What Is Enterprise Asset Management ​
and Why Does it Matter?

Christine Morris: So good morning, everyone. We are our fifth MasterClass for ITAM. And today, we’re going to be talking about “What Is Enterprise Asset Management and Why Does It Matter?” From the agenda perspective, we’ll do some welcomes and introductions, talk about what is enterprise asset  management, how does it differ? We’ll save some time at the end for Q&A. 

So a little bit about Ondaro before we dive in. Ondaro is the only pure play ServiceNow partner with fully certified resources across the platform. I think this might be our first MasterClass since we went from Cask to Ondaro. So our Ondaro rebrand really was pushed for us to represent our new global footprint. The word onda comes from the root word for wave. So we’re here to ride the wave.  

So a little bit about Ondaro as a whole. You can see there on the left-hand side of the slide we’ve got practice expertise in all sorts of areas from ITSM all the way down to App Engine. And what we deliver, really, there’s three key tenants: 

We’ve got our Envision, where we do business transformation. We support organizational change management. We’ve got a group of folks that are really driving AI readiness. Also the struggles of governing and managing your platform.  

Implement & Develop. We’ve got platform architecture, engineering. We do, of course, product implementation, build custom apps for many of our customers, UI/UX design.  

And then we also have got an arm of folks that support platform operations, enhancement services, and product management. So we only live and breathe everything about ServiceNow and transformation. 

So I am Christine Morris. I am senior director of our consulting services. So I lead all of our functional experts across the platform areas. And one of those people is the amazing Ian Cahall, who is our associate director and principal architect. And this, I think, is Ian’s first time with us. So I think many of you have already met him on some of your projects, and we’d love to have the folks that are coming to hear more. 

Ian Cahall: I think you said it best. I’m on Christine’s team. I’m responsible for our IT asset practices—so ITOM, ITAM, and security and risk are part of my area of specialty, although my background has been very heavily focused on IT asset management. So I think this is a great place for me. 

Christine Morris: So a little bit of housekeeping. We want you to join the conversation. If you have questions, you can come off mute, you can put your questions in the chat. If you need any help, use the chat. For anybody that needs captions turned on, if you click on the More button, you can show live captions as we go through this process. 

And with that, just a quick recap of where we’ve been. So we’ve been doing the CMDB MasterClass. We had done 10 sessions on that. So if CMDB is near and dear to your heart, you can go and check that out. We’ll put a link in the chat. And then if you’ve missed some of the previous MasterClasses, we’ve already done those. We did a lot around asset lifecycle. We’ve talked about HAM and SAM. So you can find recordings and resources there to check that out as well. 

So you guys know if you’ve been with us before, we love our audience polls. So, quick question for the team. We’ll respond with the correlating letter in the chat. So, have you considered looking into ServiceNow’s Enterprise Asset Management? So (A) “Yes, we’re actively exploring it, and we’re close to buying.” (B) “We’re still stuck on perfecting our HAM and SAM.” (C) “I don’t have any time for that. I can barely keep track of the assets on my desk.” Or (D) “What’s that? Extra awesome asset management?” 

Let’s see what we’ve got here. Lots of people still perfecting HAM and SAM. Vanessa says she likes extra awesome management. We’ve got—looks like Mona and Burke are looking/exploring buying it. So that’s exciting news. Let’s dive in. 

Ian Cahall: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think we’re going to start just by trying to level set on what is enterprise asset management. I think for a lot of organizations, especially—the great news is we’ve got a lot of folks here that are already familiar with HAM or SAM, some folks that are even starting to think about dipping their toes into enterprise asset management or maybe have already started. Enterprise asset management is for non-IT assets what HAM and SAM make up for the IT asset space? And so when we talk about asset management, the thing that we’re usually most focused on is going to be the full lifecycle of those physical assets, making sure that we’re getting the most out of them, whether that’s a KPI for an optimized lifecycle, end-of-life support, disposals. All of those bits and pieces of the overall asset lifecycle are going to be foremost when we’re talking about this. 

And so you can see on the right-hand side of the screen what that cycle looks like from a ServiceNow platform perspective. We’re obviously interested in planning and understanding what types of assets do we need going out and actually acquiring those assets as we need them, deploying them to our environment and making sure that they end up in the right place. We know where they’re going, who’s using them, operating those assets. So not just where are they at, but who’s using them for what purpose? So why are we using these assets, what the typical lifespan of an asset looks like, and what the costs are to continue to operate those assets throughout its lifecycle. 

And then we look at maintenance. And so we know that if we can maintain our assets, we’re going to do a better job of using them for a longer period. We’re going to get more out of them if they’re well maintained. And so understanding what it requires to maintain our assets, scheduling that work, overseeing that work, and making sure that it’s completed in a timely fashion is really important. But then also understanding what it looks like at the end of the asset’s lifecycle. What do we need to do to retire it? Are there any security or compliance requirements? How do those assets actually exit our environment? And what do we do from a data perspective when they are exiting the environment.  

