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

[Flavia Margaret]

Hi @Stijn Verhulst1 , thanks so much for providing clarifications on this. If an Install Base Item is also a non-IT product that is deployed for/at customer, then how can be differentiate Sold Product and Install Base Item?

Does this mean that for every product being sold to the customer, we need to create both the Install Base Item and Sold Product records?

[Stijn Verhulst1]

Hi @Flavia Margaret ,

that's an excellent question. Whether the Install Base Item represents an "IT" or non-"IT" product (perhaps it would be better to use the term "technology" instead of IT) that is deployed for/at a customer, the difference between a Sold Product and an Install Base Item is the following:

- Sold Product: represents the type of product acquired by a customer and does not always require the tracking of Install Base Items. A product is not always "sold" hence the term "acquire" that I use. For example, vaccination organized by a government is a product that can be consumed by citizens but does not require an explicit financial transaction from the citizen.

- Install Base Item: represents the product instances deployed/installed/provided for a customer or at a customer site. An Install Base Item is not always required for every Sold Product. And there are some nuances... Let me give you a couple of examples to clarify.

Examples:

• Sold Product without an Install Base Item:
  
  Salad bowls: is it truly a must to track each unique salad bowl a consumer buys? Most likely not. Therefore, Install Base Items are not a must.
  
  Another example is streaming services. Think about Netflix... One can purchase it but nothing needs to be deployed or installed for the customer. Hence, no Install Base Items either.
  
  
• Sold Product: Vaccination
• Install Base Item: The vaccine itself which has a unique tracking number.
  
  When a citizen has an appointment booked for a vaccination, a Sold Product would be created but not yet an Install Base Item. Once the vaccine itself has been received by the citizen, an Install Base Item can be created for tracking purposes (which vaccine was received and its unique identifiers).
  
  Another example of when you would track both is a car. When a household bought 2 cars of the same type, you would have 1 Sold Product representing the type of car (hence the Product Model that links to the Sold Product) AND 2 Install Base Items which both represent the different acquired cars, each with their own unique registration number etc.

One last note I would like to make is a more complex example, something we use in our Customer Service Management courses: streaming services that can be consumed by a streaming device installed at the customer's home. This can be tracked as follows:

- Sold Product: streaming service
- Install Base Item(s): the streaming device that helps to stream the content on the customer's TV

So in other words, a Sold Product and its associated Install Base Items are not always a direct 1-to-1 mapping like with the car example. Neither are you obliged to have Install Base Items associated to a Sold Product at all times as the latter depends on what must be tracked, how it must be tracked, and the applicable process. Building further on my previous post, the Asset and Configuration Item stories extend the Install Base Item one 😀

Hope this helps! (sorry for the elaborate answer but this is a "grey" area and that's perfectly fine as it allows lots of flexibility) Do mark my posts as helpful if you would like to as I noticed my original post got lots of traction and actually helped people a lot to understand this topic better during implementations. Whereas this is not about me, I don't want them to miss out on these latest updates you helped to make very relevant to customer's use cases today 😉

[Flavia Margaret]

hi @Stijn Verhulst1, I have marked your posts helpful 😊

If i take the streaming service example, for the "streaming device" install base item, i supposed i would be able to link the install base item to a hardware configuration item.

Example:

But if we are talking about a car as an install base item, as i'm not sure which cmdb_ci class i can store the car in, would i be able to choose any configuration item to link the install base item to? So i wonder, if in this case I would just need to choose the product model (from the Product field) in the install base item record.

Example:

[Stijn Verhulst1]

Hi @Flavia Margaret ,

Your assumption about the "streaming device" Install Base Item and a link to a respective hardware Configuration Item is absolutely correct. You clearly understand the concept and how CSM now can work together with ITSM, connecting the different support sides on the service provider side.

The reason why I repeat this is because of the car and a potentially related Configuration Item. Imagine being the car manufacturer, hence the service provider, and you track the cars as Install Base Items (which is good practice). Then the next questions would be: do we need to track individual Configuration Items for each of the "car" Install Base Items? And if so, which Configuration Item class should we use?

- Must we track a Configuration Item for a car? If the car runs on digital technology (for example: firmware, CPU, GPS, ...) you support as a service provider: yes. Otherwise, no Configuration Item is needed.

- Which Configuration Item class should we use? If the answer to the previous question is "yes"; use the Configuration Item class that fits the attributes that must be tracked for the cars best. This is where database design comes into the picture as you must determine, based on existing table attributes and table inheritance, which table is the most suitable. This is a separate exercise, but I would not use the root cmdb_ci as most likely you would create custom attributes (= fields) unique to the cars, and you want to avoid clutter as all CI child tables of cmdb_ci will inherit those new, custom attributes. So definitely somewhere "lower" in the CMDB class tree.

If you ask me, tracking the "Product" on an Install Base Item is always a good practice regardless of whether a Configuration Item is tracked for the Install Base Item or not, especially now ServiceNow has a Sales and Order Management solution that appends CSM and relies on Product "core" data.

[Sironi]

Hi Stijin,

 As you stated that :   sold product basically is a service you're selling such as router maintenance, phone subscription, document management, etc...    they are deployed in a public or private cloud.

But my case i can see Some Sold Products are Service Models, Software Models, Hardware Models

I below Hardware is Physical Asset right , then why it was added under Sold Products? Not under Asset ? . please help me to understand .