Don’t be an ITAM Fool this April

Sean Dawson: Hello, and welcome to yet another Cask Distillery Podcast, where we unlock the full potential of ServiceNow with expert insights and practical strategies, only here on the Cask Distillery Podcast. And today, we’ve got something just a little different and hopefully a lot of fun. Since April Fool’s is right around the corner, we thought it would be a perfect time to dig into some of the wildest, weirdest, and just downright unbelievable stories from the world of ITAM, or IT asset management. And joining me today is Teri Bobst. Welcome back, Teri.

Teri Bobst: Thanks, Sean. Happy to be here.

Sean Dawson: You’re so welcome. And I’m excited about this one. Teri is our senior director of what we call ITX practice here at Cask. And the reason that we asked her to come on is she’s seen it all—and we’ll hear about it in a moment—from phantom assets to zombie phones. And she’s here to really share some real-world lessons wrapped in a whole lot of humor.

So let’s go ahead and kick it off and get started. So the first story—we’re going to be covering a number of stories. So we’ll ask questions on the stories. But the first story is “Surprise! Your Inventory Does Exist.” So ITAM has a strong tie into inventory management. But what advice would you give around maintaining the actual inventory?

Teri Bobst: Yeah, that’s a great one, Sean. And the biggest piece of advice I can give is keep your inventory in one location. A company I worked for in the past, they did not have any centralized location for asset inventory. It was literally in every closet you could think of, stacked up in the corners of data centers, under people’s desks. Trucks that the field tech agents used were full of IT assets. And I actually was able to get my hands on an abandoned warehouse at one point in time while I was running ITAM. And we were able to get that asset warehouse up and running using all used equipment. So from the door readers to the cameras, everything for access control, we did it for free from the surplus equipment that we had gathered. And then started the fun part of the hunt for all of the assets and where they were. And, like I said, we pulled them out of CONEX trailers and closets and just everywhere you could think of. And once we had them consolidated, we realized we were sitting on tens of thousands of dollars of usable equipment that no one even knew existed in the organization. So we were able to pull all of that back in, supply the warehouse, get it up and running with used equipment, and then start redeploying that equipment. So, if you’re playing hide and seek with your asset inventory, your budget’s the one that’s going to lose.

Sean Dawson:Yeah. It’s like a good cost recovery on that one. So story number two, “The Employee’s Gone, but Their Phone Still Works.” So maintaining accurate asset assignments are critical to an ITAM program. But what can happen if it isn’t monitored?

Teri Bobst: Yeah. That’s a really good one. It’s kind of a horror story. Definitely good for April Fool’s. So if you’re not monitoring assets that are assigned to inactive users, you need to start now. We thought we had a pretty good handle on our ITAM program, but we were using spreadsheets and sticky notes and SharePoint, like so many organizations are for asset management. And once we implemented ServiceNow and we had hooks into Active Directory and to our HR system so that we were really seeing our employees and whether they were active or whether they were termed, we started running reports on assets assigned to those inactive users, and we literally found dozens and dozens of cell phone plans that we had been paying for month after month after month for people that no longer worked at the company. So it was thousands and thousands of dollars a month that was being spent on these cell phones that we didn’t even know where they were. We didn’t know the employees weren’t active anymore. And so maintaining that is absolutely critical because the zombie phones, the zombie subscription for software that’s assigned to those, that’s what’s going to get you.

Sean Dawson: And the third story is “‘Finders Keepers,’” Said the Department.” So let’s talk about how you deal with territorial departments. Have you ever dealt with teams that think their hardware is personal property? Like, “No, you can’t have it. It’s ours now.”

Teri Bobst: Yes. A lot of people think that possession is 9/10 of the law. And a lot of organizations have that problem. They have a decentralized inventory budget for their assets. So the departments feel like they own them. They came out of their budget. So they have laptops or monitors or the cell phones that we were talking about. And the people term. They leave the company. And because the department feels like, “I own those, so they’re mine,” they shove them in their drawers or in their overheads with the intent that, “I’m going to redeploy them when I hire somebody.” But the fact of the matter is, by the time they hire someone, they have forgotten they have those assets. So they submit requests, we get them new assets, and those assets just sit in their drawers or in their overheads. They go out of date, they are unpatched, they’re not secured, and you’re spending money. And those are just wasting money not being used.

