Exploring Subscription Management

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Subscription Management

    Subscription Management allows ServiceNow customers to effectively track and manage product subscriptions and their applications, providing a consolidated view of entitlements. It enables real-time visibility into entitlement data, supports informed purchasing decisions, and ensures compliance by monitoring subscription usage over time.

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    Key Features

    • Usage Admin Role: Responsible for allocating per-user subscriptions and mapping custom tables and applications to subscriptions to maximize usage and compliance.
    • Subscription Workflow: Involves collaboration between the chief information officer, service owner, and platform owner to purchase and manage subscriptions.
    • Monitoring Tools: Users can track over-allocated subscriptions, unmapped applications, usage patterns, and application popularity to inform future purchasing decisions.

    Key Outcomes

    • Enhance compliance by monitoring subscription allocations and usage.
    • Improve subscription management efficiency by utilizing insights to address over-allocations and unallocated subscriptions.
    • Facilitate informed decision-making on future purchases based on detailed usage reports and patterns.

    For further information on configuring and utilizing Subscription Management, refer to the guides on managing per-user subscriptions, custom tables, and monitoring capacity subscriptions.

    Learn how Subscription Management helps you track and manage your product subscriptions and their applications.

    Subscription Management Overview

    Subscription Management gives you an accurate, consolidated view of your entitlements where you can proactively manage your subscriptions.
    • Gain visibility and control of your product subscriptions and their applications.
    • Access a real‑time view of your entitlement data.
    • Maximize subscription usage and make informed decisions about purchases by viewing insights.
    • Stay in compliance and avoid unexpected costs by tracking subscription usage and allocations over time.

    Subscription Management users

    Table 1. Users
    User Description
    Usage admin The usage admin allocates per-user subscriptions by adding groups to a product subscription. The usage admin maps custom tables and custom applications to subscriptions with available entitlements to maximize subscription usage and stay in compliance.

    Subscription Management workflow

    This infographic shows a sample end-to-end workflow of how different users in an organization work together to purchase, allocate, and manage subscriptions.

    Figure 1. Managing subscriptions
    Different users in an organization work together to purchase, allocate, and manage subscriptions. Refer to the following steps for details.

    In this workflow:

    1. The chief information officer or service owner works with the ServiceNow platform owner to purchase new subscriptions.
    2. After the purchase is complete, the platform owner views the products and applications in Impact.
    3. The usage admin views the new product subscriptions in Subscription Management on the production instance. For more information, see Product subscriptions overview.
    4. The usage admin performs the following tasks in Subscription Management:
    5. If the organization requires security approvals before adding users to groups or financial approvals before subscriptions are allocated to users, the usage admin works with group managers to create subscription approval workflows that determine who gets a subscription when new users are added to groups.
    6. The usage admin monitors subscription usage to stay in compliance and make informed decisions on future purchases, consistently monitoring the following data:
      • Over-allocated subscriptions
      • Unmapped custom applications and tables
      • Usage patterns over time
      • Application popularity
      • Custom table usage

    Subscription Management benefits

    Benefit Feature User
    Fix over-allocated subscriptions Insights Usage admin
    View unallocated subscriptions Insights Usage admin
    Allocate available subscriptions using recommended groups Allocate subscriptions Usage admin
    Map global custom tables to a product subscription Issues Usage admin
    Map custom applications to a product subscription Issues Usage admin
    View a summary of subscription allocations Subscription details Usage admin
    View subscription allocation details over time Subscription details Usage admin
    View custom table usage over time Subscription details Usage admin

    What to explore next

    To learn more about configuring and using Subscription Management, see: