APM - Duplicate Business Application Best Practice

[Zach Allen1]

Hello Community,

I am looking for advice and perspective regarding APM/CSDM best practices when it comes to Business Applications from large organizations with inter-company complexity.

I currently represent an Enterprise that is made up of several Companies that leverage a single instance of SerivceNow APM. My understanding is that we should eliminate all duplicate entries of a business application, create one record within APM, and show the consumption of those applications via Application Services - the instance of the app.

However, my pain point is that each company wants to understand its specific portfolio from an ownership perspective (Company A, Company B, etc.) and the cost of the application to them as a business.

I, as a process/product owner, need to align on a model for adoption and I want to see the data from the Enterprise POV. Our recommendation (which can be altered) is:

If you own a procurement contract with a vendor and your business pays for it, create a business application record even if there is an existing record owned by another company. This could result in the following:

• Application A - Owned by Company A
• Application A - Owned by Company B
• Application B - Owned by Company A
• Consumed by Company B

My question to the community and experts is:

Does that rationale make sense and align with best practices for application rationalization and the CSDM? Or are we not leveraging the framework as intended and causing more confusion with duplication?

If the latter, how do I best represent true TCO, Application Ownership between the various companies that make up my Enterprise?

The thinking behind creating duplication now will 1.) give each company the insights they need to make better decisions and 2.) potentially lead us (as an Enterprise) to consolidate contractual agreements and rationalize excess spending where possible.

Look forward to hearing your ideas/thoughts.

Thanks,

Zach Allen

[Maik Skoddow]

Hi @Zach Allen1 

I'm not a CSDM expert but in my opinion your described approach is not a good idea. To me it sounds more like your companies are subscriber of service offerings. See https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/vancouver-it-service-management/page/product/service-portfolio-ma... 

Maik

[mcastoe]

Hi @Zach Allen1 ,

While it is indeed desirable to reduce to a single Business Application, the situation you describe calls for differing entries.   You have completely different ownership, funding, IT Ownership, TCO, and deployments (app services) etc for each and that makes them unique even though they are based upon the same software.   We often see this in global, widely distributed companies where each region or whatever functions as their own business entity.   

When it comes to rationalization, you will clearly see opportunity but if the Business rationale for each Company to "own" their own, then it is good to represent this and do so knowingly.   Perhaps, in time, decision makers will see the value of consolidation.  the key here is you are representing "your world" accurately.   

For further validation, consider that Business Application has on a a single refernce to Business owner, Business Unit Department etc.  and that is a for a reason so these situations can be modeled and clearly understood.  If you collapsed all into a single Bus App and have all App Services rolled up to it, you lose that "model" of the real world.

hope this helps,

mark