Rebuilding a Multi Tenant CMDB

The Organisation

A UK managed service provider delivering IT operations and service desk services to clients across several sectors, running a single domain separated ServiceNow instance shared across its client base.

The Situation

CI data arrived from multiple discovery sources and client supplied imports with no consistent identification rules behind it. Over time, confidence in the CMDB eroded to the point where impact assessment was being done manually and contractual reporting was being challenged by clients.

• Duplicate CIs across and within client domains
• Inconsistent class usage, with CIs landing in generic rather than specific classes
• Thin relationship coverage, making client impact assessment a manual exercise
• Unclear data ownership where a client estate spanned domains
• Discovery gaps caused by credential and scheduling issues
• Client onboarding taking longer with each new account
• Contractual service reporting questioned on accuracy

What Our Consultants Did

• Baselined CMDB health per domain against completeness, correctness and compliance
• Rebuilt identification and reconciliation rules so authoritative sources won consistently
• Ran governed deduplication rather than bulk deletion, preserving audit trail
• Corrected class structure and reclassified misfiled CIs
• Closed discovery credential and scheduling gaps to extend coverage
• Built relationship mapping for the services carrying contractual SLAs
• Defined data ownership and stewardship per tenant
• Progressed alignment with the CSDM foundation and service layers
• Standardised client onboarding into a repeatable data intake process
• Transferred knowledge and governance practice to the internal platform team

Results

• Duplicate CIs reduced from 8,400 to fewer than 1,200
• CMDB completeness across in-scope classes improved from 62% to 94%
• Discovery coverage extended from 58% to 96% of the managed estate
• New client onboarding time reduced from 10 working days to 4 working days
• Change-related incidents attributable to incomplete impact assessment reduced by 41%
• Contractual service reporting accepted without challenge across 12 client accounts

The work moved the CMDB from a reporting liability to an asset the provider could point to during client onboarding and contract renewal.