As with the CMDB, guide your investment in the right resources for instance management by an explicit set of objectives (and the value you want to see) for implementation and by the level of oversight and effort required to support those objectives. Investing in the right foundations 3 Two examples Company A is attempting to pursue service mapping to improve incident resolution without establishing the right technology and data foundations. Top-down service mapping, without appropriate investments in CMDB and discovery can result in service mapping that does not necessarily improve resolution. Additional investment in these areas might be costly, so decision-makers should take care to ensure that the ROI potential is worth the investment (relative to investment in other capabilities). Company B has a goal of cost reduction, which it hopes to pursue through continued automation of service desk activities. But it’s underinvested in CMDB capabilities, which has caused the return on additional automation investments to be limited in terms of reducing outages or improving its mean time to resolve incidents, many of which require L2 or L3 support staff. After additional analysis, decision-makers determine that the company needs to upgrade its CMDB to improve cost efficiencies4this requires reducing the amount of support needed from L2 and L3 support staff. 20 © 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.