RSMUS.comLeadership does not need another dashboard with forty-seven tiles.
Most ITAM reports can tell you how many assets are recorded, how many software products were discovered, how many tasks are open, and how much potential savings has been identified. Those numbers can be useful. They do not necessarily tell leadership whether the program is working.
Good ITAM metrics should answer five questions.
Can we trust the picture?
Before leadership acts on asset information, it needs confidence in the underlying data. That does not mean every field must be perfect. It means the critical population is understood, authoritative sources are defined, and the records are complete enough for the decision being made.
Useful measures might include coverage of in-scope assets, records with accountable owners, valid lifecycle states, current locations, normalized models, and unresolved asset-to-CI exceptions. Data quality matters because weak data makes every financial and risk conclusion less credible.
Are the lifecycle controls working?
Counts show volume. Control metrics show whether the organization can move assets through the lifecycle without losing ownership, time, money, or evidence.
Leadership should be able to see trends such as request-to-deployment time, stock aging, recovery after employee departures, refresh backlog, overdue lease returns, and disposition records awaiting evidence. The point is not to display every process detail. It is to identify where the lifecycle is breaking and whether the problem is improving.
Are we changing the economics?
ITAM reporting often becomes least credible when every opportunity is called savings. An unused license is an opportunity. An approved reclamation is an action. A completed removal may create cost avoidance. A reduced renewal or cancelled purchase may become realized savings. Those are not the same thing.
Leadership metrics should clearly distinguish opportunity identified, action completed, cost avoided, and savings validated. Hardware measures should also expose stranded inventory, excessive stock, avoidable rush purchases, aging devices, and refresh demand. The goal is to show how asset decisions change spend, not merely how much spend exists.
Are we reducing risk?
A mature scorecard should show where the organization is exposed: missing or stolen assets, unsupported hardware and software, unresolved compliance positions, overdue recoveries, incomplete disposal evidence, and recurring policy exceptions.
Risk metrics become useful when they are connected to ownership and action. A red indicator without an accountable decision is only decoration.
What decision should leadership make?
This is the test that removes most weak metrics from an executive scorecard. A good measure should help leadership decide whether to fund a refresh, change a sourcing practice, enforce offboarding controls, remediate a data source, renegotiate a renewal, accept an exception, or assign accountability.
ServiceNow can support this with asset workspaces, executive KPI views, data-quality guidance, and Platform Analytics indicators that show current state, trends, targets, thresholds, and forecasts. Those capabilities are valuable. They still cannot decide which outcomes matter to your organization or who must act when performance falls short.
Every executive ITAM metric should have five things: a clear definition, an accountable owner, a target, a trend, and a decision it supports.
Crawl organizations should establish data coverage and ownership measures. Walk organizations should add lifecycle control and exception measures. Run organizations should connect those controls to cost and risk outcomes. Fly organizations can use trusted trends to shape technology investment, security priorities, and enterprise planning.
If a metric cannot change a decision, it probably belongs in the operational detail—not on the leadership scorecard.
Mike Lavengood
Manager, ServiceNow Practice, RSM. Mike is an Engagement Manager in RSM US LLP’s ServiceNow practice, specializing in IT Asset Management, including Hardware Asset Management, Software Asset Management and Enterprise Asset Management. He helps organizations turn complex asset and process challenges into practical strategies that improve governance, data quality, operational efficiency and business outcomes. Mike brings a blend of technical, functional and program leadership experience to his work. He leads complex ServiceNow implementations, advises clients on ITAM maturity and operating models, and helps project teams connect platform capabilities to measurable business value. His approach emphasizes transparency, strong delivery discipline and solutions that clients can successfully sustain after implementation. Mike holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and an MBA. His professional credentials include PMP, ServiceNow Certified System Administrator, and ServiceNow certifications in IT Service Management, Hardware Asset Management and Software Asset Management.
