Ahead of the Unexpected: A New Vision for Asset Management Strategy [eBook]
Did you know that 46% of ServiceNow users have an Asset Management component to their environment, according to our 2019 ServiceNow Insight and Vision Survey?
The reason for that is simple.
The management of assets is essential to any enterprise, and mistakes can result in significant unplanned expenses.
Lucky for you, we recently published an entire book on the subject, covering the full ServiceNow Asset product, how to make a business case, how to know when you’re ready for Asset Management, creating an IT Asset and a SAM strategy, and even how ITAM and SAM work with other components of your ServiceNow environment.
Ready to jump right in? Go ahead and download the full eBook here. If you don’t have time to read the whole eBook just yet, skim a preview below.
Better Together: Asset Management and Your Enterprise Operating System
The benefits of leveraging the ServiceNow platform for IT Asset Management include the ability to easily augment, and be augmented by, the processes and workflows throughout the platform.
Let’s look at some of those process relationships that are enabled with ITAM as a key part of the platform.
Asset Management & Configuration Management
Nowhere is this mutually beneficial relationship clearer than the one between Asset Management and Configuration Management. If one considers all the attributes that can be useful for enabling both IT Asset Management and IT Service Management, they can be described in five general categories; Operational, Logical, Physical, Financial and Contractual. Together Asset and Configuration Management provides the overall picture of the resources available to the enterprise. Each has their own focus but also support the overlapping interest in a common view of the logical, physical, or financial view of the spectrum.
The IT Asset Management process supports Configuration Management by providing visibility to the parts of the lifecycle outside the scope of Configuration Management. When done properly, the inputs provided by the IT Asset Management process is reliable as not only a source of data to be leveraged by the CMDB, but also as a verification tool when the state of the infrastructure changes.
Additionally, when the Configuration process is designed, it relies on the insights from the business requirements gathered through the IT Asset Management program. The program provides an authoritative reference for Configuration Management via policies, contractual requirements, standards, roles, and responsibilities, allowing Configuration to align with the organization’s governance.
Asset Management & Service Desk
In addition, accurate asset information also can be a powerful diagnostic tool for the service desk. An examination of the user’s hardware and software configuration can be compared against usage prerequisites, corporate standards, and known issues in order to more quickly determine that a problem should be raised. In the case that a device requires extended repair time, the service desk with accurate asset information can restore service faster by identifying and dispatching compatible warehoused equipment to the user. The help desk can also initiate external service calls with the knowledge from the asset repository about that device’s warranty status or coverage under an external maintenance agreement.
The data collected by the service desk also helps the asset management staff conduct better analysis and more accurately define the total cost of ownership of the enterprise by incorporating trouble ticket and service request costs. Knowing the number of trouble tickets and associated costs generated by a specific model of PC or by a particular version of software can empower management to make decisions about redefining standards, training needs, or upcoming vendor negotiations.
Want to see specific examples of datasets in both Asset Management and Service Management that can be leveraged by the other? Download the full eBook for a detailed description of the ServiceNow IT Asset and Software Asset Management capabilities, plus more instance relationships, and how to build an Asset strategy from the ground up.
