Topic starter
06/11/2026 6:38 pm
TL;DR: Unused software seats often stay allocated after offboarding or role changes, leaving teams paying for access that no one uses, according to Serval. NHI Mgmt Group sees the core issue as execution, not discovery: finding a license is not the same as revoking the access attached to it.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Serval: “Software asset management works better when IT closes the loop”.
Key questions
Q: How do teams reclaim software license spend after offboarding?
A: Teams reclaim software licence spend by tying offboarding to entitlement record closure, then removing the user’s accounts, licences, and any shared service entitlements that remain assigned.
Q: Why does unused software access keep costing money after a project ends?
A: Unused software access keeps costing money because licences, seats, or subscriptions remain assigned after the user stops needing them, so the organisation keeps paying for provisioned entitlements.
Q: How should teams handle temporary access for projects and coverage?
A: Treat temporary access as an expiring entitlement, not as a special favour that will be cleaned up later.
Practitioner guidance
- Tie offboarding to entitlement removal Make every employee exit or role change create a revocation step for application seats, with confirmation recorded before the ticket can close.
- Connect SAM findings to service workflows Route unused-seat findings into ITSM so the help desk can assign ownership, track disposition, and preserve an audit trail for each recovery action.
- Set expiry on temporary access requests Use time-bounded access for project-based software so the seat expires with the work instead of waiting for inactivity detection later.
Bottom line: Software licence waste persists when discovery is not connected to access removal and seat reassignment.
Explore further
View Full Forum → | NHI Foundation Course → | Our Services → | Read the full analysis →
06/11/2026 6:42 pm
Seat reclamation is a lifecycle control, not a procurement clean-up task. Discovery can surface unused licences, but the governance problem is whether access is actually removed and the entitlement is made reusable. Organisations that treat software reclamation as a finance-only issue leave the identity and ticketing handoff unresolved, which is where waste persists. The practical conclusion is that the control boundary sits at lifecycle execution, not at inventory reporting.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Around 59% of companies report experiencing a data breach related to poorly managed offboarding processes.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should teams handle temporary access for projects and coverage?
A: Treat temporary access as an expiring entitlement, not as a special favour that will be cleaned up later. Set a duration at approval time, route approval through the right owner and ensure the grant is automatically removed when the task, leave or coverage period ends. If expiry is not part of the grant, the access will linger.
👉 Read our full editorial: SAM and ITSM together close the gap between unused seats and access removal