Need help understanding CSDM with CSM (product models and assets)

[Hans Peter]

Hi,

I'll admit that this might be more of a CSM-focused question, but it seems to me like you might be the people caring the most about best practices concerning the data model of ServiceNow. On to my question:

I've been tasked with entering the services that we offer into ServiceNow, but I'm unsure how to do it. I can't wrap my head around the relationships between services, service offerings, product models, and assets. I'm CSM certified, and maybe I slept during the course, but I can't remember services and service offerings being discussed in that course at all - it was all "products" and "assets", which seem to be the core entities, as they're also present in the OOTB case form (unlike service and service offering).

All of that seems pretty understandable with tangible items, I think in the course they used the example of a model of a car as product model, and the asset being a specific instance of that car model (with a VIN number) - but if I use product models to model the services that the company sells, what would be the instantiation of that product model? "Asset" doesn't seem to be right.

I think this is the point where CSDM comes in, and maybe I should model services as "services" and "service offerings", I'm just confused that I've never heard of those entities in the CSM course, and that they're not OOTB shown on the case form.

Because I feel like I just wrote a few paragraphs of confusing gibberish, here's an example that I want to put into ServiceNow, but just don't know what the right places are:

Client management: providing companies with all the hardware they need (laptops, desktops, sometimes network equipment etc) so they can start working and don't have to care about it. Also, providing continuous support, and installing new software on the laptops, etc.

In this example, I could define the laptop as product model and asset, but on the other hand, it's not really the laptop we're selling, but the maintenance / service of said laptop. In a case form, I'd want to identify which service this case concerns (for example, "Client Management - Software Installation"), and the laptop that the software needs to be installed to. Doing this with only the fields "product" and "asset" feels wrong.

[mcconnellsj]

Hi

Perhaps if we start from the basics we can work this together.  Lets imagine we are just talking laptops.

The laptops are sold by you to this customer?  If so, then they go through normal asset creation process (hardware model -> hardware asset).

If the laptops are not sold by you, but the customer still requires you to manage their asset estate, then again they are added as assets.  Both scenarios follow the familiar CSM processes.

In terms of providing a managed service, your example has no reference to internal infrastructure providing service to this customer, or indeed internally.  So my view is it follows the standard CSM path: assets, contracts, entitlements.

CSM only interacts with ITSM when a service is being consumed by the customer.  For example, lets say your company has monitoring software that collects firmware and build information from the laptops, and that service is offered to the customer.  This is where the application service and offerings would come in.

If there is "fresh air" between your company and the customer - standard CSM works.  In myview anyway.

Your task of "Entering Services", to me is simply defining the type of Entitlements.  You don't give examples of these services, lets say Gold, Silver and Bronze.  You can either lock down the Entitlement descriptions with a choice list, or, extend the product model class table to include "Entitlements" (alongside hardware and software), and assign these to Entitlements.

The requirement to install software on the laptop would be presented to the customer as a catalog item in the customer service catalog, for example.  A case is really for exceptions.

My 2c.