Reducing the cost of enterprise asset management with ServiceNow

[Dave Aiken]

What is Enterprise Asset Management? 

Enterprise asset management (EAM) combines systems, processes, and software to control physical assets and equipment. EAM is a business application used by asset-intensive industries to optimize capital investments, oversee maintenance and repair activities, and manage costs. The Enterprise Asset Management process manages the life cycle of all enterprise assets within ServiceNow. 

Use ServiceNow’s Enterprise Asset Management application to optimize the quality and performance of investments by reducing downtime, increasing asset utilization, and extending asset lifespan while lowering operating costs for asset-intensive organizations. Strong inter-process relationships exist between Change Management, Incident Management, Request Management/Fulfillment, Vendor Management, Procurement, Asset Discovery, and Configuration Management.  Enterprise Asset Management is a critical component of a reliable Service Catalog and CMDB within the ServiceNow platform. 

Enterprise Asset Management oversees the entire lifecycle from planning the business asset needs to acquiring equipment, deploying items, managing enterprise assets during operations and maintenance, and ultimately retiring them. 

EAM allows tracking physical assets important to the business but not related to IT and, therefore, not part of Hardware Asset Management (HAM).  This is a huge deal in the ITAM space with massive innovation potential.  

Main features of ServiceNow’s EAM 

1. Multi-component models and assets: Define parent-child relationships to guide and simplify work activity planning throughout the asset lifecycle. There are three model types: 
   1. Consumable: This model type is used to create consumable assets.  Consumable assets do not have serial numbers or asset tags, as they are tracked in bulk.
   2. Pre-assembled: A model with one or more model components used to create pre-assembled multi-component assets.  This model is used to represent assets that are assembled by a manufacturer or OEM prior to being shipped to your organization.
   3. User-assembled: A model with one or more model components used as the blueprint for assembling multi-component asset kits from inventory after being received by your organization. 

2. Enterprise risk configuration and scoring: Improve asset service and maintenance by assessing and tracking risk profiles of critical assets and their impact on operations. 
3. EAM Workspace: EAM Workspace provides a unified medium with multiple views that help you manage your assets efficiently by providing visibility into all the critical aspects of assets, such as dashboards, stockroom, asset count by model, life cycle state, model category, and overall performance of investments. 
4. Out-of-the-Box workflows for: 
   1. Return Merchandise Authorization
   2. Asset Refresh
   3. Loaner Assets
   4. Recall Orders
   5. Stock Orders
   6.  Lease-end Management
   7.  Disposal Orders 

Primary Objectives Enterprise Asset Management Addresses 

The primary objective of the Enterprise Asset Management process is to standardize the asset lifecycle as it pertains to requesting, procurement, receiving, installation, retirement, and disposal.  This includes tracking and reporting the data attributes related to ownership, status, and location of enterprise assets and associated maintenance contracts.  

The objectives of the Enterprise Asset Management process are to: 

• Ensure all enterprise assets are recorded and maintained in the asset repository. 
• Accurately identify enterprise assets to be refreshed or retired. 
• Ensure all maintenance and lease agreement information is maintained in the asset repository and linked to the appropriate asset records.
• Record purchase order information from corporate procurement functions to enable the receipt of enterprise assets and the initial creation of asset records. 
• Capture enterprise asset information from CI installation, move, add, change, or replacement activities. 
• Provide prompt registration and updates of enterprise asset records to enable the performance of other service management processes.

Why implement Enterprise Asset Management 

EAM helps track an enterprise asset through its entire lifecycle, which is all made easier with a single source of truth on the Now Platform. 

• Get a better handle on the connected and non-connected assets the enterprise owns or leases and where they are at any given time.  
• Streamline enterprise asset processes using automation and moving off of paper and spreadsheets, and reducing swivel-chair activities between systems. 
• Maximize the useable asset life and mitigate risk by redistributing unused assets, and making sure you don’t run out of certain stockroom items. 

Benefits 

The Enterprise Asset Management application provides the following benefits: 

• Increases asset utilization. 
• Extends asset life. 
• Provides an accurate and actionable asset estate view. 
• Reduces asset planning to deployment time. 
• Reduces cost by reducing maintenance frequency. 
• Reduces disruption to operations by minimizing unplanned maintenance. 

Customer Business Values Delivered by EAM 

• Increased consistency in the execution of enterprise asset management processes using standard processes and Out of the Box (OOTB) ServiceNow functionality. 
• Integrated enterprise asset management process with stockroom, procurement, and field services activities allows data gathered from asset-related transactions to sustain ongoing asset repository accuracy and enable the use of available inventory to avoid unnecessary purchasing actions. 
• Avoid penalties and derive the most benefits from maintenance and lease contracts. 
• Provides accurate enterprise asset data to make sound business decisions about ongoing and future investments. 
• Accurate reports to Asset Owners in accordance with audit and government regulations. 

References 

To learn more about Enterprise Asset Management, please refer following links: 

• Enterprise Asset Management-Process Guide 
• Enterprise Asset Management- Customer Workshop Preparation Guide 
• Enterprise Asset Management-Product Integration Options Presentation 
• Enterprise Asset Management- Scoping Guide