And so as we talk about this, the things that we’re going to want to really understand is what enterprise assets do you own. And we’ll get a little bit deeper into the specific types of enterprise assets so you’ve got more context around that question. How can you streamline those enterprise asset processes? All related to the lifecycle we see on the right-hand side of the screen. And how well are we actually maximizing their asset life while also avoiding or mitigating any risks that come up? 

Christine Morris: And, Ian, David had a quick question: “Is the intended coverage specific to physical assets, or is the solution also intended to support management/virtual logical data assets throughout their associated lifecycle?” 

Ian Cahall: Great question. No, we are most interested in the physical assets. And then obviously the data points associated with those asset records. And so if we’re talking about a physical enterprise asset that has onboard data storage, it’s a connected asset‚ maybe it’s got a modem in it, but it’s not in your typical IT asset category, we are still going to apply some of those same principles from an IT hardware perspective that we would on a server or a computer. But obviously we are also going to (A) treat the asset different from a lifecycle perspective, and (B) there’s likely going to be different stakeholders involved in that process. So it’s a great question.  

We are most interested in the physical component of the asset here. But we’ll make sure that we’re accounting for, again, any risks associated with onboard, compute, or data storage—those sorts of things. 

And so to get a little bit more defined around what that enterprise asset component is, again, we’ve spent previous sessions talking about hardware assets, software assets. And specifically, when we’re talking about enterprise assets, these are, again, those non-IT assets. So we think about something like a frontline asset; that’s going to be assets related to maybe a checkout line at your retail store, things like the conveyor belt, things like shelving or a bag carriage or something like that. All of these things that our business owns that are related to that process.  

Other things like production machinery—so any of your equipment in a manufacturing environment, any of your robotics or your tool sets there, those could be considered enterprise assets. But also we can look at facilities and buildings: the actual building itself. But also within that building could be doors. It could be furniture. It could be staircases. 

I mean, again, the limits are endless here. The important thing is, if we’re paying money for something and we need to track the specific lifecycle of it, it could qualify as an enterprise asset. The important thing to understand here is that, generally speaking, we’re really very focused on things that are considered non-IT. And again, just like we just talked about, it doesn’t mean that it’s not got any onboard compute. It could have a modem on it. It could be a connected device related to it. But those things blur the line. And we’ll get a little bit more specific into what that means. 

So, I think to help better contextualize this, the right way to do it is to compare enterprise asset management with IT asset management. And while we talk about both of these in the same space—especially from a ServiceNow perspective—and we tend to cover enterprise asset management under the IT asset management umbrella. Again, really important to emphasize the enterprise assets generally are non-IT. And the reason why they tend to be so closely linked from a ServiceNow perspective is, largely speaking, we are using the same data set and the same platform. A lot of the same forms and functionalities are happening in both places. And so it’s easy to blur those lines. And we’ll talk a little bit more about how they differ but also how they are similar. 

So the key differences between enterprise asset management, hardware asset management, and software asset management. Again, enterprise asset management is for those non-IT asset classesL medical, industrial, fleet, any of these things that, again, while they might have some onboard compute, they’re not actually a traditional IT asset for a lot of different reasons. The things that we’re focused on from an enterprise asset management perspective beyond the general asset lifecycle are going to be some of those things that I already mentioned: asset maintenance, work management, providing dedicated workspaces by industry. So let’s say that your organization does both manufacturing and finance work, or both manufacturing and entertainment or hospitality. You might want separate workspaces for those types of assets so that the people that are performing work on the manufacturing side are doing slightly different processes and slightly different visibility than the people working in the hospitality space. 

And in addition to that, from an enterprise asset management perspective, we tend to also be very interested in the model risk for those assets and making sure that we’re aligning our compliance to those industry-specific standards, a great example being medical assets. Obviously you’ve got certain elements of HIPAA involved in that where who’s using it or who’s making use of those assets could be protected information—not always, and potentially even rarely. But it’s still something that we want to make sure that we’re checking the box on and not introducing unnecessary risk to environment.  

Hardware asset management, on the other hand, is focused on physical IT asset classes. So your physical computers, your servers, your storage, your network gear, any kind of IT equipment that you can put your hands on. Some of the unique capabilities of HAM we’ve already touched on in previous sessions, but to highlight a few, devices of service management for those organizations that are providing their managed devices out to their end customers. Zero Touch Refresh and Mobility, OEM warranty integrations, and that tightly coupled with ITSM.  

Now then, from a software asset management perspective, we’re more interested in the virtual IT asset classes: software products, SaaS subscriptions, virtual servers, cloud resources, etc. The special capabilities that we really tend to focus on with software asset management are going to be client software distribution for software deployment and reclamation or direct integrations with their software publishers for specific usage subscriptions and metering. 

