Supported business outcomes
Summarize
Summary of Supported business outcomes
The CMDB success advisor in ServiceNow helps organizations improve their Configuration Management Database (CMDB) data quality by focusing efforts on specific, measurable business outcomes. Instead of addressing the entire CMDB at once, the advisor enables targeted improvements aligned with key organizational goals. Each supported outcome is linked to a dedicated product module featuring its own scope, dashboards, data quality monitoring, and guided remediation workflows.
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Key Features
- Data Foundations: Ensures your configuration item (CI) data is accurate, complete, and reliable by focusing on CI classes most relevant to your organization. Selecting principal CI classes filters fields on task records to reduce data entry errors and improve the accuracy of incident, problem, and change management processes. This outcome aligns with the Common Service Data Model (CSDM) and supports improved integration coverage and stronger CI linkages. You can configure up to 200 principal classes to tailor the scope.
- Hardware Asset Management (HAM): Focuses on the accuracy and completeness of physical hardware data such as computers, servers, printers, and other devices. It targets hardware model categories that pose the greatest business risk by identifying missing model IDs, serial numbers, locations, duplicate records, and mismatched asset and CI states. Guided remediation helps improve hardware normalization, asset lifecycle tracking, financial and compliance reporting, and reduce data duplication. The number of hardware categories selected is configurable.
Practical Guidance for Customers
ServiceNow customers should select the CMDB success advisor outcome(s) that best align with their business goals. The options include:
- Data Foundations: Ideal for improving integration coverage and foundational CI data accuracy.
- HAM: Best suited for enhancing hardware asset data quality, lifecycle management, and financial reporting.
- Both Data Foundations and HAM: Can be run simultaneously when organizations need to improve both general CI data quality and hardware asset accuracy.
Each outcome provides a dedicated advisory experience with its own scope, KPI dashboard, issue detection, and guided remediation, allowing teams to focus on the most critical areas for measurable CMDB improvements.
CMDB success advisor drives measurable CMDB improvements by aligning data quality efforts with specific business outcomes. Instead of tackling the entire CMDB at once, the advisor enables you to target the areas that matter most, beginning with the outcomes you want to achieve.
Each supported business outcome maps to a dedicated product with its own scope, dashboard, data quality monitoring, and guided remediation. CMDB success advisor supports the following business outcomes:
- Data Foundations
- Use Data Foundations to keep your CI data accurate, complete, and reliable. By selecting the CI classes that matter most to your organization, you give your teams a focused, clear view of your IT infrastructure in the CMDB.
When you configure your Data Foundations scope in CMDB success advisor, the selected CI classes are automatically marked as principal classes. Doing so filters the CI fields on task records to show only the most relevant items, enabling you to reduce data entry errors and improve the accuracy of your incident, problem, and change records.
You can select principal classes to improve foundational data accuracy, align with Common Service Data Model (CSDM), strengthen incident and change CI links, and increase integration coverage for important CI classes.The default configuration enables you to select up to 200 principal classes.
To learn more, see Using CMDB success advisor for Data Foundations.
- Hardware Asset Management (HAM)
- Use HAM to keep your hardware data accurate and complete. This includes computers, servers, printers, and other physical devices. Focus on the hardware model categories that create the most business risk. By doing
this, you can fix data issues that affect asset tracking and financial reports.
CMDB success advisor for HAM shows you hardware CIs that are missing model IDs, serial numbers, or locations, identifies duplicate records, and highlights asset and CI state mismatches. It then guides your team through targeted remediation to resolve each issue.
You can select hardware model categories to improve hardware normalization rates, track asset life cycles accurately, strengthen financial and compliance reporting, and reduce duplicate and outdated hardware records. The number of categories you can select is configurable using the sn_cmdb_advisor.cmdb_advisor_scope_limit property.
To learn more, see Using CMDB success advisor for HAM.
Choosing your CMDB success advisor outcome
Use the following table to get the right CMDB success advisor guidance for your organization's goals. Each outcome activates a dedicated advisory experience with its own scope, KPI dashboard, issue detection, and guided remediation. You can start with one outcome and expand to the other at any time or run both simultaneously if your organization has overlapping goals.
| Business goal | Recommended outcome |
|---|---|
| Improve integration coverage for your most critical CI classes | Data Foundations |
| Track and fix missing serial numbers, model IDs, and locations for hardware | HAM |
| Support asset life cycle management and financial reporting accuracy | HAM |
| Eliminate duplicate hardware records and asset and CI state mismatches | HAM |
| Improve both data quality and hardware asset accuracy | Both: Data Foundations and HAM can run simultaneously |