'm pleased that we are working together to make the topic of ITAM "run" at Metro international and continue to drive us towards the future."

Project information

Project: ITAM – Conception and introduction
Branch: Wholesale food
Employees: > 97.000
Locations: 678 stores in 34 countries

About METRO AG

  • METRO is a partner to the many small and medium-sized independent companies in the food industry
  • The METRO share is at € 10.50 (July 9, 2021)
  • More information: www.metro.de/en

Technologies

Partner

SAMS Award 2021

For the excellent SAM project, METRO AG, together with its partners Raynet and USU Software AG, received the highly coveted and international SAMS DACH Award in the summer of 2021.

Share this post

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This could also interest you

Contact our experts

You are interested in our solutions, need further information, or have questions? We will support you with your request – contact us today.

// METRO AG

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