Difference between Asset and Sold Product in CSM

[SwarnadeepNandy]

I am trying to figure out the difference between Asset and Sold Product. Or what is the relationship between Asset and Sold Product. When to use Asset and when to use Sold Product. Where should the assigned product be stored?

Where should the case be raised on? How the BOM should be mapped, either in Assets or Sold Products?

More in-depth insight will be really helpful, maybe with an example (if possible not the Boxeo dev, qa and prod example Or Sold Product is only meant for SAAS products).

Thanks & Regards,

Swarnadeep Nandy

[Kunal Varkhede]

Hi Swarnadeep Nandy,

Products and assets identify the product models and individual product instances owned by a customer.

With the Customer Service Management application, you can configure product models and assets.

A product is a good or a service that a company sells to and supports for their customers. A product has specific features or components which determine the agents best qualified to provide support. A product model is a specific version or configuration of a product. A product can be installed at a customer site or in-house with access provided on a subscription basis.

Go through this Servicenow Doc

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-customer-service-management/page/product/customer-service-...

Set Up Asset Contact Relationship

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-customer-service-management/page/product/customer-service-...

I hope it will help you.

Regards,

Kunal.

[Stijn Verhulst1]

Hi Swarnadeep,

that's an excellent question and I hope this will clarify it for you. The whole Install Base setup with Sold Products is focused on digital services, which are different from physical products and assets, because they are deployed in a public or private cloud.

Thus a sold product basically is a service you're selling such as router maintenance, phone subscription, document management, etc... where as an asset is a physical product located at the customer's premises.

It leads to the situation where you perfectly can have both worlds next to each other, dependent on your business. Maybe you sell an application not running in the cloud but instead on a customer's server? That would be an asset.

Though, what if you for example sell additional packages for the application running in your premises and connecting with the application at the customer's premises? That would be a service and therefore a sold product.

The sold product in its turn can be related to Configuration Items, responsible for running the service appropriately within your premises. These can be used to track incidents, problems, changes etc...

It implies you can track on a case the sold product, product and asset. But not necessarily all of these would be filled in or applicable. Assume the customer wants to log an issue regarding the previously mentioned application; this would fill in only the asset & product on the case. It's "their asset".

On the otherhand, if the customer would like to report an issue regarding the additional packages of the application; a service which is ran by your company, the sold product & product would be filled in on the case.

Last note: a sold product doesn't always have to be a SaaS product though it's quite common. It also could be for example a maintenance service, hence you can link entitlements to a sold product, not dependent on any CI. To keep it simple: a sold product represents a business service.

Hope this answers your question!

Warm regards,

Stijn

[SwarnadeepNandy]

Hi Stijn,

Really appriciate for your elaborative answer. It really helps clear out lot of mist. But on the contrary it creates some mist as well. 😛

We had discussion with ServiceNow. They mentioned, they are going away with the notiion of Assets in CSM. Assets will be used mostly from Vendor perspective. i am not sure, this is true or not.

But the explanation you have provide, actually makes quite a lot of sense.

We have CFS and RFS. But here I get really confused, where to map it?

Regards,

Swarnadeep Nandy

[Stijn Verhulst1]

Hi Swarnadeep!

Happy I was able to at least clear out a bit of the mist 😉

As for the stepping away of Assets in the CSM solution, it's something I cannot confirm at this moment. I'm not aware of such a change. But maybe it was said in the context of your use cases highlighted during the discussion? (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Before I can answer your question decently, what are CFS and RFS referring to?

Warmest regards,

Stijn