Hardware Asset Management
HAM is the Management of your physical assets. From when an asset is requested, then procured, to eventually being retired and disposed.
HAM ensures that physical assets are fully tracked and managed throughout their life cycle.
Hardware Assets include devices such as :
Computers, Laptops, Servers, Network Switches, Monitors, Printers, Mobile Phones, IP phones, Hard drives, Routers, Firewalls.
Hardware Asset Management also involves managing
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Warranties
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Contracts
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Vendor Agreements
Without HAM, Organizations wouldn’t know
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What assets are available in stock : If you have no record of your assets, you won’t know what you have or don’t have available.
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Where are the assets located
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What Systems do the assets support
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Who is using the assets
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How much value is gained from the assets
Lifecycle of Asset
In this stage, Management will decide whether to purchase, lease or even reuse the existing assets to fulfill organizational needs.
Acquiring assets is the stage when the procurement department goes through the formal process to acquire new assets, which is typically achieved via a purchase order.
This stage of the asset lifecycle is where newly purchased assets or existing assets are deployed into operation.
In this stage, Assets are deployed for use in the organization while the assets are in operation. The asset management team maintains the correctness of the data in the asset repository relating to all assets.
This ensures the location and ownership of each asset is accounted for at all times.
- Retirement and Disposition
This stage covers the retirement and disposition of an asset. This is when an asset reaches its end of life and no longer provides any value to the organization.
Asset vs Configuration Item
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Asset
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Configuration Item
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Tracked for Financial reasons
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Tracked for supporting business service
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Tracked from acquisition to disposal
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Only tracked while it’s in use
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Has parent/child relationships
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Has upstream and downstream dependencies
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A Financial value is assigned
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No Financial value is assigned or tracked
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Tracked by an IT Asset Manager
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Tracked by an Engineer/Configuration Manager
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Hardware Model
Hardware model is a record that is used to store product specific information for an asset.
The reason why some information is stored at the model level rather than at the asset level is because the information Is common across all the assets for that given model.
This means every time when you create an asset under a specific model, you won’t have to re-enter the manufacturer, the model number, its description etc. because it will always have the same value.
Storing certain asset attributes at the model level is also beneficial because it makes it easier to update the description or any other product specific attribute through a single record.
The relationship between a hardware model and a hardware asset is a one to many relationship, meaning you can have multiple hardware assets for any given hardware model.
Hardware Asset
Hardware Asset is a physical asset like Computers, Laptops, Servers, Network Switches, Monitors, Printers, Mobile Phones, IP phones, Hard drives, Routers, Firewalls etc.
Consumable Models and Assets
A Consumable assets is similar to an asset, but it’s tracked at the quantity level while it’s in stock.
Consumable assets can consist of assets such as headphones, cables, keyboards, mouse, webcam etc.
Consumable are not tracked once they've been deployed.
Model Categories
A Model Category is basically a value that categorizes models and assets in service.
Categories are great for organizing your assets as they allow you to manage your assets effectively.
Model Categories help you to search and filter for assets, Group assets together.
Manufacturers and Vendors
A Manufacturer is a company that creates products to sell.
A Vendor is a company or individual that you do business with to procure goods and/or services from.
Manufacturers can also be Vendors.
Locations
A location is a record in ServiceNow that represents a physical location that your organization owns, leases or does business at.
Managing the locations of your organization is a great way to further organize the hardware assets that your company owns.
Imagine not knowing the location for any of the assets that your organization owns and manages, would be hard to understand what location, building or room a particular asset is in.
Stockrooms
Stockrooms are designed area where assets are held for the purpose of storage.
Purchase Order
A Purchase Order (PO) is a document issued to a vendor from a buyer, which lists out all of the assets that the buyer wishes to purchase.
A PO usually lists out the following information for each individual item; price, item quantity, serial number, model, product SKU, and detailed description.
Purchase orders in ServiceNow can be created either manually in the purchase orders module or they can be created directly from an item request in the sourcing task.
Transfer Order
Transfer Order is when one or more assets are transferred from one company stockroom to another, for the purpose of stock distribution.
Let’s say an end user requests a laptop in San Diego, but there are no laptops available locally. BUT in London stockroom, there are 25 laptops available in stock.
Instead of procuring a new laptop, a transfer order can be made where the laptop can be transferred and shipped from the London Stockroom to the San Diego Stockroom.
This type of proactiveness allows you to save money by transferring available assets to local stockrooms when requests arise.
Stock Rules
A Stock Rule is a system defined criteria that automatically creates a purchase order, or transfer order, from one stockroom to another, when the amount of in stock assets, for a given hardware or consumable model drops below the defined threshold.
Let’s say that the London Stockroom always has to have at least 10 Dell Laptops available at any given time, Once defined, a stock rule can automatically trigger a purchase order or transfer order when the stock level goes below 10.
Contracts
A Contract is a legally binding agreement between two parties. Typically, in IT Asset Management, Contracts are created between Organizations and Vendors for Warranties, Support agreements, and leases
Vendor Catalog Item
Vendor Catalog Items are records that the Procurement department manages, in order to track the availability and price of products that your vendors have for sale
In ServiceNow, Vendor Catalog Items can be related to Hardware and Consumable models, so you can easily view all Vendor Catalog Items, for a Single Hardware Model.
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