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Home > Why Complete Data is Key to a Winning ITSM + ITAM Strategy

Why Complete Data is Key to a Winning ITSM + ITAM Strategy

By Jason Yeary
September 6, 2019
IT Service Management
improve ITSM complete ITAM data
Are you taking a modern approach to the way your IT team manages its technology assets? With so many separate service desk and IT asset management (ITAM) solutions available on the market, it can be easy to have a disjointed or inaccurate picture of what’s going on. This is less than ideal in today’s IT environment. An ideal scenario is to fully integrate your IT asset management processes with the way your organization also delivers services to employees. I went in-depth on this topic on our webinar Using Complete ITAM Data to Improve Your ITSM about protecting your company’s assets and data and why it is a big deal. If you missed it live, you can watch it on demand.  In this post, I’ll highlight the benefits I covered when it comes to combining ITSM with ITAM in your organization and how to track and manage all of your technology asset data

Understanding What Complete Technology Asset Data Really Means

Complete ITAM data simply means going beyond logging what devices are available or in use. Instead, it’s about analyzing devices and software on a more granular level and in relation to incidents, problems, changes, and other ITIL-defined processes you may already be implementing in IT service management (ITSM). There are multiple methods you can use to track and manage this data, including an installable agent or even an agentless network discovery scanner (which I’ll touch on later). This agent can provide in-depth information like:
  • CPU 
  • Operating system
  • Warranty and lifecycle details
  • Incident history
  • Associated hardware and software

How ITAM Data Can Improve ITSM

The real benefit of marrying ITAM and ITSM is connecting a disjointed array of devices and software to the employees that use them, the tickets they submit, and the actions taken by IT in response to this data they are now able to see.  Having this data at your disposal is critical for improving ITSM in general. It can be used to view the relationships between incidents, changes, and other aspects of the service delivery process.

Incident Management

Linking devices to incident records over time as they are submitted is one of the more practical ways ITAM data can help improve IT service management.  By working tickets with more context, service desk agents can associate IT assets with employees, and even remove problem IT assets from your infrastructure as needed. This helps you resolve incidents more quickly, avoid future problems, and make smarter decisions based on historical data now available.

Change Management

You can also link IT assets to changes within your organization. By connecting assets to changes, you can have a better understanding of exactly how the technology and the employees using that technology may be impacted whenever changes are scheduled. This can also help identify what departments will likely be impacted by a change, and allows your organization to proactively perform an impact analysis prior to implementing the change.

Get Started Today With SolarWinds Discovery

This marriage of ITSM and ITAM is made possible by first collecting data using an agent, integrations with other critical IT systems like Microsoft® SCCM and VMware vCenter®, or an agentless network scanner. No matter the method you choose, SolarWinds® Discovery provides organizations with an accurate, powerful, and cost-effective way to discover, map, and manage your software and hardware assets, and improve your service delivery. To explore a fully connected ITSM and ITAM solution built to suit your infrastructure needs, request a free consultation today to see SolarWinds® Service Desk in action.
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data
ITAM
ITSM
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Jason Yeary
Jason Yeary is a technical expert for SolarWinds Service Desk customers and a former service desk manager in the healthcare industry. He is ITIL 4…
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