Six months after rolling out GLPI for asset tracking, the CFO asks: "OK, we approved this project. What did it actually save us?" If the IT manager can't answer in one slide, the budget conversation gets harder next year. This article is the structure of that one slide — what to measure in GLPI, how to extract it, what story it tells.
The four ROI dimensions that matter
Asset-tracking ROI doesn't usually come from one big saving — it comes from four smaller ones that add up. The report should cover all four:
- Depreciation visibility — knowing what's still on the books vs. what's already written off. Avoids paying maintenance contracts on retired hardware.
- Licence under-utilisation — software seats paid for but not assigned. Each unused seat is a direct refund opportunity at renewal.
- Downtime avoided — incidents prevented because maintenance was scheduled before failure. Hardest to measure, biggest in dollar terms.
- Contract renewal misses prevented — auto-renewals that would have happened by default, vendor contracts that lapsed without renegotiation.
What to extract from GLPI for each
1. Depreciation visibility
Source: Assets → Computers/Monitors/etc. filtered by Decommissioning date set vs. Active. Cross-reference against the supplier contracts table. Concrete numbers to put in the slide:
- Number of assets fully depreciated this year (line item in the company's accounting).
- Of those, how many are still in use (= productive assets at zero book value).
- Of those, how many still have an active maintenance contract attached (= overpayment opportunity — those contracts should usually be terminated).
2. Licence under-utilisation
Source: Management → Licences with seat counts vs. Assets → Software → Installed. The delta is your unused-seat count. Concrete reporting:
- Total licensed seats × cost per seat = annual licence spend.
- Active assignments / total seats = utilisation rate.
- Top 5 licences by under-utilisation (e.g. "Adobe CC: 50 seats, 31 assigned = €4,200 / year wasted").
This single line tends to surprise CFOs the most. Most companies are 60 – 75% utilised on enterprise software seats; getting to 90% saves real money at renewal.
3. Downtime avoided
This is the only one that requires a baseline. Compare the 12 months before GLPI rollout against the 12 months after, using ticket data:
- Incidents categorised as "Hardware failure" (closed Tickets, type Incident, category Hardware-related).
- Estimated downtime per incident (use a conservative 4 hours average; document it).
- Loaded labour cost per hour for affected employees.
- Year-over-year change in incident count × hours × labour cost = downtime cost difference.
Be honest: this is partly attribution-by-correlation. The slide should say "trend, not proof" if the rollout coincided with other changes.
4. Contract renewal misses prevented
Source: Management → Contracts with End date within last 12 months and Notice period alerts firing 30/90 days ahead. Slide content:
- Number of contracts that expired in the last 12 months.
- Of those, how many were renegotiated (vs. auto-renewed at original terms).
- Of those that were renegotiated, the cumulative saving on the renewed terms.
Even a 5% discount on a €40,000 contract = €2,000/year. Three of those a year = €6,000.
The one-slide layout
For a board deck or CFO email:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ GLPI asset-tracking ROI — 12 months ending [DATE] │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Depreciation visibility │
│ • Assets fully depreciated, still in use: 47 │
│ • Maintenance contracts on those: 12 → €4,800 │
│ (terminated last quarter, savings YTD) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Licence under-utilisation │
│ • Adobe CC: 50 seats / 31 used → −19 at renewal: €4,200/y │
│ • Visio: 25 seats / 9 used → −16 at renewal: €1,800/y │
│ • Total identified savings at next renewal: €6,000/y │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Downtime trend (vs. prior year) │
│ • Hardware-failure incidents: 87 → 64 (−26%) │
│ • Estimated avoided cost (4h × €45 × 23): €4,140 │
│ • Note: trend, not exclusive attribution │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Contract renewal optimisation │
│ • Contracts expired in period: 14 │
│ • Renegotiated (not auto-renewed): 9 │
│ • Cumulative annual saving on renegotiated: €11,200/y │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Total annual recurring saving identified: €25,340/y │
│ GLPI annual cost (licence + hosting + ops): €4,800/y │
│ Net recurring benefit: €20,540/y │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Numbers are illustrative; replace with actuals from your Tools → Reports exports. Distinct from depreciation tracking mechanics (how to compute) and asset/finance integration (how to link to accounting). This piece is about communicating to the funder of the project, not about how the system works internally.
What NOT to claim
Avoid these in the report:
- Vendor-style percentages — "GLPI improved efficiency by 60%". The CFO will ask what 60% means and how it was measured. If you can't answer in one sentence with a baseline, don't include it.
- Productivity savings without dollarising — "saved 2 hours per technician per week" is fine if you also multiply by labour cost and team size. Otherwise it sounds soft.
- Avoided downtime hypotheticals — "could have prevented €50K outage" is speculation. Stick to actual measured trend lines.
The honest ROI report is usually less impressive than the marketing one — and that's why it works. CFOs trust numbers they can audit, and a credible €20K/year saving beats an incredible €100K/year claim.