Hi, everybody. Welcome to this
week's Friday fast 15. I'm Kaitlyn Frank with
Crossfuze today. I'm here with Joel Gyolai. Joel is the I.t. asset
management practice lead here at Crossfuze. He's been with Crossfuze
for almost five years and has been working with
ServiceNow since 2012. So we have a few
minutes here with Joel we're going to dig into
this one topic we won't speak for more than 15 minutes. Let's dig in. Hi Joel welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. You bet. So first question today. Can you tell me very
simply what is I.t. hardware asset
management for anybody who's new to this topic. Sure Yeah. The description I'd like
to give out to people is that I.t. hardware
asset management. It's a set of business
processes that combine things like financial
contractual and inventory pieces of an assets lifecycle
inside of an I.t. environment. So how important is that
piece that the hardware asset management, how. How important is
that to the business as a whole outside of society. It's very important right. Every company has
I.t. assets right. Everybody has
something, whether it's a phone a computer anything
in a company someone's going to have that piece of
I.t. equipment that costs money. Right We all know I.t.
assets costs money. But we also need to know
other things about them. So the key point. And we'll hammer it today
actually on this discussion is that there is more to assets
than just who they're assigned to or where we got them from. It's tracking the entire
lifecycle of an asset. So things like knowing
when to recycle an asset is very important right. Or knowing when you need to
restock your inventory that you have is also important. So it's more than
what people might think of just
knowing someone who has a computer and the model. It's more than just those
simple pieces of data. Because I imagine
that having you need to be on top of
that inventory management is probably a big deal. Traditionally
asset management is something that has set solidly
within the I.t. function of the business. Is that still the
case in your opinion. That's not the case anymore. Service now is really
good at saying this quote over and over its
I.t. asset management. It's a business issue disguised
as an I.t. problem right. So I.t. asset management
covers so many aspects or even multiple departments
of a company. So the other quote
and percentage that they throw out there
is that I tam is actually 80% process and 20% technology. So they're really
trying to hit home. The idea that it's not just I.t. I.t. might be responsible
for supporting I.t. devices or tracking them
in an inventory. But it's a business
as a whole that completes the full lifecycle. Right I.t. isn't
the only one who places a purchase order
for new laptops or contacts a vendor if they need
to re refresh a contract or renew a contract. Right it's not I.t.
that does that. So they're really
trying to hit home that this is an entire
companies problem that we need to fix as a whole. And again, the important
piece of why ServiceNow is calling this out
is they're designed to handle the entire
lifecycle of an asset. So I mean assets were managed. I mean, they've been
managed for decades and decades and decades. Right and well before
ServiceNow is ever even an idea. So how is it different
now in ServiceNow than it was with more legacy
methods of asset management. Yeah And you're totally right. Right people think
of asset management. They go, oh, well, you know,
we something like socom or we have into or we have
a spreadsheet with what's in our storage closet. Well, that's great right. Those are great tools
minus the spreadsheet. They're great tools
for tracking devices. Who owns them. What the details
are of that device. But again, there's so much
more to asset management than just knowing what a
device is and who has it today. So doing the whole lifecycle
management in one platform is huge right. That's so important to tracking
everything from a device and also shows you
know some serious are why everyone kind of knows
that I.t. departments are just kind of cost centers. They just suck money
out of a company. People will say, but
they keep the lights on. They allow people do their jobs. But by doing a full lifecycle
management of your devices, you can show our why
especially through service. Now by being proactive right. You can get on top of things
like refreshing assets. You don't have to no longer
be reactive to saying someone's computer broken. You look in well, you're
out of maintenance. We can't fix it anymore
without having someone you know charge us money to do it. So you can now do
reports directly to say, OK, well, let's
do 60 months from now. How many devices are going
to be out of warranty and let's go ahead and
start refreshing those now. We don't have to
worry about it later. And you can even
get in front of it from a budgeting standpoint
right to say, OK, well, I know we have four place 200
laptops in the coming quarter. I know I won't have to put this
into my budget plan, et cetera. You can now be more
proactive than reactive, which is an important piece. And I'm sure that helps
with sort of your inventory to say you don't have a whole
stack of new laptop sitting in a warehouse somewhere
you can sort of better manage the really the
supply chain of your assets is that right. Exactly no 100 percent right. Whether we're talking software
as a manager or hardware you want to be smart
about your spending. Right So you just
want to just you don't want to throw
money at the problem that that's not
the best solution. So by exactly knowing
your inventory knowing what you
need in the future, we can now be more
accurate with your spending and not just have
a stack of laptops for no reason you can not
have the appropriate number for the upcoming
scenarios that are going to come down for say next year. Nice So with all
that in mind, you know we are increasingly
living and working in a work from anywhere world. And that's true,
especially now in the midst of a global pandemic. But it was it was the
case before that as well. So what are some of
the unique challenges that that sort of
working environment presents to organizations as
it relates to hardware assets, I mean, there's organizations. I know that like ours that
span multiple countries multiple regions and/or might
not have warehouse storage space at all. Yeah Oh gosh. I know right now, companies
are scrambling right now right. For what. What's happening right now
with how many people are now working remotely. I know we as a
company crosses have seen this so many
times from people just saying I need help right. I now have hundreds
of people at home. We're just throwing computers
and monitors at them. But we have no idea
who we assign it to or when we assign it to them. And that's a perfect
opportunity for implementing harder asset management right. Because harass management
again in ServiceNow is designed to track
the entire lifecycle. Now is a perfect
time to get started with the first few phases right. We can now get our inventory
up to snuff in ServiceNow to do exactly who has what
one we assigned it to them. But then go proactive
again for scenarios are going to come up
with a remote workforce. You're going to
have a lot of people needing I.t. assistance I.t.
is no longer down the hall. They are now across the country
or across the world, even. So now we can
leverage the platform to setup standardized
approaches to getting support for these devices
or heaven forbid you you lost a laptop
somewhere it got stolen. We can now standardize those
approaches through the catalog requests as well. So again, it's a
great opportunity. I know people are struggling. But a good opportunity
to use this. You now have a huge inventory
of assets needed to track. Let's do that. But let's standardize it and
complete the entire processes for the entire lifecycle instead
of just putting a Band-Aid over and tracking the inventory. Let's make this
better for the future. So yeah, I know,
companies are scrambling, but I think it's a
great opportunity to really tackle this problem. You know company wide sharing. And so I mean, obviously. And I'm sure you've
been involved with a lot of companies
right now better and you're helping
them get through this. Do you have any examples
of a real world scenario, you can share with
that going to happen. You have to name names,
but what happened and what was the result.
Yes meanwhile a lot of the companies that do this. They come into it with
the same types of data. So we'll say, what
are you doing today. Let's just talk about inventory. How are you tracking inventory. And it's excel. Right it's spreadsheets. It could be accessed databases,
which make us all cringe. Those still exist, but they just
have that basic information. So the full asset
lifecycle is always from planning to end of life. Most customers just have phases. One through three
or two through four. They have an inventory of
what they have in a stockroom and they know what may be
assigned out to people. That's it. So the best example
that comes to mind would be a company that had
that same data coming in. But we built out the
entire lifecycle. So what they ended up doing was
they took our best practices and actually it's ServiceNow as
best practice approach as well. And they leverage
the entire platform. So they use ServiceNow
to do everything from planning to end of life,
meaning that they leverage the service catalog
heavily for requesting new items whether it's a part
of onboarding whether it's just bulk orders they
leverage the catalog to standardize that approach. So they had all of their
models pushed to the catalog. So people could place direct
orders for these models. They leverage procurement
to automatically procure and generate the
asset records in the platform. They even tied into
their purchasing system, which is cool. A lot of people you
know, they probably won't use ServiceNow
for purchasing. They do that somewhere
else, which is fantastic. But they linked
into that platform. So everything is intertwined. So they know from a
ServiceNow standpoint, this was the order
for this person. This is when it was a place. This is what they're requesting. They had the dollar amounts,
they had all the approvals through service. Now when it was
ready to actually be triggered and
purchased that sent of the integration
to the other system as soon as that system
placed the order that came back into service. Now two weeks later when
the assets came in that was automated. And the assets were created. And then they tied into
contract management, which is another piece that
people kind of forget about as well is we now can I can tie
these assets to say maintenance contracts or warranties. Right So we talked
about that earlier. We hate that
example, when people you know their laptop breaks
and they find out they lost warranty six months ago. This again, was a
proactive application that they deployed where
they now have all those ties into the contracts. They know exactly when
their warranty and dates are so they can get in front of it. They can start the refresh. And then end of life
prior to the war and she's ever expiring. So that was probably
one of the best examples that we came across
was across the board. They did it from beginning
to end all eight phases. They crushed them. And I think they were so happy. And it was a great really
good success story for us. That's awesome. I love hearing those stories. Very, very cool. We'll leave a few minutes left. So there's a couple
of quick questions I want to get through. Let's talk about data. You really can't
talk about ServiceNow without talking about data. Why is that. So significant as you're
talking about hardware assets. Yeah Well, if anyone
watching this video has ever been on a call with me. I always say this
knowledge is power, right. So by tracking more data points
you're more knowledgeable. You can now make more
knowledgeable decisions. And the one I just talked about
is the one I always call out. And that is the
warranty expiration. By knowing that just an example. You can now get in front
of running out of warranty and start refreshed
processes before you're even close to that date. So data points are extremely
important for asset management. And you got kind of think
outside the box right. It's not just what's
the zero number. What's the asset tag. What's the model, you've
got to think beyond that. You have to know what
Stockholm it was in or is in who it's assigned to who
owns it, who manages it. That type of data that
is really non I.t. data you want to track in there
because again, that comes into play down the road when we
get to phase 5, 6, 7, 8. And maybe that's why
well because Crossfuze just recently came out
with a new methodology for implementing hardware
asset management in ServiceNow. And why did we decide to
formalize that implementation process. And how does that benefit
customers of ServiceNow. Yes, our smart hand
product like my little. Yeah, it's a great name. Smart ham makes everyone giggle. So that starts up the
conversation wonderfully but it's a great product
and methodology because it covers the entire lifecycle. Like I said ServiceNow
will say over and over and over on sales presentation
sales sheet you've got to you've got to do planning
through end of life. You can't just do
1, 2, 1 through 4. You got to do one through
eight and that's what this is. It is the ServiceNow is best
practice approach to him. So we set you up for success
for every single phase and we lay the
groundwork for you. So I know it can be confusing. But we walk through from
every stage of game. Just your inventory uploaded
to creating your product models in the catalog to creating
some workflows leveraging procurement. We hold your hand all
the way through that you can understand how the
entire lifecycle works and then create those standard
processes for everyone to use in the company
going forward. So it's an extremely important
product and I'm so proud of it. That's so great. Well wonder if it would just
the last question I have. What other resources
might be available that could help our viewers
that want to learn more. You know the doc site is
always good for ServiceNow, obviously, if you're
familiar ServiceNow the community is fantastic. You know Crossfuze our
website, which is wonderful is a revamped full
of information. Obviously these types of
quick webinars and videos are very helpful. So check out those
two two places. And I'm sure get when you're
going to say always reach out to us right across the. Let's talk across news.com. Took the words right
out of my mouth. Wonderful well that's
all I have for you today. Thank you so much joy. I appreciate your time. And you know as Joel said,
let's talk at Crossfuze we'll talk to you soon. Thanks