Software Asset Management Quick Start Guide

Kieron Dean · ‎08-30-2024

Welcome to the Software Asset Management Quick Start Guide

If you're just starting your Software Asset Management journey, then you've come to the right place. This guide will help you get up to speed on activating and realizing value from ServiceNow® Software Asset Management and is a great place to come back to as our products evolve over time. For a quick overview, watch this video:

Guide Overview:

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

Software Asset Management overview
What are the business outcomes you can expect?
What to know before getting started?
Steps to quick success
Demos and other helpful resources

Software Asset Management

The Software Asset Management application systematically tracks, evaluates, and manages software licenses, compliance, and optimization. You can reclaim unused software rights, purchase new software rights, and manage allocations for entitlements.

What are the business outcomes you can expect from Software Asset Management?

Before you start to implement Software Asset Management, it’s critical to have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. Software Asset Management allows you to deliver several positive business outcomes, and you can achieve all this over time. However, by deciding which outcomes are most important for your organization and agreeing on them with your stakeholders, you can set clear expectations and tailor your initial implementation to realize these goals.

Software Asset Management benefits:

Simplify with one platform: Streamline and manage software assets with a single-architecture SAM solution. Use automation and digital workflows to feed critical asset data to the business.
Reduce costs: Cut software and cloud expenses by pinpointing shadow IT, reducing overlap, and optimizing license use. 
Mitigate license risk: Protect your business with software license management by embedding SAM into the IT change process and acting on unlicensed deployments. 
Automate IT: Save time with custom workflows throughout the lifecycle. Automate processes across departments like HR, procurement, security, GRC, and app teams.

Before You Get Started

Before you get started with Software Asset Management, check and consider the following:

Customer Type

This guide is designed for new customers who are starting their journey to optimize their software spend and gain visibility and control of their software and cloud assets.

Feature Type

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.

Organization Involvement

Roles & Personas (Stakeholders):

CIO/VP of IT Ops
VP of Asset Management
VP of Enterprise Architecture
VP of Procurement

Steps to quick success:

Explore the documentation listed below to get started.
Explore the SAM Demo to get a brief overview of how the product will work in your environment.
Before you start to implement SAM, it’s critical to have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. SAM allows you to deliver multiple positive business outcomes, and you can achieve all of this over time. To help you plan for your implementation, refer to the SAM Pre-implementation Checklist and SAM Success Map.
Consider your options for implementation.
1. Many ServiceNow customers work with a certified ServiceNow partner or ServiceNow Expert Services for their SAM implementation since SAM involves business processes and disciplines they are not familiar with. It also accelerates rollout and helps customers achieve their goals faster.
2. If you have chosen to work with a partner but haven’t selected a partner yet, this document will help you develop your ServiceNow partner strategy. Make sure that the partner uses Now Create, ServiceNow’s library of more than 700 leading implementation practices, since this accelerates your time to value and reduces risk. Check out our Partner Finder to find a SAM-certified partner.
3. If you are going to self-implement, this success pack, this process guide, and this best practices whitepaper provide detailed guidance for a successful implementation.
We strongly recommend that you take a phased approach to SAM implementation, so you achieve your most important business outcomes first, accelerate time to value, and avoid overcomplicating your initial rollout.

SAM Documentation: (product page) (datasheet) (product documentation)

Demos and other helpful resources:

AnupaN · ‎11-19-2024

The link to the process guide does not seem to work.

prashantsh

This quick-start guide is a game changer clearly laid out, and full of practical tips to ramp up Software Asset Management. Looking forward to diving in and implementing these steps—thanks for sharing