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FinOps in 2026: From Cost Control to Technology Value (Part 4 of 5 ) 

Behind many FinOps challenges lies a simple problem: the data is not consistent. This is exactly where ITAM comes in. Its core discipline - identifying, naming, owning, and tracking assets throughout their lifecycle - is precisely that what FinOps needs. It doesn't start with dashboards or tooling, but with getting the data right. And getting the data right starts with solid ITAM.

If your CMDB and your ITAM platform disagree about a single asset, you don't have two systems of record. You have two guesses. That's the uncomfortable starting point for most organisations, even ones that are confident they've got this covered.

(part 5 of the series "The ServiceNow SAM journey: From data chaos to intelligent control")

(part 3 of the series "The ServiceNow SAM journey: From data chaos to intelligent control")

The familiar frustration

If you manage ServiceNow SAM Pro, you’ve seen it: you run reconciliation, open your dashboards… and there it is again: a long list of “Unknown Software”. You cleaned it up last month. You standardised names. You taught your team the right conventions.

Your asset data and your cloud bill are telling different stories, and that's costing you

Most organizations discover the problem in a similar way: a finance leader extracts a cloud cost report, flags a spike in software licensing fees, and sends it to the IT Asset Management team. The ITAM team opens their CMDB or SAM tool and finds… nothing that matches. Different categories, different vendors listed, different time periods. Two teams, two systems, two versions of reality. And somewhere in the gap, there’s a six-figure problem that neither team had the authority or visibility to detect alone.