AMI: Streamlining IT Asset Management

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Thomas Watson, President & CEO

As a proponent of digitalization that helps streamline how work gets done, ServiceNow—a leading-edge cloud-computing company delivering digital workflows—draws a lot of inspiration from some of the world’s top consumer-facing apps. During various keynote speeches, ServiceNow’s CEO, John Donahoe, has expressed his views on how the mobile apps of companies like eBay, PayPal, and Uber are revolutionizing the life of a consumer with their exemplary yet simple-to-use service capabilities. For instance, Donahoe notes that today consumers can safely and securely reset their PayPal password from their smartphones in less than 20 seconds. However, when it comes to resetting a work email password, the task requires traversing several stages of permission.

Thomas Watson, a veteran in enterprise hardware asset management, and president and CEO of AMI—a stellar ServiceNow partner—shares the same point of view as that of Donahoe. He reflects, “There is a dramatic gap between the services we seek out in our personal lives and at work. And this gap is even more apparent when it comes to the user interface (UI) of enterprise IT asset management solutions. At AMI, we aim to bridge this gap.” AMI builds simplified and frictionless interfaces that allow IT staff to receive, track, audit and dispose asset hardware, fulfill service requests, or receive alerts on the status of missing or inaccurate asset information, as easy as calling an Uber.

“AMI’s mantra from day one has been to understand and build solutions that deliver measurable business value instead of just creating new software”

However, a great UI is not all that AMI has to offer. Entering the Asset Management market in 2003 with cutting-edge data capture and reconciliation tools, AMI has stormed its way up with its complete cradle-to-grave lifecycle management solutions for IT hardware assets and an intelligent user interface. AMI’s deep knowledge of automated data capture (barcode/RFID) for the tagging, tracking, and reconciliation of IT hardware asset repositories, coupled with their flagship asset management application, AssetTrack for ServiceNow, makes them a sought-after ServiceNow solution provider.

AssetTrack for ServiceNow: One-Stop Shop for Asset Management

AMI truly believes that asset management is more than just integrating some barcode or RFID scanners into an environment. The tools have to be coalesced and implemented in a way that saves enterprise customers money, improves compliance, strengthens security, and ensures the availability of assets. “This is precisely what we are able to provide to ServiceNow customers through AssetTrack for ServiceNow,” informs Watson. Using automated modules, AssetTrack for ServiceNow can seamlessly verify IT shipments against purchase orders, validate invoices, eliminate the chances of shipment damages through constant monitoring, and continuously check for the assets that need to be reclaimed or reissued— all inside ServiceNow. AssetTrack also enables rapid stockroom audits— helping companies sustain accurate stock levels, without overspending.

The application’s prowess, however, is not just limited to administering assets. When it comes to offering a superior asset management system, one of the most valuable aspects is maintaining accurate asset data. Without reliable and up-to-date asset data, there is no asset management solution in the world that can provide ideal outcomes.

Operational in the asset management domain for more than 15 years, AMI has emerged as one of ServiceNow’s key technology partners today

AssetTrack customers including Teach for America enjoy a track record of maintaining accurate hardware asset data.

STEM education, delivered by Teach for America, opens future education and career doors for students. Without laptops, Teach for America instructors cannot help their students. At Teach for America, it is mission-critical to know where all the IT assets are at any given time. With the help of AMI, Teach for America has enjoyed 100 percent hardware audit accuracy, each and every month of 2019! By maintaining a reliable resource of well-run asset data, the asset management solution helps companies react to security events, respond to audits—both external and internal—or any kind of activity that can save redundant investments and reduce organizational asset risk.

Another key challenge in the asset management space that AssetTrack tackles with finesse is providing the perfect automation solution. Although there are numerous automated asset management systems available in the market today, others have the baggage of external server costs and out-of- platform security issues. Hence, the software falls short to live up to an IT asset manager’s expectations when they start using the solution. To solve this setback, AssetTrack comes with excellent tools that simplify work for the people handling assets—“and this helps us bridge the automation gap,” says Watson.

Above all, what makes AMI exceptional in the ServiceNow landscape is its ability to offer 100 percent native ServiceNow application. In basic terms, this means that the AssetTrack application—built on the ServiceNow platform—plugs right into ServiceNow environment without any integration or security issues. There is no server, middle layer, or cloud services required to integrate AssetTrack with the ServiceNow system.

