Help Your Enterprise with ServiceNow Asset Management

Imagine having the core abilities to oversee your infrastructure, manage operations seamlessly, and streamline field services. Picture making informed decisions about inventory, optimizing stockroom logistics, and ensuring contractual excellence. Can this be the future of your asset management practice?

This blog post serves as a gateway to harnessing the potential of ServiceNow Asset Management. I explore how ServiceNow Asset Management can empower your enterprise to take charge, make informed decisions, and automate your asset management processes and bring it to the next level by explaining the key features available.

To start with, what are the goals of asset management? What's so important about it?

Goals:

1. Optimal Utilization: This involves minimizing underutilization and ensuring assets are employed to their fullest potential, thereby optimizing their contribution to the organization's success.
2. Cost Control and Efficiency: Efficient asset management minimizes unnecessary expenditures. By optimizing usage, maintenance, and replacement cycles, organizations can significantly reduce operating and maintenance costs, leading to improved financial efficiency.
3. Lifecycle Management: Managing assets throughout their lifecycle is essential. From acquisition to disposal, strategic management ensures timely replacements, preventing operational disruptions, and maintaining business continuity.
4. Data-Driven Decision Making: Informed decisions are powered by accurate and up-to-date data. Asset management leverages data insights for smart choices concerning maintenance, replacements, and investment, leading to resource optimization.
5. Optimized Maintenance: Proactive and predictive maintenance strategies minimize downtime, extend asset lifespan, and curtail maintenance costs. This goal ensures assets operate at their peak efficiency.
6. Performance Tracking: Monitoring asset performance and analyzing data unveils trends and patterns. This empowers proactive decision-making, driving continuous improvement across asset management processes.
7. Enhanced Asset Visibility: Gaining comprehensive insight into asset location, status, and condition enhances operational efficiency.
8. Supplier and Vendor Management: Effective relationships with suppliers and vendors are essential for timely asset delivery, quality assurance, and competitive pricing, facilitating seamless asset procurement.
9. Support for Decision Making: Furnishing accurate and timely information supports crucial decisions related to asset investments, retirements, replacements, and upgrades. This empowers informed, strategic choices.
10. Standardization and Centralization: Streamlining asset management processes through standardization and centralization enhances consistency, accuracy, and collaboration across departments and locations.
11. User Satisfaction: Ensuring assets are available and operational when needed enhances user satisfaction and productivity, positively impacting the overall organizational experience.

What are the key features available in ServiceNow to support and automate your Asset Management practice?

First of all, ServiceNow offers two mobile apps – Now Mobile and Agent Mobile – each tailored to cater to distinct asset management needs.

Agent Mobile App: Empowering Onsite Supporters

• Scanning Features: The Agent Mobile App revolutionizes how onsite supporters interact with asset management. Equipped with scanning capabilities, it simplifies the process of registering new assets seamlessly. A quick scan captures essential data, eliminating manual data entry errors and speeding up asset incorporation.
• Location and Stockroom Audits: Onsite supporters can conduct location and stockroom audits with unmatched accuracy. By scanning assets, they confirm their physical presence, ensuring records align with actual stockroom contents. This real-time validation enhances data integrity and minimizes discrepancies.
• Asset Information Lookup: Armed with the Agent Mobile App, onsite supporters effortlessly retrieve asset information on the spot. This instant access to critical data streamlines decision-making and supports informed actions.
• Disposal Support: The disposal process becomes streamlined and efficient. Scans confirm the retirement of concrete assets, ensuring proper documentation and reducing administrative overhead.

Now Mobile App: Empowering End Users

• Issue Reporting: The Now Mobile App targets end users, allowing them to swiftly report issues related to assets they own or are assigned to. This efficient reporting mechanism keeps staff productivity at its peak by ensuring rapid issue resolution making the life of the agent and user so much easier.

Secondly, the Stockroom Management in ServiceNow heavily automates the process of sourcing, ordering and receiving of assets. Effective inventory management stands as a cornerstone of asset management success.

Manage your inventory stockrooms and stock levels

With ServiceNow, organizations gain the power to monitor stock levels with ease. Real-time insights enable proactive decision-making, preventing shortages and streamlining operations. ServiceNow also introduces the concept of stock rules, automating the stock replenishment process. Setting rules to ensure that when stock levels drop to predetermined levels, automated actions kick in to replenish supplies promptly and submit an order to the vendor.

Automate the process of consuming your stock, transferring or aquiring new assets

• Automated Stock Consumption: With ServiceNow, the process of consuming stock becomes easy. Based on the incoming request, the system will automatically check your stock levels based on the requestor location and let you take the decision
• Asset Transfers: ServiceNow introduces a new level of asset flexibility through transfers. If one location lacks sufficient stock, the platform allows for streamlined transfers from other locations, ensuring resource availability where and when it's needed.
• Asset Acquisition: The platform streamlines the process of acquiring new assets via procurement module. If stock levels fall short, ServiceNow enables direct submission of purchase orders. This eliminates delays, ensuring swift access to essential resources and at the same time allowing you to manage different vendors

Shop like Experience with ServiceNow's Service Catalog

Imagine a scenario where the process of ordering assets feels like a breeze – intuitive, convenient, and user-friendly. ServiceNow's Service Catalog makes this vision a reality, introducing a shopping-like experience to asset acquisition.

