Recently, I attended a customer meeting where the focal point was how ServiceNow could enhance overall IT lifecycle management. Our discussion centered on how our platform seamlessly integrates with existing ecosystems to provide comprehensive visibility, governance, and stakeholder alignment. However, amidst the dialogue, one of the customer’s executives raised a significant concern: the challenge of tracking IT assets provided to remote employees, especially those who have permanently shifted their base location during the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing IT support during critical times has become exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.
This issue resonates with many companies implementing hybrid work policies. The pandemic has fundamentally altered corporate operations, bringing forth new IT challenges.
Furthermore, organizations falling under regulatory authorities such as IRDA (for Insurance), RBI (for banking), or SEBI (for stock holdings) are obliged to undergo multiple audits throughout the year. These audits encompass both IT and non-IT assets, as well as corporate software procured for internal or external usage. According to Gartner, most organizations face three or more software/hardware audits annually. Failure to comply with these audits can result in severe penalties, both monetary and reputational.
The majority of organizations maintain large teams, typically led by Asset and Compliance Managers, tasked with monitoring assets and conducting internal audit reports to ensure compliance. This process is labor-intensive and often requires extensive collaboration. Despite these efforts, there is a risk of erroneous results and untracked assets or processes.
Adopting a realistic perspective, the current approach to asset management is suboptimal, especially for mid to large enterprises with substantial asset counts. Moreover, it heavily relies on human efforts, leaving room for errors or missing critical information. Recently, there has been a trend toward migrating to the cloud (hyperscalers) or re-platforming applications into Microservices. In such scenarios, tracking assets and enforcing compliance checks become even more challenging.
So, how do we effectively address these issues?
The solution lies within ServiceNow’s platform, particularly its IT Asset Management (ITAM) module. ITAM comprises two major sub-modules: ITAM-SAM (Software Asset Management) and ITAM-HAM (Hardware Asset Management). When these modules work in tandem, they offer remarkable benefits for organizations. While SAM ensures controlled and optimized software expenditure, HAM provides visibility into asset estates and automates the IT lifecycle from procurement to disposal.
The primary objective of ITAM is to provide customer the visibility as to know:
- What all assets (Hardware/Software) they own
- Where are those assets located
- Who is using those assets
- How often these assets are being used
- What is the configuration/complaince status
- How much individual asset costs
- What values (ROI) these assets deliver
- When is the end of life or renewal for those assets
Addressing these essential questions is paramount for every organization. Failure to do so compromises the overall objective of maintaining a company’s reputation. Let’s understand how ITAM – SAM/HAM works and addresses which key issues:
Streamlining Software Asset Management
Following the activation of a discovery source, the Software Asset Management (SAM) application initiates the normalization process for software installation data within your organization. Regular weekly updates for publisher names, product names, software life cycle dates, and other pertinent information are provided to maintain the accuracy and currency of your discovered data. Leveraging machine learning capabilities can further enhance normalization rates. Moreover, organizations have the option to participate in the SAM Content Service, allowing for secure and anonymous submission of unnormalized content to ServiceNow for research, validation, and updates.
Efficient Management of Software Rights
Software entitlements enable effective tracking and management of rights for purchased software. This encompasses determining the quantity of rights purchased, associated costs, allocation details, and more. Software entitlements can be managed individually or imported in bulk to streamline administration.
Utilization of Publisher Packs
Managing license compliance across diverse software publishers with varying licensing models can present challenges. To address this, the SAM application offers publisher packs, extending functionality between the Now Platform and leading third-party software publishers. These packs provide additional capabilities to facilitate tracking and optimizing licensing for specified software publishers, complementing the extensive software publisher options available through the Content Library.
Monitoring SaaS Subscription Usage
The SAM SaaS License Management application facilitates seamless integration between your ServiceNow instance and third-party SaaS applications and Single Sign-On (SSO) providers. Through these integrations, subscription usage data can be retrieved from SaaS and connected SSO applications, enabling organizations to track usage, ensure compliance, and optimize licensing for subscriptions.
Tracking Software Spending
The Software Spend Detection application enables organizations to track and optimize software spending based on imported financial transaction data. This valuable data aids in identifying redundant software, updating purchasing policies, and effectively managing unmanaged software products.
Analysis and Enhancement of Business Processes with Software Asset Analytics Dashboards
Preconfigured dashboards within the SAM application offer actionable data visualizations, empowering organizations to track performance and improve business processes. These dashboards provide insights into license compliance, SaaS and SSO subscriptions, engineering applications, recommended licensing optimizations, potential cost savings, normalization trends, and more.
Efficient Management of Hardware Assets
The Hardware Asset Management (HAM) application normalizes asset data in hardware and consumable models. Regular weekly updates ensure the accuracy and currency of your data. Similar to SAM, organizations can opt in to the HAM Content Service to contribute unnormalized content for research, validation, and updates.
Automating Asset Life Cycle
With the Hardware Asset Management application, organizations can efficiently control the entire life cycle of their hardware assets from procurement to disposal. This automation tracks the financial, contractual, and inventory details of hardware assets, providing asset tasks for deployment, replacement, retirement, and more. Asset tasks can be seamlessly integrated with Incident, Change, and Work orders, streamlining ticket resolution and service delivery.
Refreshing Aging Hardware Assets
Replacing aging hardware assets with new ones is essential to maintain performance and mitigate associated risks as assets approach the end of their life cycles.
Auditing Asset Inventory
The Hardware Asset Management application facilitates the capture of asset inventory in specific stockrooms or locations using the ServiceNow Mobile Agent and mobile scanning capabilities. Organizations can compare scanned results with stored data on the Now Platform to improve data quality and inventory process compliance.
Managing Expiring Maintenance and Lease Contracts
Timely notification and action on expiring maintenance and lease contracts can help organizations avoid penalty charges. The Hardware Asset Dashboard provides a consolidated view of expiring contracts for efficient management.
Gaining Insight with Hardware Asset Workspace
The Hardware Asset Workspace offers a centralized view of an organization’s hardware asset estate, providing visibility into asset life cycles, health and status, normalization status, purchase orders, stock orders, and more. This facilitates informed decision-making and streamlined asset life cycle management.
In this blog I tried to address some of the key issues related to enterprise assets and how ServiceNow ITAM (SAM,HAM) can help customers address it in most effective ways. I trust you find this information valuable, and until next time, happy reading.
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