In the ever-growing digital world, with many businesses' operating models and workforce paradigms shifting dramatically, it is of paramount importance to have visibility into the hardware resources in the IT environment, including the many home offices that now exist worldwide. This will optimize IT spending and reduce risks. It will also further improve overall employee productivity with greater efficiency.
Understanding Hardware Asset Management (HAM)
Hardware Asset Management is a part of the IT Asset Management. Hardware Asset Management (HAM) manages the physical and consumable assets throughout their asset lifecycle at every stage. The Hardware Asset Management enables the organization to:
- Reduce the cost of managing assets
- Control the inventory of assets that are purchased and used in the organization
- Improve service to end users.
- Comply with the industry standards and regulations
Challenges in Traditional Hardware Asset Management
- Disconnected Tools in the IT Environment: Disconnected tools mean that information about hardware assets, such as procurement details, current location, and maintenance history, may spread across multiple platforms. These disconnected tools and hardware create issues in getting a full view of assets in the IT environment.
- Manual Processes: These manual processes are prone to error and inconsistent data, which leads to inefficiencies, especially as the number of hardware assets increases with time. If the hardware assets are spread across different locations, departments, and organizational units, then managing them is challenging.
- Increased Cost and Risk: Older systems can lead to higher operational costs due to their inefficiencies in asset management processes. These increased costs may include labor costs associated with manual tracking and costs related to lost or underused assets.
Traditional HAM practices may not integrate well with modern security protocols and technologies, leaving these assets vulnerable to unauthorized use, data breaches, and theft.
Introduction to ServiceNow HAM Solutions
ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management provides end-to-end visibility of IT hardware assets and automates the asset lifecycle in a single platform. This helps customers achieve greater visibility through a trusted source of data. Customers are enabled to use prescriptive workflows relating to asset lifecycle and business processes. These drive greater efficiency for the customer, and industry best practices are provided out-of-the-box in ServiceNow HAM.
Key Features of ServiceNow HAM Solutions
- Automation and Discovery: With the ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management solution, an organization can easily automate hardware asset discovery and inventory management, providing real-time visibility into its hardware infrastructure.
- Lifecycle Management: ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management solutions can manage the entire lifecycle of hardware assets, from procurement to retirement. This ensures that the assets follow industry regulations and adhere to the organization's internal policies throughout each stage of their lifecycle.
- Integration Capabilities: The customer can seamlessly integrate ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management and ServiceNow IT Service Management. This integration helps the organization share data seamlessly, enhancing productivity and collaboration.
- Reporting and Analytics: With this feature, the customer can track asset performance, compliance with industry regulations, asset usage over time, and many more key metrics, enabling them to make informed decisions and manage assets proactively.
Benefits of Using ServiceNow for Hardware Asset Management
- Reduces Cost of Maintenance: The HAM solution reduces the chances of unexpected failure and downtime by constantly tracking the status of hardware assets. Because of this, organizations will have less maintenance of their hardware assets.
- Hardware Spending: Real-time visibility into hardware assets with accurate data enables planning and allocating budget, avoiding under- and overspending on hardware assets.
- Improved Disposal Procedures: ServiceNow HAM solutions improve the overall asset disposal process and mitigate risks. They also ensure that hardware disposal is handled in compliance with regulations and company policies.
Implementing ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management Solutions
Step 1: Assessment and Defining Goals
The implementation team starts by assessing current asset management practices. They address loopholes and identify areas for improvement. The team then defines the organization's HAM implementation objectives by engaging stakeholders from IT, procurement, and Finance to gather requirements.
Step 2: Plan, Design and Configuration
In this step, a project plan is created, outlining the scope, project timeline, and resources required for the implementation. Then, the implementation team can configure the ServiceNow HAM Module according to the organizational requirements. Configuring HAM will also involve defining various asset classes, attributes, lifecycle stages, and workflows.
Step 3: Implementation
In this step, the implementation team must set up asset classes and configure the lifecycle stages (procurement, deployment, maintenance, retirement). The organization can integrate ServiceNow HAM with ITSM processes for seamless operation. The implementation team also develops and customizes reports and dashboards to have real-time visibility into the hardware assets.
Step 4: Testing and Validation
A user acceptance test is conducted to ensure the functionality meets the requirements. The testing team also needs to validate the accuracy and completeness of data migration.
Any issue or discrepancy will be addressed within the allotted timeframe.
Best Practices for Optimizing Hardware Asset Management
To optimize hardware asset management, the following are the industry's best practices:
- Conduct regular audits to ensure the accuracy of existing asset inventory. This helps the organization identify discrepancies, update certain asset information, and maintain compliance with regulations.
- Automated tools and workflows can be utilized to track asset lifecycle stages. This automation reduces the chances of manual error to a larger extent.
- Develop and enforce standardized policies and procedures for Hardware Asset Management at the organization. It should include detailed guidelines for asset procurement, usage, maintenance, and disposal, ensuring consistency and accountability.
Also, read Explore Efficiency of ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management
Case Studies: Successful HAM Optimization with ServiceNow
India’s Top Private Sector Bank
6000+ Servers | 40,000 end points | 30,000 users
The challenges include managing a highly dynamic environment with many employees using outdated methods like Excel sheets and emails for hardware inventory. Manual processes for onboarding, offboarding, and services lack transparency and audit capabilities, leading to high SLA times for asset allocation to new joiners. Managing communication with multiple stakeholders, handling assets in a work-from-home scenario, and updating a huge hardware inventory manually at various stages further complicate the process.
The ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management implementation process included the end-to-end HAM Lifecycle from new asset allocation to asset disposal. The configuration was based on the asset allocation to employees.
The value outcomes for the customer are as follows:
- Hardware asset Normalization: 95%
- 60% reduction in asset allocation TAT for new joiner
- Automatic processes from Manual Excel and Emails.
- Transparent Inventory Management
Future Trends in Hardware Asset Management
The organization invested $30,193 million in HAM to strengthen cybersecurity measures in 2024 only. According to a report from Future Market Inc., the global hardware asset market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 11.9% from 2024 to 2034. By 2034, the HAM market is expected to reach a valuation of USD 93,056 million.
- Blockchain Integration: Blockchain technologies are being used for transparency and the secure tracking of assets throughout their lifecycle.
- IOT Integration: IOT technologies are used by organizations to enable real-time tracking and monitoring of hardware assets.
Conclusion
ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management (HAM) offers a robust solution for providing optimization of HAM processes. ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management removes the complexity of managing and maintaining the assets on which the business of an organization relies.
To unlock the benefits and make your organization ready for the future, consider implementing ServiceNow Hardware Management inMorphis today.