Getting started with Software Asset Management

LisaLatour — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 10:25:42 GMT

Welcome to ServiceNow®

Software Asset Management

Congratulations on purchasing ServiceNow® Software Asset Management (SAM)! With ServiceNow SAM, you’ll take control of your software assets, reducing compliance risk and lowering software costs. This guide gives you the critical information you need to get started, including proven guidance and links to valuable resources.

Let’s get started!

Guide Overview

Here’s an overview of the topics we will cover in the guide:

Familiarize yourself with SAM
Decide on business outcomes
Chart your implementation path
Prepare for organization change
Bookmark resources

Start by familiarizing yourself with SAM

SAM comes with many capabilities that let you take charge of your software licenses. You’ll find a list of some of these capabilities in the box on the right, along with links to further information. However, before you start a deep dive, the links below will help you familiarize yourself with the basics of SAM and learn where to find more information:

The SAM product page and datasheet provide high-level product information and links to other resources.
This overview video walks through key SAM capabilities, including providing SAM screenshots.
For pragmatic advice on getting started with SAM, check out this Gorilla Guide.
Detailed SAM product documentation can be found here.

If you have purchased SAM Enterprise, you’ll also want to learn about Cloud Cost Management, which helps you to minimize cloud spend and reduce risk by managing you cloud resources. Here’s where to go for information:

For an overview, take a look at the Cloud Cost Management product page and datasheet.
You can find Cloud Cost Management product documentation here.

And don’t forget to visit the ServiceNow SAM community. You’ll find best practices and other useful resources, and it’s also a great place to talk to ServiceNow experts, get your questions answered, and connect with other community members.

Selected SAM Capabilities

* Requires SAM Enterprise

Identify your desired business outcomes

Before you begin SAM implementation, it’s critical to clearly understand your business goals. By deciding which outcomes are most important for your organization, you set clear stakeholder expectations and focus your initial implementation to realize this goal.

This article provides a framework for organizations using ServiceNow Software Asset Management (SAM) to identify, prioritize, and measure business outcomes to achieve maximum value. The methodology emphasizes a comprehensive approach involving people, processes, and technology, recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Chart a path to implementation success

Work with ServiceNow experts

If you have chosen to work with a ServiceNow partner or ServiceNow Expert Services for your implementation, it’s important to clearly communicate the business outcomes you want to achieve and agree on a well-structured roadmap to attain these goals. If you want to work with a partner but haven’t selected one yet, check out our Partner Finder. Our partner ecosystem includes over 2,000 partners who are vetted to implement ServiceNow products/services. Our expertise combined with that of our partners allow us to deliver services that meet your needs and achieve your desired outcomes.

To accelerate time to value and reduce risk, make sure that your partner uses our library of more than 1,000 leading implementation practices. We also recommend you use these best practices if you are self-implementing, as they provide a wealth of assets designed to guide you to success.

If you’ve purchased ServiceNow Impact as part of your platform investment, welcome! You now have access to adoption and health tools, expert guidance, 24x7 technical support, and value tracking dashboards. Connect with your Customer Success Manager today to help you download the Impact Store application, coordinate your next steps, and begin setting up your capabilities map in Impact.

If you don’t have Impact, consider how these resources and benefits would help you navigate your future with ServiceNow. Learn more about Impact here.

If you’ve purchased ServiceNow Impact as part of your platform investment, welcome! You now have access to adoption and health tools, expert guidance, 24x7 technical support, and value tracking dashboards. Connect with your Customer Success Manager today to help you download the Impact Store application, coordinate your next steps, and begin setting up your capabilities map in Impact.

If you don’t have Impact, consider how these resources and benefits would help you navigate your future with ServiceNow. Learn more about Impact here.

Understand ServiceNow releases and upgrades

If you’re not already on the latest ServiceNow release, we strongly recommend that you upgrade before you begin development in SAM. By upgrading, you get new ServiceNow innovations into the hands of your users faster, get access to the latest performance and security enhancements, and ensure that support is there when you need it. To make your upgrade smooth and successful, take a look at these upgrade resources.

SAM Path to Value

This article outlines the "Path to Value" for implementing a Software Asset Management (SAM) program in ServiceNow using a systematic, phased approach known as Crawl-Walk-Run. This progressive strategy enables organizations to monitor, manage, and optimize software assets, aiming to enhance visibility, minimize risks, and boost operational efficiency. The three phases represent predefined maturity items used to improve the value return of the SAM program

Prepare for organizational change

To successfully deploy and launch SAM, you need your team and business stakeholders to know how SAM works and understand its benefits. To do this, you need to communicate what’s changing and why and ensure that everyone has been appropriately trained for their role. This webpage provides detailed guidance on how to plan for organizational change. If you need help creating a winning communications plan, this communications plan template also provides useful advice.

The following courses are a great starting point for training:

Software Asset Management Professional Fundamentals: Learn how to set up an effective SAM practice.
Discovery Basics for Software Asset Management: Use ServiceNow Discovery to populate information about installed software.

Software Asset Management (SAM) Professional Reconciliation Process Overview
Configuration Management Database Fundamentals: Discover how to implement a successful CMDB.

For people who are new to ServiceNow, we also recommend this very short Welcome to ServiceNow course to learn the platform basics.

Bookmark
these resources!

NowSupport -- You can get technical issues resolved quickly by contacting our team comprised of ServiceNow employees with deep product knowledge and real-world experience. Read more here on how to use support.

Re: Getting started with Software Asset Management

chattyswhimsies — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 12:03:37 GMT

Wondering if there are needed updates here since -

Last update:

‎11-21-2023 08:11 PM

post Getting started with Software Asset Management in SAM articles