As far as how they are more alike, though, is all of the above. Enterprise asset management, hardware, asset management, software asset management? They’re all built on the same foundation where we’re really interested in things like model management. And to achieve model management, the tight integration between our asset records and our CI records using the ServiceNow CMDB in the content service help to fulfill our model records. Model lifecycle management with specific visibility to end of life and end of support and the actions that need to follow those dates. Substitute models and components; so where within your organization can we replace one model with another? This is true for all of those different categories. Where can we bundle and pallet models? This is especially true for both enterprise and hardware asset management because, again, we’re dealing with the physical there. And then model normalization, which, again, we’ve talked about in depth in the past. 

But our real interest is making sure that we’ve got accurate, consistent, and standardized model records within the platform. On the inventory management side, we want to know what do we have. And so stockroom and warehouse management for that physical inventory for both hardware and enterprise assets? Very similar. Stock thresholds and automated stock ordering? Again, kind of the same thing. If we’re keeping things in stock and we need to maintain a certain minimum level of that stock, this is a great tool for both sides of the aisle. And then stock transfers and bulk transfers: Where are we moving our stock to and from? How do those stock rooms work with each other in terms of that parent-child relationship? And then stock optimization: Where are we sitting on hardware or enterprise assets for too long? And we don’t want to do that anymore so that we’re not wasting money. Basically making sure that that piece of furniture that’s set at the bottom of the stack, how long has it sat there? Are we spending too much on bringing this equipment in and just leaving it in our stock rooms? And how can we improve that a little bit more? 

Christine Morris: [00:15:43] And, Ian, David posed the question, “Can you clarify and provide context for model in this context?” 

Ian Cahall: [00:15:50] I can, yeah, absolutely. So in ServiceNow Asset Management, the model is the parent record for any type of asset record. The model defines the base attributes of the asset—things like who’s the original manufacturer, is there any specific model number or model information that’s required? Other elements like those lifecycle components. So when does a model reach end of support? When does it reach end of life? And then all of the asset records that are associated with that model retain that information and carry it through so that we can see how those things compare and make sure that we’re taking the right action on our individual asset records. And we actually will get a little bit more into model management here in a few slides as we dig deeper into some of the specific enterprise asset features. Good question. 

Ian Cahall: So really quickly, I want to highlight a few of the key use cases for enterprise asset management before we dig into some of the features and how we get to those use cases. So I already talked a little bit about risk scoring. Risk scoring is unique to enterprise asset if we’re comparing it to hardware asset or software asset. And importantly, the things that we’re most interested in here is again, how our enterprise assets are introducing risk to our organization based on certain components like frequency of maintenance. How often do we need to be performing repairs or maintenance on a particular type of enterprise asset to make sure that it’s not turning into an incident? And then also understanding how these assets align to those industry-specific requirements. Again, I called out previously the example of HIPAA. There are a lot of different examples where our physical assets in the enterprise space may have different risk criteria and qualifiers. And we want to make sure that we’ve got good visibility to that 

RMA, or return merchandise authorization, so, this is a big thing in the IT space, but it’s also true in a lot of enterprise asset spaces as well. Return merchandise authorization, or RMA, or is the process of working with the manufacturer of an asset to make sure that we’re able to get it repaired, either covered under warranty or service contracts, or those kinds of standards.  

What this does is make sure that we’ve got visibility to which of our assets have gone out for repair, whether or not we’re getting an actual repair or a swap. And then also understanding how that impacts our current asset records. So if an asset has left our environment, we need to have visibility to that, understand when it will come back, what we’re going to do with it. And in those cases of swaps, it’s really good to have visibility for which new asset has come into our environment versus which asset has left our environment, for compliance reasons, among other things.  

Same is true for asset disposal. So again, any type of asset that’s leaving the environment, if it’s repairable, oftentimes, will go into that repair space. But if it’s not, then we know that we need to dispose of it. And there are other reasons why we might dispose of an asset as well. If it’s just simply end of life, it’s something that’s introduced enough risk that we don’t want to continue to maintain it. Or if it’s exposed or gone past the level of our typical threshold for total cost of ownership. Those might be reasons why we have to dispose of an asset. And when we do that, we want to have good visibility to that process as well. Again, largely for compliance. So we want to know which assets have left our environment, why, and what we did with them as they went out. Did we hand that off to a third-party vendor to dispose of it, etc. 

Other things we want to look at are auditing our assets. I think this is pretty self-explanatory. But again, in cases where we want to make sure that we’ve got really good, up-to-date information about what our current asset estate looks like, where our assets are, and where they might be missing. It’s important to do routine asset audits. 

