How SHI helped Quest Diagnostics find a cure for its ITAM woes

Imagine being an organization with over 47,000 employees and locations in all 50 states, as well as Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and India, and having only three full-time employees to support your IT asset management (ITAM) function.

This would be a nightmare scenario for most. For Quest Diagnostics, however, it was a reality.

Lacking the manpower, expertise, and resources to handle the situation internally, Quest sought an outsourced ITAM provider that could offer both hardware and software asset management. But this would not be a simple fix.

The challenge of managing a complex environment

Quest’s environment was not only large, it was complex.

It had a global repository of tens of thousands of PC assets, over 300 publisher software products, and an extensive number of WinTel servers. Furthermore, its data was subject to strict industry regulation and compliance standards.

This task would require a seasoned ITAM provider with experience working with customers of similar complexity and size. The company turned to SHI.

An expanding project that required a full-service solution

Initially, SHI was tasked with managing desktop products and licensing, entitlements, and maintenance for Quest’s entire Master Software Library (MSL). However, the project quickly scaled to encompass the complex metrics of the company’s virtual server environment, comprising all its physical and virtual WinTel servers.

SHI was up to the task, creating a fully scaled, customized managed service. The solution included access to SHI’s IT Asset Management Platform, discovery tools, licensing consultation, and complete technical guidance for the organization’s entire IT estate.

The solution included:

1. Managing the entitlements and maintenance for more than 300 publisher software products in the MSL
2. Developing a vendor asset tagging program for physical assets
3. Implementing a standard acquisition and disposition program
4. Tailoring a cloud-based solution that integrates with both internal and external provider systems

SHI quickly became a virtual extension of Quest’s ITAM team. The Software Request Portal functionality within SHI’s platform expanded to accommodate SaaS-based provisioning.

As a result, SHI developed an API that connects directly into Quest’s systems to automatically provision and deprovision Office 365 subscriptions in near real-time in accordance with movers, leavers, and joiners enterprise wide.

A true practitioner of its own solution

While SHI provided Quest with a dedicated team of data quality experts to support the tool, the real beauty is how quickly the organization has taken to the tool, becoming a true practitioner of its own solution.

It now uses the platform for recognition training, compliance rules, and data quality. It uses the Software Request Portal within the platform to provision software for its users in near real time, and has a streamlined process for and centralized visibility into the software request and acquisition process.

Having entitlements centralized has saved Quest significantly on time. And, the company estimates that through the actionable data it has received, it has been better able to optimize its environment and minimize audit risk, saving them approximately $20M in cost avoidance.

Thanks to this successful project, Quest has made SHI its global provider of both ITAM and IT asset disposition (ITAD) solutions.