Your Audio Visual CMDB or "AVCMDB"​, Part 3: Vendor Data

[Matthew Fearnle]

As an Audio Visual ecosystem evolves it will invariably contain a consortium of vendors, warranties, and service plans. The following is a guideline as to how an enterprise can leverage ServiceNow to manage the lifecycle of Audio Visual Support.

For those who are tasked with managing an Audio Visual (AV) ecosystem while coming from an IT background here is a quick primer.....

Outside vendor support comes in 3 basic tranches, Service Contracts, Product Warranties and Workmanship Warranties:

Service Contracts: This is a separate purchase (an asset outside of the AV install) that promises a level of service, a defined number of hours, and a definition the space(s) that the service contract applies to. Individual service contracts are predominately assigned to high profile Digital Spaces (Corporate Boardrooms) or high volume digital spaces (Theaters/Entry Lobby video walls). There are to levels of liability in a service call scenario, first are you calling the right vendor? Second are you paying for a service call that should be covered under a service contract?

Product Warranties: Simply put, a promise made by the manufacturer that a product will work (as designed) for a period of time, usually one year. In some cases a product may be covered by a service contract and a product warranty. The service contract will cover the cost of the technician swapping out the malfunctioning product, the product warranty covers the cost of the product itself. Some vendors will charge for the technician visit.

Workmanship Warranties: These cover the workmanship which is the installation of the hardware, coding, cable termination and in general the handiwork of the installation team. These agreements are also forged in terms of one year. Any work done by the client (you) can void this warranty.

ServiceNow can be leveraged to attach these contracts and warranties as assets ( since they do have monetary value) to the physical hardware and the Digital Spaces that contain them. It is important to give them expiration dates as they go from full value to zero value the day they expire. Work with your ServiceNow developers to inset a task to remind you to review the contract 90 days before expiration. This is very important if you are building Digital Spaces for a department or division that owns the space and therefore the contract.....AV departments have to be proactive in managing the expiration of contracts and warranties. The trick is to automate the process through ServiceNow.

As Audio Visual (AV) becomes more and more IT dependent, the entire industry will be forced to adopt IT processes. The massive complexity of legacy AV is now making a transition to Unified Communications (UC), this can be managed, monitored and automated using ServiceNow.