I have written posts many times about how awesome an inventory tool NCM could be with just a few simple changes where as it sits now it is merely a pretty good one.
One extra little nugget I wanted to through out in that vein is SmartNet. One of the primary reasons network folks are forced to keep track of their Cisco network gear down to location and serial number is because you have to know these things for your Cisco maintenance which is a per device charge depending on the device model and the level of support you wish to have on it. This becomes more important the larger you are as it can easily amount into the millions of dollars like ours does.
For instance we are in the process of renewing our main contract right now. It took a large report from Cisco showing everything we bought in the last 3 years, A large report from our primary Cisco vendor with a list of everything we purchased, a report I created for inventory in NCM and some serious Excel wizardry by a Sr. DBA to come up with a solid list of items that needed to be on our contract with the needed info. Each data source had it holes in missing items as well as data.
My thought here is, like inventory, NCM could be a great tool for the specific sub-use of keeping track of all Cisco gear for SmartNet. I think it would only take a field here or a checkbox there along with some very basic logic and reporting in the line of there are all your contract numbers and or here is what expires when and maybe even send alerts on it.