• Hardware and Software Items: With ServiceNow's Service Catalog, organizations gain the power to offer a comprehensive selection of hardware and software items. This intuitive interface allows users to browse, select, and order the assets they require with ease.
• Shop-Like Convenience: The Service Catalog mimics the experience of online shopping platforms, making asset ordering a familiar and intuitive process. Users can explore item descriptions, select quantities, and place orders seamlessly.
• Enhanced User Satisfaction: By offering a user-friendly ordering experience, organizations boost user satisfaction. Employees can quickly and confidently request the assets they need, leading to increased productivity.
• Efficient Workflow: ServiceNow's Service Catalog streamlines the entire asset ordering workflow. From request submission to approval and fulfillment, the process becomes automated and frictionless.

Asset Contracts with ServiceNow Contract Management

• Centralized Contract Repository: ServiceNow's Contract Management provides a centralized repository for all asset-related contracts. This ensures easy access, eliminates document silos, and streamlines contract retrieval and reference.
• Compliance Tracking: The platform facilitates proactive compliance tracking by automating contract-related alerts and notifications. Organizations can stay ahead of contract milestones, renewals, and obligations, reducing the risk of non-compliance.
• Financial Visibility: ServiceNow's Contract Management offers insights into financial aspects of contracts, including costs, terms, and payment schedules. This transparency aids in accurate budgeting and resource allocation.
• Integrated Workflows: Contract Management seamlessly integrates with other ServiceNow modules, such as Asset Management and Procurement. This ensures that contract terms, such as warranties and maintenance agreements, are aligned with asset lifecycles.
• Efficient Renewals: ServiceNow's automated workflows simplify contract renewals. Organizations can track contract end dates, initiate renewal processes, and ensure that assets remain covered without disruption.

Workflows to automate the lifecycle management of assets

ServiceNow's capabilities extend beyond the ordinary, encompassing a range of workflows designed to optimize processes and enhance decision-making. Let's explore some additional workflows that empower organizations to navigate asset lifecycles with precision and agility:

• Hardware Refresh Request: The Hardware Refresh request flow brings foresight to the forefront. As hardware assets approach the end of their lifecycle, this workflow enables proactive replacement with new assets. By tracking aging hardware and facilitating timely upgrades, organizations ensure operational continuity and maintain technology efficiency.
• Loaner Asset and Consumable Requests: Sometimes, short-term needs arise for assets or consumables. The request for loaner assets or consumables allows users to secure these resources for temporary use. This workflow ensures that operations proceed smoothly even for short-duration requirements.
• Lease Contract Expiration Management: The lease contract expiration flow adds a strategic dimension to asset management. Organizations can make informed decisions regarding leased hardware assets before their contracts expire. Notifications about approaching lease contract expiration dates empower timely actions, ensuring seamless transitions.
• Disposal Order Creation: In the lifecycle of assets, there comes a time for proper disposal. ServiceNow's Disposal Order workflow streamlines this process. Whether it's an asset reaching its end-of-life cycle or one that's no longer functional, creating a disposal order through the Hardware Asset Workspace ensures efficient and compliant asset disposition.
• Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) Process: The RMA process is a pivotal aspect of asset management, facilitating returns or replacements of faulty products. The Asset RMA Order catalog item features prescriptive workflows that streamline the RMA process. This not only expedites actions but also enhances customer satisfaction.

Additional ServiceNow Features for Comprehensive Asset Management

ServiceNow continues to elevate its capabilities, offering a spectrum of advanced features that transcend conventional approaches. Let's delve into these noteworthy features that expand the horizons of asset management:

• Fixed Asset Containers: Dive into the realm of fixed assets, versatile containers capable of housing multiple assets. Often overseen by finance or accounting departments at the corporate level, fixed assets can encompass IT assets such as hardware and software. This dynamic feature allows for comprehensive tracking and management of diverse assets within a single entity.
• Advanced Shipment Notification (ASN): Automate and streamline asset records creation even while assets are in transit. The ASN feature empowers you to seamlessly generate asset records as assets make their journey, ensuring accurate and up-to-date data from the moment assets are on route.
• Asset and Configuration Item (CI) Management: Dive into the landscape of asset and CI management. This entails creating assets, defining appropriate states and substates, synchronizing assets and CIs, managing consumables, and retiring assets. This holistic approach ensures correct management across the asset lifecycle.
• Asset Bundles: the convenience of asset bundles – a mean to consolidate a group of assets existing within your inventory into a unified entity. This feature enhances efficiency by simplifying the handling of asset groups, facilitating management and tracking.
• Hardware Model Normalization: This capability enables users to align hardware and consumable model details, such as manufacturer, product, model, and device type, with data from the Hardware Model Normalization Content Service constantly updated by ServiceNow and supported by Machine Learning features
• Pallet Assets for Inventory Management: Enhance your inventory management strategy with the effective use of pallet assets. This feature optimizes the organization of assets and simplifies their tracking, offering a seamless way to manage bulk assets efficiently.
• Organization Management Application: Discover the Organization Management application, a versatile toolset that streamlines asset management tasks. From updating users and adding vendors to managing models, this application provides an intuitive platform to execute crucial asset management actions.

To sum up, efficient asset management stands as a linchpin for success of every IT organization. ServiceNow's Asset Management suite emerges as a transformative solution, reshaping how organizations oversee, track, and optimize their valuable assets. As we journey through the world of asset management, stay tuned for an upcoming blog post that will delve into another vital aspect: Software Asset Management. This exciting subject will help us to understand how ServiceNow supports organizations to optimize software resources, reduce compliance risks, and unleash potential savings.