We also want to integrate with our incident process. Now, for enterprise assets, this could be a combination of ITSM. It could be OTSM or another incident management toolset largely focused on our enterprise class assets. And again, it’s really important to differentiate those things when we’re talking about enterprise assets. Because, while some organizations may use ITSM to manage incidents for non-IT equipment or non-IT infrastructure, those sorts of things oftentimes—and more and more lately, we’re actually seeing organizations move to non-IT incident management to make sure that those things are properly categorized and separated. 

We also want to have visibility to recalls. And so if there are asset recalls, we want to be able to manage those effectively. Via workflow, understand which assets are impacted and actually use our workflow to automate the tasking and the retrieval of those devices to either be repaired or returned and replaced. You name it. Obviously those recall stipulations can vary quite a bit from case to case. 

And then finally, the other things that we’re looking at are lease-end workflows. So much like IT hardware, enterprise assets can be leased. And if they are, we want to have good visibility to what happens when a lease ends. Do we need to buy those assets out? Do we need to return them to the lessee? Do we need to do other actions like make sure that we’re extending those leases? How does that impact our environment? And based on those actions that we need to take, we need to also make sure that we’re automating that follow up. So if it’s something that needs to be returned to the leasing company, we need to actually go out, get those devices or those pieces of equipment, and then return them to that company. And this gives us the ability to get that visibility. 

And then the standard things. So the ability to request an asset—in this case, obviously, we’re most interested in those non-IT assets, but making sure that there’s a way to self-serve that request process and retain visibility to it as well as refreshing assets. Now again, while this is a concept that is very common in IT hardware, for non-IT assets, there’s also a lot of different use cases for refreshes. Good examples would be medical equipment. Oftentimes medical equipment needs to be replaced every so often. And this can facilitate that by identifying where those assets are, which assets are eligible, and when we need to actually perform those refreshes, as well as any tasking around that. 

So we’ve got another poll here. 

Christine Morris: Yeah. So this one is what tool are you currently using to manage enterprise assets? So (A) “Still trying to define what an enterprise asset is.” (B) “Tracking assets in different systems by different departments,” which is, I think, one we see most commonly. (C) “Actively implementing cross-functional asset visibility, potentially in another tool.” (D) “Other. Tell us what magical chaos you’re using.” 

If you could respond in the chat, we’d love to hear. We’ve got Erin. Yes. Everyone has their own system or spreadsheet. Lots of Bs. Joseph is using HAM and SAM only. Looks like Scott is slowly getting into this in ServiceNow. 

Ian Cahall: C, Maximo. Yep, that’s pretty common. OK. 

Christine Morris: [00:23:33] Lots of Bs. And I think that— 

Ian Cahall: Yeah, lots of Bs.  

Christine Morris: That’s the most common because the departments are so siloed that everybody is doing their own thing, purchasing their own software, which doesn’t give you really that perfect snapshot from a financial systems perspective either. 

Ian Cahall: Exactly right.  

Christine Morris: And then Francine says, “They want to track our equipment in our conference room. So we found an audiovisual model category that’s enterprise in the facility class.” She doesn’t understand why it’s none in IT assets as these are Microsoft Teams kits, including many PCs, large-screen touchpads, cameras, soundbars. For her, it’s an IT asset.  

Ian Cahall: Yeah great point. So I think it's definitely valid. The way that I tend to qualify most audiovisual equipment is much like you. So if we're thinking about the team’s device, your projector, maybe even if you’ve got a monitor or a large TV screen, a lot of those things are connected, which you would consider traditional IT assets. But when we’re talking about audiovisual, there are other pieces of equipment that are not considered IT. And so those things might be traditional speakers, traditional sound systems, lighting equipment, the actual furniture within that conference room. So the desks, the chairs, the tables, and a number of other items that are not considered IT assets. 

So while you might look at, again, your projector or your team’s kit as IT assets, the rest of the items in the room would be considered enterprise assets. And so, audiovisual is one of those that definitely gets a little bit into that gray area where if you talk to a traditional audiovisual technician, they don’t consider themselves IT, even though, increasingly, the equipment they’re using is smart equipment. It’s all connected. It’s all managed via your Microsoft admin portal or something to that effect. But it’s as a result of that gray area, especially, from people working in that space. I think it’s got applicability in both ITAM and enterprise asset. And that's certainly something that could be discussed in more depth. 

Ian Cahall: So, really quickly, I want to touch on roles, responsibilities, and personas for enterprise asset management. These are the types of people that would be using enterprise asset management within the platform. Obviously, you’re going to have your enterprise asset management. And this could be one or multiple people. But these are the types of individuals that are responsible for one of those classes of enterprise asset. And this could be somebody that has other responsibilities. Great example could be a facilities manager; somebody who is not responsible for maintaining the facility. They’ve got responsibility for applying work. And they have that first level of responsibility over the building or the office space or what have you. They could also be classified as an enterprise asset manager in this case. 

