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Steph Morillo
Quick Start Guide - Normalization
If you are starting your journey with ServiceNow’s Hardware Asset Management, this guide will provide a brief overview about Hardware Normalization and how to get started with it.
What is Hardware Normalization?
Asset visibility starts with data you can trust, and clean data is critical to business agility, strategy, and planning. Normalization creates a definitive list of assets in your organization, providing assurance that you know what assets you own.
Normalization is the process of standardizing discovered asset data to fill in gaps, or correct fields where the manufacturer name, product, or model are inconsistent. The ServiceNow Content Library will automatically populate additional metadata such as lifecycle dates (end of support and end-of-life) and dimension information, where available. Discovered hardware data can come from many sources (ServiceNow Discovery tools, your procurement systems, spreadsheets, etc.), and as a result, the data may be formatted in many ways. Automatic and continuous normalization standardizes these models by category against UNSPSC data to maintain a perpetually clean asset database. For any outliers not recognized, our ServiceNow content service team will research and update the Content Library, pushing that updated content to all customers.
Relevant Demo and Tutorial Content:
Watch here to learn about how the HAM Guided Setup can assist in configuring Hardware Asset Management. This video also includes information on how to opt-in to Resource Categories.
Watch here to dive deeper into Normalization Data Services.
Watch here for more on how to install the Content Library Portal. The IT Asset Management Content lookup portal gives you visibility into the data stored in the Hardware Asset Management Content Service. You can use the content portal to help you identify missing attributes like model number and view related content like lifecycle data.
How to Normalize Your Asset Data:
- Ensure you have alignment and support from an executive sponsor at the organization. It is important to establish realistic and measurable expectations
- Ensure you are opted into the resource categories to activate hardware model normalization and automated updates to product model and asset records. Note that this step can be completed as part of Hardware Asset Management Guided Setup configuration.
- Opt in to the Hardware Asset Management content service. The Content Service is a shared service that provides customers with continual data quality improvement. By anonymously and securely providing ServiceNow the unrecognized details of Hardware/Consumable models, the Hardware Asset Management Content Service will, in return, supply updates to the normalization library. This new content will improve your normalization hit ratios and enable you to better manage your hardware assets. Note that this step can be completed as part of Hardware Asset Management Guided Setup configuration.
- Check that you have hardware inventory data flowing into HAM. Note that hardware inventory data may come from multiple sources, and they are not always consistent. Each hardware has a unique model number. The model number is the number which HAM Normalization uses to normalize records with inconsistent product names and manufacturers. This number aligns the values in the database with those in the UNSPSC.
- Experiencing lower than expected normalization rates? You can use this valuable information to focus on where your CMDB can be improved! Review this remediation documentation for tactical solutions.
- Analyze the Hardware Model records to confirm normalization completeness and accuracy. Reports can be run by searching for Reports > View/Run > search for “Normalization”. This can be done individually on a specific record by evaluating the Normalization tab in a specific record, or running one of the following reports:
- Hardware Product Overall Normalization Status
- Consumable Product Overall Normalization Status
- Hardware Model Normalization Status
- Consumable Model Normalization Status
- Perform these iterative steps with some frequency to ensure your hardware inventory data is normalized properly.
- Build processes and procedures to streamline and enhance your hardware visibility activity. Combining technology, people, and process is key to any successful HAM program!
Recommended Courses:
Hardware Asset Management (HAM) Fundamentals - Beginner
Additional Resources
See here for Quick Start Guides on:
Experiencing lower than expected normalization rates? Review this remediation documentation for tactical solutions.
HAM Process Guide provides a detailed explanation on how the Hardware Asset Management process is enabled within the ServiceNow platform. ServiceNow encourages simple, lean ITAM processes, which is reflected in the out-of-the-box design.
You can visit ITAM Events page to see Live on ServiceNow for latest events to help you deploy, adopt, and achieve value faster from your ServiceNow products. You can find a repository of previously recorded Live Event recordings here.
ServiceNow Customer Success Center - The CSC is a one-stop shop that gives you instant access to proven methodologies, leading practices, expert insights, and advice.
NowSupport - You can get technical issues resolved quickly by contacting our team comprised of ServiceNow employees with deep product knowledge and real-world experience. Read more here on how to leverage support.
