What's New in Zurich Release for Hardware Asset Management

[Faith-Chia]

ServiceNow® Hardware Asset Management aims to reduce stockroom inventories and resource usage at the beginning of the asset lifecycle. This service provides value from the start to the end of the lifecycle, with asset managers using data such as end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-service (EOS) information to support hardware refresh planning. This approach addresses risks related to aging assets, missing devices, regulatory requirements, and cost management through planned purchasing.

With the introduction of Now Assist for Hardware Asset Management, asset managers can now utilize agentic workflows and AI agents to streamline asset management and relieve themselves of mundane tasks. The Zurich release brings two agentic workflows that help asset managers fulfill hardware requests and repair asset failures.

In the ServiceNow AI Platform® Zurich release, there are six main features:

1. Help manage hardware asset requests – Agentic workflow
2. Help repair assets – Agentic workflow
3. Asset putaway
4. Employee asset receiving
5. Stockroom receiving
6. Asset attestation remediation

Help manage hardware asset requests

Hardware asset managers often deal with a large volume of hardware asset requests that can quickly turn into a backlog of mundane fulfillment requests. Clearing this backlog can be time-consuming and whittle down HAM managers’ valuable time that could be spent on higher value activities instead.

The help manage asset requests agentic workflow brings AI agents to help asset managers fulfill hardware requests more efficiently. This workflow improves the overall experience in managing large volumes of hardware requests and accelerates the request fulfillment time thanks to AI agents assisting the fulfillers. This improves productivity and enables HAM managers to focus more on high-value activities.​

Help repair assets

Assets requiring repair often experience extended downtime because technicians face time-consuming challenges in identifying issues and determining the appropriate repair path. This process can involve extensive research, including browsing third-party sites to gather relevant information, which further delays resolution.

The help repair assets agentic workflow offers guided support to asset technicians, significantly reducing asset downtime by providing step-by-step troubleshooting, diagnostics, repair instructions, and lists of required parts for IT assets. By streamlining the repair process and delivering comprehensive, easily accessible guidance, this solution enhances technician efficiency, speeds up repairs, and minimizes disruptions caused by asset failures.

Asset putaway

Asset managers lack a flow to drive the put away of an asset into a stockroom location (space or place). Without a flow, this leads to increased risk and decreased inventory accuracy.

Asset putaway provides task-based guidance for putting away assets into their respective granular locations in a warehouse. It automatically updates asset records after putting away assets, reducing the risk of losing or misplacing assets and improving inventory accuracy. This feature ensures that assets are properly managed and accounted for, enhancing overall operational efficiency.​

Employee asset receiving

Asset managers want employees to receive assets from the Employee Center for accountability and tracking purposes. End-users can lose productivity with a clunky receiving process. Decreased data accuracy also occurs when real-time updates for asset receiving are not given or available.

Employee asset receiving feature prompts employees to receive assets in transit from Employee Center notifications. It automatically updates any related PO, TO, shipment, or asset task after the employee receives an asset, increasing data accuracy with real-time updates to asset receiving. This feature ensures that assets are properly managed and accounted for, enhancing overall operational efficiency.​

Stockroom receiving

Assets enter organizations in various ways, which can result in inconsistent receiving processes that create data risks. In high-volume environments, the lack of a unified method to receive assets leads to bottlenecks and inefficiencies for asset managers.

Stockroom receiving streamlines the asset receiving process and improves data accuracy. This feature standardizes the receiving process with an intuitive user interface (UI) to reduce the time spent receiving each asset. It provides real-time visibility into shipment overages and pending quantities of shipments, improving accounting and data quality with prompts to encourage filling in blank data spots.​

Asset attestation remediation

Managing and validating assets poses significant challenges, especially when users reject attestation requests, making it difficult to maintain accurate and reliable asset data. Mismanagement of assets can result in inaccurate records, heightened security risks, and increased costs.

Asset attestation remediation offers a comprehensive solution by empowering asset managers with streamlined remediation flows designed specifically for attestation. This feature enables users to initiate, execute, and track asset attestation requests directly from the inventory workspace through a guided playbook experience. Additionally, it provides remediation tasks to investigate assets rejected by users and introduces attestation via the Now Mobile application.​

The Zurich release introduces Now Assist for Hardware Asset Management, featuring agentic workflows that help asset managers efficiently fulfill hardware requests and guide technicians through asset repairs, minimizing downtime. Additional enhancements include task-based asset putaway, streamlined employee and stockroom asset receiving processes that improve inventory accuracy and operational efficiency, and robust asset attestation remediation flows to address challenges with validating assets and managing rejected attestations. Together, these features leverage AI and automation to reduce manual workloads, enhance data quality, ensure compliance, and optimize hardware asset management from procurement through disposal.

To learn more about additional features and enhancements for Hardware Asset Management in this release, check out the Zurich release notes.