The bottom line is their most important role from an enterprise asset management perspective is overseeing that asset lifecycle, making sure that any routine maintenance that needs to occur is happening, any end-of-life items are happening. And I think it’s really important to note that even in that example of a facilities manager, the facility could have an end-of-life process. And a lot of times, especially in the enterprise space, we’re leasing our office space through one form or another. And when that lease ends, we need to know what happens and how we handle that. And so this is a great example of what that dual role could look like.  

And the big thing that we look for from an enterprise asset manager, in addition to everything we’ve just talked about is making sure that they take ownership of that data being well maintained in the ServiceNow platform. So obviously we’ve got all of our automation. And we’ll get more into some of those features that help support that. But making sure that somebody is the person with that responsibility following up on requests, making sure that they understand where work is being scheduled. And those sorts of things are really important for the enterprise asset manager. 

The other roles, technician and maintenance, pretty straightforward. These are the people that are actually completing work orders related to our enterprise assets. Could be a repair, could be a routine maintenance, could be simple upkeep. Or they could be responding to incidents as well.  

Compliance stakeholders. So, these are the people that care about the data quality and the kind of start and end points of our asset records. So when did we get an asset? What are we using it for? When did we get rid of an asset? Why did we get rid of it? Where did it go? All of these things are really important data points for a lot of our compliance-focused individuals within our organizations. And enterprise asset management helps give them visibility to those items. 

And then, of course, your ServiceNow platform administrator. So they’re going to help support your enterprise asset data hygiene. They’re going to make sure that if you’ve got integrations out there bringing data in, that they’re working appropriately from a ServiceNow perspective. And then they’re going to help configure any of the access and visibility that you need to that data to help support those workflows and also make sure that if there are upgrades to the platform or new features and those sorts of things, they’re provided to your enterprise asset management users in a timely fashion and that there’s no impact to our ability to operate. 

Christine Morris: And, Ian, we had a question. Joseph asked, “How do you get a person in this role to start using ServiceNow to conduct these functions? We have subject matter experts that currently perform these kinds of functions, but they are not aware/experienced using ServiceNow.” 

Ian Cahall: Yeah. Great question. So there are a number of different starting points for an enterprise asset manager, if that’s the type of role that we’re talking about. The first place that I would start, obviously, is foundational training. As we know, there are the actual enterprise asset manager and foundational training out on ServiceNow University, totally free and accessible to everybody. I would certainly recommend that as a starting point.  

But in addition to that, if you don’t have that ability to train and upskill those folks within the organization, sometimes it’s a matter of shadowing. So, for example, if today you’re already doing HAM, you’ve got a hardware asset manager. That’s a great place to start for shadowing somebody that’s looking to get into the enterprise asset space. And then beyond that. If those skills are limited within your organization, you need external support, partners like Ondaro or here to help as well. 

Christine Morris: Yeah. And the other thing I would add, I mean, especially in the enterprise ecosystem, to assign one person responsible for all enterprise assets is—I don’t know that you can get there. I mean, you’ve got somebody that owns facilities. You’ve got somebody that owns HVAC. You’ve got somebody across all of those. So, in many instances, you might have multiple asset managers that are responsible for their stream of work or their department. It’s one of those ones that is challenging to just say you’re going to have because, fundamentally, then it’s like, what department pays for that? The question that people would pose.  

Ian Cahall: Yeah. Absolutely. Agreed. So let’s get into some key enterprise asset management features that I think really differentiate this from your HAM or your SAM and make it so that you’re getting the most out of an investment in this toolset and make it make sense for why these enterprise assets should live in ServiceNow rather than HAM or a third-party platform or a spreadsheet somewhere. 

So, if you’re familiar at all with ServiceNow at this point, you’re probably familiar with the concept of workspaces. This is the modern place to complete your work related to these specific categories of workflow or workstream. Enterprise asset has not just one dedicated workspace but, as of Zurich, has multiple dedicated workspaces for different categories of asset. 

And so, most organizations are going to start with the enterprise asset workspace as their branching-off point and then from there will likely segregate certain workspaces by class. And so a great example is the OT asset management workspace, which is a part of enterprise asset. So for your operational technology, those things might be classified as enterprise assets as well. 

And you can create a dedicated workspace for that. This workspace is going to include dashboards that have great visibility into lifecycle activities, ongoing work, total cost of ownership, all the key pieces of information that you need to effectively manage your enterprise asset estate while also servicing important actions and items that you need to focus on via action cards, which will appear at the top of your screen in the various tabs of your workspace. That’ll draw attention to things like missing data points or late actions or upcoming lifecycle dates that you need to be aware of. 

And I do see Vanessa asked, “Is enterprise asset management separate licensing from HAM? We have HAM, SAM, and assets. To understand licensing and capabilities is a struggle for us.”  