And then the worst thing that happens is you’ve done a really good job to make sure that Windows is updated across your organization. And then, all of a sudden here pops up a Windows 7 laptop on your network. And you’re like, “Where in the heck did that come from? We knew we upgraded all of those.” Well, it was somebody that had it in a drawer, and they were like, “Hey, new guy, here’s your laptop.” And they hand them a Windows 7 laptop that now is not patched. It’s not secure. And all of the alerts start flying off. 

And so it’s really critical, if you can, to centralize your IT budget. I was able to build a really strong use case for centralizing all of our standard hardware into the ITAM budget. And once we did that, then IT asset management said, “Okay, this person no longer works here. Here are the assets assigned to them. Please return them to me now.” We would get them back in. We would scrub them. There was no PII data. There was no subscription software or license software still on them that we were liable for. And then we would redeploy them as the next request came in. So you keep your assets in use throughout their entire lifecycle. And in that first year of doing that, we saved $150,000 in one year by being able to say, “No, department, you do not own these. Possession is no longer 9/10 of the law. You have to return them. We’re going to redeploy them.”

Sean Dawson: That’s a great story. So story four is “The Case for the Disappearing $16,000 Router.” And have you ever had a high-value asset just vanish into thin air? Like it went out for a lunch break and never came back?

Teri Bobst: Yes. Yes, I have. This is a really strong case for making sure that your ITAM program is maintaining a chain of custody when you’re transferring out, especially high-dollar assets. But really, any assets, it’s really important. So we purchased the $16,000 router from the vendor for a project. It came time to deploy it. The network team said, “We don’t have it.” “Well, we don’t have it either.” And they’re like, “Well, you must have it because it’s not here.” So we checked with the vendor, we got the serial number, we were able to pull up the asset record and see that there had been a transfer order made on that asset record. We also scanned in the signed copies of the transfer orders, so we were able to see exactly who signed for it. So I printed that out, and I went over to the network admin, and I was like, “Do you recognize this?” And then he’s like, “Oh, I think that’s that box under my desk.” It was literally sitting under his desk for months. He’d just been propping his feet up on it. And it was a $16,000 router. So, yeah, don’t let “It’s under my desk” be part of your ITAM strategy.

Sean Dawson: Yeah. And story five is “Spoiler Alert: Your Payroll System Shouldn’t Be Vintage.” So how does a hardware refresh, and how should it be a part of a solid ITAM program? And what can happen if a company doesn’t proactively refresh their old hardware?

Teri Bobst: Yeah. So nothing says, “Enjoy your holiday weekend,” like a dead payroll laptop from 2009. And that’s exactly what happened. Where I was working, they did not have any hardware refresh program ever. So, literally, things were in use until they died and turned to dust. And this was high visibility. It was a 24/7 environment. So there was a lot of critical assets that, once they start aging out, not only does it increase your cost of ownership because they’re going to have more incidents against them, they’re going to have more downtime. They’re going to disrupt your business. And this was a really, really good, eye-opening use case for how disruptive to business it could be.

So it was a Memorial Day weekend that also happened to be a payroll date when payroll was processed. And come to find out, the payroll for the entire organization was run on a 2009 model laptop. So it was over nine years old at the time. And it was the only laptop in the entire organization that had this specialized utility on it that was required to process payroll for the entire company. And it died.

Sean Dawson: That was the server?

Teri Bobst: It was the server, yes. And it died on that weekend. So it became a fire drill. Do we have this model anywhere? Can we find it on eBay? It’s nine years old. We shouldn’t have these floating around in our environment. And we were able to find one that was the same exact model. Because you couldn’t just put the hard drive out of the one that died in something else, or, it wasn’t going to be compatible. It had to be the same model. So we were able to find one, get the hard drive swapped, and get payroll processed. 