AMI’s Trust-Winning P-P-T Approach: People, Process, and Technology

Underpinning AMI’s success in the enterprise asset management domain is its even-handed focus on people, process, and technology. “An asset management software cannot perform any action on its own, we focus on the complete picture: asset management process, the people (IT personnel) that are executing the process, and the technology that makes the job easier for the people,” says Dave Van Patten, director of operations, AMI.

Together with that, AMI also has developed free guides and tools to help refine ITAM processes and help communicate the business value of 100 percent ITAM accuracy. These combined efforts help AMI evaluate its client’s business requirements better, providing support at each stage of the solution implementation process and demonstrating ROI more quickly.

“Complementing this P-P-T approach is our customer centricity,” states Watson. One of the important aspects that make AMI trustworthy among its clients is that “we are honest enough to even talk our clients out of certain technologies when we have enough evidence that it won’t work for them,” he adds. Consider RFID technology for example. Working in the asset management segment for decades, AMI has gathered enough knowledge to prove that RFID technologies might be a good candidate for data center environments, but not for end user asset tracking laptops, tablets, and smartphones. “We will never recommend a technology that doesn’t work,” says Watson. This level of honesty and transparency plays a critical role in the sustainability of the business in the long run. In fact, a testament to this customer-focused mindset is AMI’s 97 percent customer retention rate—which speaks volumes about AMI’s trustworthiness among clients.

Partnership with ServiceNow

Operational in the asset management domain for more than 15 years, AMI has emerged as one of ServiceNow’s key technology partners today. “We are always actively observing ServiceNow’s plan of actions and looking to partner with them to help our mutual customers, thus enhancing the IT service management experience for companies,” points out Watson. Among other approaches, one key strategy that AMI sees ServiceNow acutely considering is the idea of “Uber-like experience”—to enhance the IT staff’s asset tracking experience. In the coming years, AMI’s endeavor shall lie in expanding the bandwidth of its UI to include voice, imagery, geo-location, and other technologies, thus integrating more modern, mobile technologies, and setting a new horizon for UI in the enterprise application domain.

Alongside, Watson also notes that ServiceNow—in all its recent campaigns and partner events—is intensely promoting independent software vendors (ISVs), like AMI, to endorse ServiceNow’s platform to build applications. “We are proud to say that we were one of the early adopters of this path, which has made AssetTrack the most popular paid application on the ServiceNow store,” highlights Watson.

Empowering Enterprises to Manage Hardware on their Own

AMI’s growing trail of success further substantiates the impact that AssetTrack for ServiceNow application has in the asset management space. AMI has been helping Teach for America—a national, non-profit education organization—to consistently achieve 100 percent accuracy in their end-user hardware audits. Prior to working with AMI, Teach For America had hundreds of computer assets with missing or incorrect inventory records.

Together with that, AMI also boasts working with a global IT service provider that offers IT logistics services to the air transportation industry. “By employing our asset management solution, the IT services company went from spending $1 million annually to $30,000, which is a massive success seeing that it is a 97 percent reduction in expenses,” reveals Watson.

In yet another instance, one of the largest U.S.-based enterprise managed services providers was able to use AssetTrack to meet strict asset management SLAs with dozens of their enterprise clients. The client implemented AssetTrack for their field staff to track assets, which also worked seamlessly with the end customer’s asset management tools. This allowed the company to deliver excellent asset data to their customers at a minimal cost, which later turned out to be a key differentiator that helped them win significant business.

The Future of Asset Management Is Hardware-As-A-Service

AMI’s mantra from day one has been to understand and build solutions that deliver measurable business value instead of just creating new software. Keeping that vision in mind, the company aims to continue building innovative tools for AssetTrack solution, thereby making its offering more holistic. That said, AMI is also constantly expanding its partnership network with ServiceNow, and several other technology companies to remain at the forefront of innovation. “In the long run, our moonshot goal is to revolutionize the notion of ‘Hardware-as-a-Service,’” reveals Watson. Explaining the idea, he says: “Just like a SaaS model, hardware can be procured, configured, delivered, serviced, and replaced, automatically through simple subscription services in a fully compliant manner, and at an affordable cost. That’s where the market is moving toward, and AMI intends to be at the frontline of this change.” With a view to executing these plans effectively, AMI is poised to bring the next wave of innovation in the asset management practice.