Yeah, I know. This is a great question. So enterprise assets are licensed separately from hardware assets. And they’re categorized much the same way. And so if you’ve got an idea of how HAM is licensed today based on categorical subscription unit counts and ratios, enterprise asset is built the same based on the category of asset. There are different ratios that attribute themselves to your subscription unit account for enterprise asset management. And so, getting an understanding of that, I definitely understand that it can be difficult to wrap your head around what those differences are. The really great thing that I will call out for enterprise asset management and hardware asset management now is that as of, Xanadu, ServiceNow introduced the ability to select which categories of your assets—whether it’s an enterprise asset or a hardware asset—which subcategories within that domain you want to manage with ServiceNow. 

And that directly impacts your licensing burden. And so a great example for enterprise asset is let’s say that you’ve got facilities records within your enterprise asset database. And you don’t actually want to manage your facility’s assets. You can actually turn off that category. The records will stay there. But all the workflows and all the extra enterprise asset management goodness that you get will get turned off. So you’re just maintaining the baseline data record. So, that is something that we certainly help a lot of our customers with. When it comes to navigating what that looks like. So always here to help support and understand what level of licensing you need for enterprise asset management. 

We’ll talk really quickly about the modules too. So the specific things that you get from the enterprise asset workspace, again, you’re going to get that enterprise asset dashboard. But in addition to that, you’re going to get your asset estate, which is your deep dive, the ability to actually scroll through all of your individual asset records, see your asset requests, and understand where you’ve got asset remediation tasks, where you’ve got missing data points for asset records, etc. You’ve also got your enterprise model management module, which gives you that model-level visibility. 

So just like we talked about earlier, your models are your parent records for your individual assets. And so it’s just as important that you’re maintaining your model records as your assets. And again, the model management module here is going to give you visibility to your model lifecycles and where you’ve got potential items that need to be addressed, whether it’s missing data, upcoming lifecycle dates, etc.  

In addition to those things, we’ve also got our inventory management. So this is going to show you where your enterprise assets are currently being stored, who’s responsible for that storage, and where there are tasks related to that inventory, whether it’s moving inventory from one location to another, deploying inventory, receiving inventory, etc.  

We also have lease management, which if your assets are leased, this gives you direct visibility into when those leases expire and what actions you need to take to address assets that are associated with those expiring leases. 

And then finally normalization rate, which gives you visibility to how your records are being normalized. Again, making sure that your records are standardized, consistent, and easily able to be workflowed because of that consistency. 

Next up we’ve got model and asset risk scores. So we talked a lot about this. But this gives you a little bit of a closer look at what that is. So the baseline for this is us making sure that we can improve our asset uptime by ensuring that we know when, how, and where we need to apply better maintenance, more frequent maintenance, or potentially less frequent maintenance based on those risk scores, a lot of this being driven by, again, those industry-specific, requirements as well as data that we’re getting back from incidents, requests, etc. And so, this is a great place for us to see which of our models need refined maintenance cycles. But it’s also a great place to start making decisions around whether or not you want to keep and maintain those models within your environment because of the frequency and the level of risk. Those models or assets that are introducing more frequent risk to your environment might be good candidates for retirement so that you can replace them with more reliable assets in the future. 

So we’ll talk really quickly about enterprise model types. And we talked a little bit about models already. But there are a few things to understand here. So there’s your simple model. For any intent and purpose, this is your fixed asset. So this is the standard model. It’s got a lifecycle. It’s got costs associated with it. But it has no child assets or parts. So it’s a standalone model. There’s no components for it. You get what you get. A great example would be piece of equipment or a piece of furniture. Your desk is a desk, and it’s put together. It is what it is. You’re not going to add parts to it. You’re not going to remove parts to it. It’s very standard and straightforward.  

Beyond that, we’ve got our consumables. And again, if you’re coming from a shop that’s using hardware asset management, you’re probably familiar with the concept of consumable. But in this case, when we’re talking about consumables, we’re thinking about assets that we’re less interested in the cost associated with the life cycle. We’re more interested in blended costs and quantities of these consumables that we know how to maintain. This means that we’re putting less management emphasis on these consumables. So we still want to have visibility to them. We still want them to be requestable. We still want to know how many we’ve got in stock at our different locations, and we still want to have visibility when we deploy a consumable to somebody. But beyond that, we’re less concerned about what else happens. We’re not going to look at maintaining our consumables. We’re not going to look at so much of a disposal effort with our consumables. It’s really very simply how much do we have in terms of quantity? And what’s our blended cost rate for those consumables so that we’ve got some idea of how that’s impacting us from a CapEx or OpEx perspective. 

Beyond that, we’ve got our multi-component pre-assembled models. These are enterprise models that have many different child component records. A comparable idea for this is going to be bundles of IT assets. On the IT side, you might look at a server that’s got your server, it’s got a chassis, it’s got cabling, it’s got some other items. The same thing is true here for enterprise model.  

So something that you might consider for an enterprise model example would be a vehicle. Obviously you’re interested in the vehicle itself. The body, the engine, and all those sorts of things. But then it might also have child component records for the tires or the wheels or the brakes or any other number of additional items that we want to maintain and manage within the space. 

