Supported business outcomes

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated February 23, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Supported Business Outcomes

    The CMDB success advisor in the Zurich release focuses on driving measurable improvements in your Configuration Management Database (CMDB) by aligning data quality efforts with specific business outcomes. Instead of addressing the entire CMDB at once, it enables you to target critical areas aligned with your organizational goals, improving the relevance and effectiveness of data management.

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    Key Features

    • Data Foundations: Enables you to maintain accurate, complete, and reliable Configuration Item (CI) data by selecting key CI classes relevant to your organization. This selection marks those classes as principal, filtering CI fields on task records to reduce data entry errors and improve accuracy in incident, problem, and change records. It supports foundational data accuracy, alignment with the Common Service Data Model (CSDM), stronger CI links, and increased integration coverage. The default configuration allows selection of up to 200 principal classes.
    • Hardware Asset Management (HAM): Focuses on maintaining accurate and complete hardware data, including computers, servers, printers, and other physical devices. It targets hardware model categories that present the most business risk, identifying missing model IDs, serial numbers, locations, duplicate records, and asset-CI state mismatches. The advisor guides teams through targeted remediation to resolve these issues. The number of selectable hardware model categories is configurable.
    • Outcome-Based Advisory Experience: Each business 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 others or run both simultaneously if needed.

    Key Outcomes

    • Data Foundations Outcome: Ideal for organizations aiming to improve integration coverage for their most critical CI classes and enhance foundational data accuracy.
    • HAM Outcome: Best suited for organizations needing to track and fix missing hardware identifiers, support asset lifecycle management, improve financial and compliance reporting accuracy, and eliminate duplicate hardware records and state mismatches.
    • Combined Outcomes: Running both Data Foundations and HAM simultaneously supports organizations with overlapping goals to improve both data quality and hardware asset accuracy.

    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