Asset management - Customer workshop

[Anish Reghu]

Dear all,

What are the set of questions I should go with while going to a customer to implement Asset management for them?

Regards,

Anish

[Ashok Sasidhara · Accepted solution]

PFB some key questions to ask:

1. Explain the difference between ITSM asset management and HAM Pro. Ask whether they are willing to purchase HAM pro.
2. Where are they currently storing asset and CI data? How are the assets & CIs currently linked?
3. Finalize the scope of hardware devices which they are going to manage as Assets. Explain the difference between assets & CIs to make sure that only relevant assets are considered. Specifically ask whether mobile devices are in scope.
4. Are they planning to have a single process globally or will there be variations for certain regions? Encourage to follow a single process globally by sticking to OOB as much as possible (There might be unavoidable process variations & customizations that would be required for certain regions due to some strong business reasons like local regulations, financial impact etc.)
5. How is the asset lifecycle currently managed? Ask in detail about the following use cases and understand about customizations required when you set up the relevant use cases in ServiceNow:

• Standard asset requests
• Non-standard asset requests
• Asset procurement
• Bulk stock orders
• Asset transfers between stockrooms
• Asset deployment & assignment
• Asset maintenance, repair and RMA
• Management of lost and stolen assets
• Loaner asset management
• Asset refresh
• Asset disposal
• Asset audits

1. Is the current asset management process documented clearly with details on key areas like asset operational & lifecycle activities, RACI, audits, reporting etc.
2. Gather details about the standard and non-standard hardware models which they are planning to use.
3. Are they planning to use procurement in ServiceNow? Do they expect to integrate with any procurement system?
4. Gather volumetric data like approximate total number of assets, contracts, locations, stockrooms, model categories, models etc. in scope.
5. Check whether any integrations like SCCM, Intune, JamF etc. to populate the asset related data in the CMDB are in scope. But if you have a separate CMDB program, these integrations should be added to that scope.
6. Gather the Asset & CI synchronization requirements.
7. Gather reporting & dashboard requirements.

Also please keep in mind that there will be considerably higher effort in setting up & maintaining normalization and setting up asset lifecycle flows if they are planning to use ITSM asset management instead of HAM pro. So you should try to encourage them to consider using HAM pro by explaining the benefits in detail.

[Anish Reghu]

Excellent and thank you so much for the reply.

Regards,

Anish

[Ashok Sasidhara]

Also I would suggest to download HAM related docs like process guide, scoping guide, starter stories etc. from https://nowlearning.service-now.com/nowcreate and go through them to understand more about HAM before discussing with customer.

[Larissa5]

I was going to suggest the same!  Lots of information and documentation on NowCreate.