Asset Management helps various departments across IT, Finance, Services and end users to:
- Manage asset lifecycle from planning to disposal
- Control and monitor inventory, and make effective purchasing decisions
- Comply with standards and regulations
- Enable end-to-end IT services to end users
This blogpost covers how ServiceNow Process Mining when applied to hardware and software data exposes process inefficiencies and nudges for ideas to improve.
- Build ‘Process Configuration’ for asset table(s)
This is a setup step that helps you later when you create a Project for mining a table. Any table you would like to mine must have a Process Configuration record for it to enable you to make best use of all the functionalities offered.
Access ‘Process Configuration’ through the wrench on Process Mining Workspace and create a new record for the asset table you would like to mine as shown below.
Fill out the ‘Process Details’ specifying the fields relevant for you (shown below).
You can specify the fields you would like as ‘activities’ and ‘breakdowns’ below. This will prompt you with suggestions when you create a Project for mining the data.
You can skip to ‘Improvement Opportunities’. The system will suggest them based on fields you selected in the previous step. Add them all to the library to be used on multiple projects later.
- Create a Project for mining an asset table
From process mining workspace, create a new project and point it to ‘alm_hardware’ table for mining it as shown below.
On the next step, fill out ‘activities’ and ‘breakdowns’.
At step 3, add ‘automated improvement opportunities’ from the library. The library was set up in the previous step when Process Configuration was created.
After mining the project, you can access the process map from the Analyst Workbench.
You can implement the popular use cases narrated below to spot hardware and software asset process inefficiencies.
USE CASE #1: Slow maintenance on hardware assets
Table: alm_hardware
Findings:
- Assets going directly from In Stock to Maintenance
- It takes long time to return from maintenance to stock.
- Breakdowns show which assets have slowest maintenance
USE CASE #2: Consumables in stock for very long
Table: alm_consumables
Findings:
- A large portion of consumables were stocked. Instead, they could be directly consumed
- Consumables were in stock for a long time before consumed
- Indicates over-purchasing and need for better inventory management
USE CASE #3: Hardware with CI reconciliation
Tables: alm_hardware; hardware_model
Findings:
- Assets do not have attached CI record where they were meant to have one
- Assets in use, but CI is marked as Non-Operational
USE CASE #4: Rework on Software lifecycle
Table: alm_asset where model category is software license
Findings:
- Rework found on several stages of software lifecycle process
*Other use cases and demo are on the VIDEO RECORDING here (will be posted shortly)