But it was a really eye-opening experience for everyone. HR was freaking out. Payroll was freaking out. Everyone was just in a panic over this laptop that had died that was the only laptop that could process payroll. So I was able to use that as a use case of, “We have to have a hardware refresh program. These are the reasons in addition to,” like I said, “the cost of ownership and the downtime to your business.” Things like this are the reason that you have to refresh your assets, especially critical assets in your organization. And also have redundancy. Don’t have it running on a single laptop.

Sean Dawson: As you were describing that story to me, it gave me a little heartburn because I was thinking, “And it’s over a holiday weekend.”

Teri Bobst: Yes, it was over the holiday weekend. So there were many of us whose holiday weekend was ruined. I was back in the office instead of at home enjoying my holiday, as were the payroll people and field agents that were scouring the properties for a matching laptop. Yeah.

Sean Dawson: Wow. Wow. All right, well, we can move on to story number six, which is “The $300 Paperweight.” So let’s flip it a little bit. What’s the most wasteful thing you’ve seen in ITAM? Like something that made you want to scream, “Why are we throwing that away?”

Teri Bobst: Yeah. So this one is really near and dear to my heart. And it was literally over Cisco IP phones. And what I had found was the company was disposing of these devices. They were $300 phones. And literally the majority of the time, the little back stand that holds the phone upright is the part that would fail. And then they would dispose of the phone. And it could be that the keys were sticky, it could have had a cracked screen, but the majority of the time it was the back stand. And they were literally throwing them away by the dozens. 

And so I was able to find a really great company to work with that all they do is refurbish Cisco IP phones. And you could send them to them. They would clean them, repair them, replace the handsets, the cords, put them in a box, and cover shipping both directions for $55. So you now took what was a $300 paperweight that was going in the trash, and instead of buying a new one, you were replacing it for $55. And over the course of two years or so—we talked about the asset warehouse that I found that was abandoned and we consolidated all of our inventory into—I was able to use the savings in a two-year time frame from those phones alone to purchase a forklift for our warehouse. 

So it’s really, look for savings anywhere you can. Sometimes, you’re going to find them in really surprising places. And if you see something like that that’s like, “Okay, but this phone is still usable. It’s still the model that we use today. There has to be a better way than just throwing it away and buying a new one.”

Sean Dawson: Yeah. And appropriately enough, the last story is story number seven, and it’s called, “The ITAM Wrap-Up.” So people don’t always associate ITAM with strategic impact. And you and I have talked about this before in some of our other podcasts and in our webinars. But can you share an example where it actually delivered real-world value beyond just compliance and tracking?

Teri Bobst: Yeah. So, going back to the $300 paperweight of the phone and being able to find those cost savings, ITAM is a strategic enabler. It’s not just compliance. And if you ask any of us ITAM practitioners, who says ITAM can’t be sexy? You look at this warehouse equipment ROI just from these phones that we were able to replace.

And it’s really bigger than that, though. It’s all around making sure that you’re using what you have, you know what you have, you know what you need. And if you have a way to extend the life of those assets or to refurbish those assets, and they’re still within a good, usable solution, and they’re within their lifecycle, redeploying them. So that also goes back to consolidating your inventory so that you do have the ability to say, “I have distributed all of these assets, tens of thousands, millions of dollars of assets across this organization when they’re no longer in use. They’re coming back to me, to my ITAM program.” And then the ITAM program can say, “Yes, these are still usable. We can use them over here in a new build or in a new project, or we can redeploy them to new people as they come in.” And it’s all around the hardware, the software that’s associated with those. And of course, making sure that the people that are using them are still really employees of yours and that you’re not paying for cell phones for people that no longer work there. And so it’s really when you start to run ITAM smart, you start being a cost center and start becoming more of a value center.

Sean Dawson: Yeah. Well, that’s great. Thank you for all the input and, as usual, your guidance, Teri, and for coming on the podcast again.

Teri Bobst: Yeah. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. It was a great stroll down memory lane.

Sean Dawson: Yeah. So for those of you watching, please comment, like, and share, because sharing is caring. And let us know if there’s something that you would like to see. And happy April Fool’s. Take care. Bye bye.