There’s a differentiation between pre-assembled, multi-component models, which are when they’re requested, you get what you get. And again, a car is a pretty good example of that. You’ll request that vehicle as part of your enterprise fleet. And the components of it will come pre-assembled. And then there are user-assembled multi-components where you receive these different pieces or parts, and you’re willing to put them together at a time of reception. 

And so we talk a little bit more about that. But this gives you an idea of what that relationship ultimately looks like. It gives us a visibility into each of those enterprise model components. And the reason that this is so important is not only are we interested in the overall parent model record and its life cycle, but we’re also interested in life cycles and the attributes of those components. So can we repair them? Can we swap them? Does a component go end of life earlier than the parent model? And so we need to take specific action on those things. There’s a lot of reasons why we would want this level of granularity. And again, a lot of our workflow can be built out of it. 

And so a perfect example is that vehicle. We know that we’re going to replace the tires every X amount of months or years. And so those components will come up for end of life sooner than the parent model. And we’ll be able to take specific action, create tasks for that vehicle to be serviced, etc. 

And this goes into a little bit more depth here. So for your multi-component models, much like with any other type of asset, you’ve got your model as the parent record to an asset. But in these cases where we’ve got multiple components, those components act as the model record parents for the child assets for the multi-component asset. And again, the simplest way to think about this is, again, with the model being that parent record, we want to make sure that the model is where the life cycle is being defined. And then the asset is where the action is being defined. So if we’re, again, replacing those tires on the vehicle, we want that asset record to reflect those actions being taken. And oftentimes, again, if we’re replacing tires, for example, we’re going to swap those out as an asset record. So the old asset record would show “retired.” The new one would show “in use” and associated with that multi-component asset. 

Christine Morris: And Ian, Vanessa asks, “Does this work the same for child assets and consumables, or is it different?” 

Ian Cahall: It does. Yeah. So this is the same. And we can see this dictated here. So we’ve got model components, but we’ve also got consumable model components. And both of them can be related to a multi-component model as a parent record. And yes, I also see Joseph said, “A tire being considered a consumable.” Yeah, the tire would be considered a consumable, whereas a wheel might be considered a component. You’re going to replace the tires much more frequently. Those would be in that consumable category, whereas your wheels hopefully are only getting replaced if they go end of life for whatever reason. Or they become damaged, etc. 

And again, that’s just one example. We could extrapolate that to anything. HVAC, if you’ve got coils in an AC unit, those might be components of the HVAC unit. And again, a ton of different types of use cases where this might be useful. 

Then we’ve got multi-tier model classification. So when we’re talking about how we classify our models, one of the things we want to do is, in addition to the model category—which you may be familiar with if you’re coming from a HAM Pro shop—you’ve got your model categories for your IT hardware already defined. The same is going to be true for your enterprise assets. But in a lot of cases, there might be reasons why you need to add additional layers of classification to your model beyond that category.  

And so while your model category is going to sit at the top and define some of your high-level workflows and what might be visible on a model form or an asset form, there may be reasons why you need to create lower levels of hierarchical classifications where you want to be able to report on those things, whether it’s within a dashboard or an ad hoc report, etc. And there are also my reasons why, from an industry perspective, you’re doing that as well. So, if you’ve got different types of medical monitors within your environment, you might have a model category of medical monitor, but maybe you want to create subcategories of heart monitor or oxygen monitor or any number of things. 

And so there are a lot of different reasons why we might want to be able to report on separate categories. And we’ve got that ability to define that, both on the model level and then also within our different views of data in the enterprise asset dashboard, etc. 

Now we talked about this already, but important to highlight it really quickly. So we’ve also got our maintenance plans. We want to be able to proactively schedule and manage the health of our enterprise assets. We’ve got the ability to define that within enterprise asset management so we can set specific durations, frequencies, or event leadups to initiating maintenance work and then assign that work to our technicians that support this. 

And again, this can be split by different types of model categories or those classifications that we add in addition to that. And beyond that, too. If we want to get really creative, we’ve also got the ability to add scripting to make it very explicit on what our circumstances are around, building a maintenance plan. 

From those maintenance plans, in addition to them, we can also create work orders and manage them. And again, if you’re familiar with hardware asset management, you’ll know that this is very similar to that. We’ve got the ability to create and oversee the work that’s being done on our asset estate. And this is really important. For those enterprise asset managers, you need to know that your things are being upkept or incidents that are related to our assets are being responded to in a timely fashion. And so we can do ad hoc work, or we can do those scheduled maintenance items, and we’ll have visibility to all that within our work management space within the enterprise asset workspace. 

There’s another poll. 

