Establishing End-to-End Control of the Asset Lifecycle
A large telecommunications provider extended its service transformation by introducing clear asset definitions, lifecycle governance and real-time visibility across its technology estate.
Context
Following a successful uplift of internal request workflows, the organisation turned its attention to a deeper structural issue: asset visibility.
While requests were now flowing through a single platform, the underlying data lacked coherence. There was no shared definition of what constituted an asset, naming conventions varied across teams and tracking stopped once items were deployed. Leadership lacked confidence in inventory, location and utilisation, and asset management remained disconnected from service delivery.
The organisation needed to move beyond ticketing and into true lifecycle management, without sacrificing usability or adoption.
Approach
This engagement focused on creating a clear, enforceable foundation for asset and configuration management, ensuring the platform reflected how assets should be governed in practice.
Define
The first step was establishing common language and rules.
Asset and configuration management processes were defined from the ground up, including clear nomenclature and explicit decisions on what needed to be tracked and why. This removed ambiguity and created a shared understanding across teams, a prerequisite for any reliable CMDB or asset model.
Align
With definitions in place, workflows and tooling were aligned to enforce consistency.
Request and fulfilment flows were designed to capture every asset movement logically, ensuring items could be tracked from purchase through deployment to retirement. These standards were then implemented directly into the ServiceNow environment, allowing the platform to reinforce, rather than bypass, agreed processes.
At the same time, the user interface was refreshed to ensure the experience remained intuitive. Asset management was deliberately designed to feel simple for end users, encouraging adoption and accurate data capture.
Govern
Governance was embedded through lifecycle visibility and metrics.
Real-time dashboards provided clear insight into stock levels, asset locations and usage patterns. This allowed decisions to be made based on evidence rather than assumption and ensured asset governance could scale as the organisation grew.
Outcome
The organisation achieved full lifecycle visibility across its technology estate.
Assets are now managed end to end, from initial request through deployment to retirement, with consistent data and clear ownership. Leadership gained actionable insight into inventory and utilisation, while users benefited from a modern, easy-to-use interface.
Most importantly, the organisation now has a scalable foundation for future growth, with standardised processes that support increasing asset volume without increasing complexity.