“Seat management” is a management term for figuring out the cost of an enterprise service. Have 50 employees with computers? Have a need for 50 copies of Microsoft Office? Then seat management is for you: rather than think of this as 50 separate people, they are 50 “seats” that you manage as an anonymous colletive.
And what happens if you don’t manage things properly? You have a case of seat management failure.
Seat management is allegedly one of the great innovations of the modern office world. But when it fails, it’s off to the dumpster.