Christine Morris: [00:48:22] All right. We’ll make this one quick because we are getting close to the end of the time here. How many of your non-IT assets are still tracked in spreadsheets? “All of them. Excel is our enterprise asset management system.” “Most of them, but we’re trying to get out.” (C) “Just a few holdouts.” (D) “None. We have a robust tool that manages all non-IT assets,” which I’d be willing to guess maybe only one person has a robust tool. 

Just a few holdouts. All right. Roll on, Ian. 

Ian Cahall: Cool. I’ll make this part quick. But I think it is important. Because this is where there’s a big deviation from our classic ITAM data sources. So when we’re implementing enterprise asset management, we need to find a way to get data on those enterprise assets. If we’re talking about IT assets, we’re going to be looking at toolsets like the classic IT Discovery from ServiceNow or maybe we’re looking at SCCM or Intune or Tanium. You name it. There’s a lot of different third-party tools and platforms that are available to provide that data.  

For enterprise assets, this is a little bit different. Because while there are those connected assets like we talked about, we may need to either complete an integration or migrate that data.  

But then, for our non-connected assets, those integrations may not be available. Again, you may have them in spreadsheets today. You may have other sources of truth for this data. And so we’re going to have to find ways to bring that data into ServiceNow so that you can effectively manage it. And hopefully, that's a one-time thing.  

But when we’re working on trying to sort this information for our connected assets, thankfully, ServiceNow does have discovery tools to support this. Again, classic discovery for network discovery is one path. But in addition to that, ServiceNow now offers OT visibility for those operational technology types of equipment, those things that maybe you’re in very secure DMZ type of environments or other scenarios where there’s very unique requirements to try to get in and access that data. And that data will ultimately land in our CMDB. And through synchronization between CMDB and our asset database, those asset records will be created.  

For our non-connected assets, a few different paths. But it could be that we’re looking to do a one-time import. Some of you may be familiar with the process of doing imports into ServiceNow. And the real key there is building the right transform map. So we get the data together in a spreadsheet or something similar, build our transform map so that ServiceNow can make sense of the information that’s in that spreadsheet. We create those records in our CMDB and our asset records, make sure that those records are linked, and we’re able to action them appropriately. 

And then finally, whenever we’re bringing new assets into the environment, we want to make sure that our workflow is accounting for the creation of those asset records. Whether that’s a self-service request or receiving or something to that effect where we can create our asset records at initiation and then synchronize them with the CMDB. 

We’ve also got advanced shipment notifications. This works the same as with hardware asset management. So anytime that a vendor is shipping us assets, they can provide an asset that can be imported either manually or via some sort of email ingestion or integration, and that can result in the asset records being created as well.  

And then finally, we can also do bulk imports, similar to the import process, just described, but on a larger scale. Oftentimes this might require a job, and depending on the volume of data that we’re talking about, may even be best handled via a mid-server import as well. So lots of different ways that we can try to handle that. But again, the bottom line is we want to make sure that as you’re planning your adoption of enterprise asset management, we’re facilitating bringing that data into the platforms. 

And then finally—and I’ll quickly gloss over this one—we do have RFID data integration with Zebra MotionWorks. So if you guys have Zebra scanners for RFIDs, we can actually use that as a place to bring in asset data during an audit or an initial onboarding of enterprise asset management. 

Christine Morris: All right. So we'll end with a fun poll. If your enterprise asset management program were a movie, what would it be called? “Fast & the Fractured: Asset Drift.” (B) “Gone With the Warranty.” Common one. (C) “Field of Assets: ‘If you tag it, they will come.’” (D) “Mission Possible: Powered by Enterprise Asset Management.” What would you name your enterprise asset management movie? 

We’ve got Field of Assets. Yeah, lots. Another. A Fast & the Fractured. Good one, Max. Everybody wants to name their movie The Field of Assets. Joseph says, “A heading towards C.” I love it, Scott. Scott added his own: Living on a Prayer. That’s a good one. 

Ian Cahall: That’s good. 

Christine Morris: All right, well, we are winding down. Just a couple of—if you guys are interested, I know a couple folks are talking about, “We’re going to start this journey.” HAM and SAM is hard to do on your own. Enterprise asset management is much harder to tackle that from an enterprise perspective. So if you’re interested in some assistance or some guidance, we’re always here to help. We’ve got some additional—we can do a career path roadmap to figure out how do you start to tackle that. And then, again, just shared some links to our CMDB MasterClass and our ITAM MasterClass. 

So in the last—Ian and I are actually in a meeting together after this. So if anyone has a couple quick questions—Scott’s already got one. Beat me to it: Are we sending the slide deck after the class? He has a person in his division who should see it. And I think that we post it. Yes. All right. Kristen says yes. We will share it.  

Any other questions to wind us down? 

Neat. Well, thank you, Ian. And thanks everyone for joining us. And we’ll be coming out with what our next topic is.  

Ian Cahall: Yeah. Thanks so much everybody. Appreciate it.