Don’t get tricked! In ServiceNow “asset management” can mean different things, to different groups. It’s very important to always keep in mind your products audience, “…and ask about those tables.”

ITSM Asset Management: ITSM has an internal facing focus. IT serves the business, and only the business. Asset management in the ITSM world, often means you have to track assets based on internal business needs such as budgeting, inventory management for departments and the contracts behind those purchases. Example: tracking devices it loans to employees.

CSM Asset Management: CSM has an external facing focus. CSM agents focus on serving the companies external clients. The driving purpose behind asset management for CSM is to help track assets that the external clients use to support other customer-facing services. Example: tracking devices owned by external customers.

Technical note: If you are currently using asset management application, there is such a difference for CSM that when you activate CSM for setup, it modifies the tables in the asset management application (to extend the unique benefits that are available between asset management + CSM).

CSM customers not using Asset Management already, use the asset and product tables for case management — which is referred to as the ‘Case view’ of these tables. And.. that’s it. So if you have a need for more asset beyond what’s available, you need to buy the asset management product.

Blog written as part of my journey with the CIS-CSM Campaign program — offered by ServiceNow.