17 Lean ITAM Projects To Launch Your ITAM Practice

[stephenmann]

In his previous (guest) blog post — A Lean Approach To Getting Started With ITAM — Martin Thompson of The ITAM Review explained how Lean thinking can be applied to IT asset management (ITAM). He also promised seventeen ideas that could be considered "minimal viable ITAM services" to tackle, to start to show a return from ITAM investment.

Each one of these could potentially be implemented in isolation, and most of them just require some human horsepower rather than major organizational change:

1. AWOL Hardware — Review "asset last seen" data and hunt down hardware that might have gone astray or hidden away under desks or in drawers. Upside: Surplus hardware (and potentially software) stock to issue against new requests to avoid buying new hardware.
2. Inventory Accuracy — Compare inventory against other enterprise sources such as antivirus, Active Directory, or the CMDB. Measure and improve inventory accuracy. Good quality, trustworthy inventory allows for sharper and more efficient procurement. Upside: The business can make smarter decisions about purchasing choices, deployment of new projects and supporting customers if it has accurate inventory.
3. Service Ownership — If not already incorporated within a CMDB, keep an accurate record of each physical and virtual server, what function and value it brings to the business and who is responsible for the service(s) on them. Upside: It's much easier to renew maintenance agreements accurately and spot redundant or expired servers to be removed.
4. Change Management ITAM Savvy — Once an organization has base-lined and reconciled assets in the datacentre. Maintaining a good ITAM position can largely be attributed to good change management processes. Ensure your change management has ITAM smarts and appreciates the risk and costs of changes. Upside: Avoid expensive software licensing true up bills in the datacentre around virtualization and the configuration of servers, which is an area where organizations are typically tripped up during a vendor audit.
5. Software Amnesty And Reclaim — Survey your software users and reclaim any unused software titles. You could use software usage tracking technology or simply ask them in an email. "We're trying to save the company money so please let us know of any applications you don't use" can sometimes work wonders. Upside: Build a stock of spare licenses to avoid buying software against new software requests.
6. Quantify The Cost Of Software — Most software in the enterprise costs money. Even open source titles cost money to maintain. Make your employees aware that software costs the company money and seek management approval for all software requests to smoke out inappropriate requests. Upside: Save money by only buying software the company actually needs.
7. Monitor Rebuilds — Keep an eye on machines that have been rebuilt or maintained by the service desk. Has the correct software been reinstalled when the machine was reimaged? Are there opportunities to remove unused software or swap expensive applications for cheaper alternatives? Upside: Identify money saving opportunities as assets transition through their lifecycle.
8. Quarantine New Projects — Check new projects before they are deployed to customers or installed on the network. Assess how the project is licensed and how that license cost might change throughout the lifecycle of the project. Upside: Avoid nasty financial surprises from mismanaged projects. Identify cost savings against original project budget plans in order to save the project money.
9. Monitor New Software Installs — Keep track of all software changes across your environment. Marry these changes against software requests on the service desk and change requests in the datacentre. Jump on any discrepancies and look for root causes to establish how the discrepancy might be avoided in the future. Upside: Remove the financial risk of software audits exposing weaknesses in your lifecycle processes.
10. Align With Human Resources — Keep track of joiners, movers, and leavers via HR. People changing jobs, moving on from projects, or leaving the company altogether are a great source of change throughout the asset lifecycle. Upside: Claw back surplus devices and applications as employees leave the company. Cancel subscriptions and logins. Identify redundant applications as employees change roles.
11. Proactively Manage Maintenance Renewals — Only renew maintenance contracts when it is clear the assets are a) still in use and b) are still valuable to the company. Upside: Avoid paying for unused software and services.
12. Avoid Lease Fines — Avoid the cost of expired leases or lost hired assets by actively managing the last seen date, ownership, and expiry dates of assets. Upside: Reduce lease fines and only hire assets that are actually being used.
13. Functional Overlap — Do applications or devices exist that offer overlapping functions? Are there opportunities to streamline to more suitable applications or devices that offer better value for money whilst still meeting functional requirements? Upside: Reduce software costs.
14. Cheaper Alternatives — Are there commodity applications that would do a perfectly good job at a better price. Often user education is the only barrier to adoption. Upside: Reduce software costs.
15. Charge Internally For Assets: There is nothing better for making business unit owners question their use of assets than being sent a bill for them. Charge internally for assets against a budget and provide levers for making changes and incentives for positive behavior. Upside: Reduce waste.
16. Asset Strip Retired Assets: Sell unwanted software licenses (EU only) and sell unwanted or retired hardware assets or asset parts, components, or minerals. Upside: Squeeze maximum value from the whole lifecycle of assets.
17. Exploit Product Use Rights: By working through the product use rights (what you are allowed to do with the software) for your high value or high volume software titles, you might identify acceptable uses of the software which will reduce costs e.g. some software manufacturers allow secondary use of software on another device. Upside: Squeeze maximum value from existing contracts and reduce future software costs.

It would be great to hear your feedback on these types of projects and if you've already experienced success with them on the ServiceNow platform. Please let us know.

Image source: Flickr: brad.coy's Photostream