Automated discovery eliminated manual data entry for nearly 4,000 devices, feeding hardware specs, software versions, and network locations directly into service tickets. Technicians arrive to calls already knowing the issue, cutting out guesswork and back-and-forth entirely.
Usage data from the ITAM gave the team at Buffalo State concrete evidence to reduce software licenses during renewal cycles, saving the college money. When the data speaks for itself, the conversation with stakeholders becomes simple and budgeting is easier.
With ITSM and ITAM on one platform, Buffalo State was able to shrink its print environment by 88% to save money and resources, and build complex, multi-step workflows that pull asset data at every stage. Improvements in asset data, support speed, and spending decisions show the value of a unified platform.
Industry: Higher Education
Devices Monitored: 4,000
Key Benefits:
When Roland Rachinger, Director of Technology Support Services at Buffalo State University, reflects on what changed when his team stopped running IT Service Management and IT Asset Management as separate functions, the answer is straightforward: everything gets better.
Buffalo State had been running ITAM and ITSM separately for many years until they recently unified both functions on the TeamDynamix platform, with nearly 4,000 devices being monitored.
In a recent ITAM event focused on best practices, Roland shared the case for bringing ITSM and ITAM together.
To begin, Roland recommends using an automated discovery utility. Before automated discovery, technicians were manually entering serial numbers, MAC addresses, and device specs into the system. It was slow, and it was error-prone.
“Having a dynamic system with ITAM that can feed this data automatically to ITSM so that we don’t have to do things manually is absolutely huge,” Roland said.
Discovery agents now continuously collect that data, including hardware specs, software versions, disk utilization, and network location, and surface it directly in service tickets within TeamDynamix.
The moment a call comes in, the technician already knows what they’re dealing with.
Roland describes a common example: “You can see, ‘oh here’s why OneDrive isn’t syncing, you’re running out of disk space.’ There’s no back-and-forth. No guessing. The answer is already there.”
Roland continued, “Putting those tools and that information in the hands of those who are answering the frontline calls has been very helpful.”
Subscription software licensing creates a recurring pressure: every unused seat costs money, year after year.
Buffalo State uses scheduled tickets in TeamDynamix to trigger proactive renewal reviews before every expiration date. Usage data from the ITAM layer feeds directly into those reviews.
The MATLAB renewal is a good example of how this works, Roland said.
When the vendor changed terms, and costs went up, Roland’s team pulled usage reports across all licensed users.
Several faculty members hadn’t touched the software in months as their research had shifted, or they’d stopped teaching courses that required it.
“We just couldn’t justify keeping all the licenses for everyone going forward because that landscape had changed,” Roland said. “It’s really nice to have that data to say, ‘oh we noticed you aren’t using it, can we maybe not renew it?’ and in a number of cases people said, ‘yeah, I’m not doing that research anymore.'”
The conversation becomes easy when you have evidence, Roland said.
“Having a dynamic system with ITAM that can feed this data automatically to ITSM so that we don’t have to do things manually is absolutely huge.”
One of the clearest examples of what a unified platform for ITSM and ITAM makes possible is Buffalo State’s transition from roughly 1,000 individual desktop printers to around 120 centrally managed devices.
The economics drove the decision, according to Roland. “The cost savings are undeniable,” he said, “To maintain inkjet printers, the cost of them, the replacements — it’s just an extremely expensive endeavor. Moving to a centralized print environment basically gets rid of every desktop printer.”
But executing that transition required complete asset visibility.
Discovery agents automatically detected every printer on the network, including USB-connected devices that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Asset records tracked each device’s location and capabilities.
Knowledge base articles explained the change to end users.
Live dashboards in the self-service portal let anyone find the nearest available printer in seconds, Roland said.
The shift also required a philosophical change in how the university thinks about ownership.
“Instead of a departmental device, it’s more of a shared space device,” Roland explained. “We’re moving those printers physically out of an office and into a shared workroom or even a hallway.”
None of that would have been manageable without asset data and service management working from the same source of truth, Roland said.
Running ITSM and ITAM on the same platform also means that complex multi-step workflows can pull in asset data at every stage. Software request workflows at Buffalo State are deliberately thorough. They route through licensing checks, security reviews, accessibility compliance, procurement, and asset record creation before a single installation happens.
“Our software requests workflow is rather intense because our we built it to mirror the actual process,” Roland notes. “There’s a lot of moving parts when someone says, ‘Oh, I need XYZ piece of software.'”
That complexity isn’t a sign that something is wrong; it’s the institution’s actual process, captured and enforced by the platform, Roland said. The asset record created at the end of that workflow becomes the anchor for every future ticket, renewal decision, and usage report tied to that software.
As Buffalo State’s experience shows, running ITSM and ITAM on a single platform can result in numerous benefits for both IT and the organization as a whole.
At Buffalo State, technicians have all the data at their fingertips and often already know what’s wrong before they ask their customers a single question; they’ve been able to shrink their print environment by 88%, cutting down on maintenance costs; and they’ve used Software Asset Management during software renewal cycles to show where software is actually being used and saved money by eliminating unused software licenses.
Each capability compounds the others. Better asset data means better support context. Better support context means faster resolution. Better usage analytics mean smarter renewal decisions. And because everything lives on one platform, the data doesn’t get lost at the seams between systems — it flows where it’s needed, automatically.
As Buffalo State’s experience highlights, when service management and asset management share a platform, the whole operation gets smarter.
