ServiceNow has released a new version of the Now platform designed to improve employee workflow in a mixed work environment.
The core of the latest version, code-named Rome, is the employee center, which aims to be the digital command center for organizations that manage a mixed workforce. This product helps to reduce the time employees spend to obtain the required information from various departments of the enterprise (such as IT, human resources, and procurement).
On Thursday, when ServiceNow and Microsoft jointly announced that they would integrate multiple functions of the employee center (including IT, human resources, and procurement) into Microsoft Teams, the new ServiceNow Rome version was promoted. It marks the first major expansion of the partnership signed between the two companies in July 2019. The Employee Center can be used as a collaboration application in Teams to work across multiple applications (including chat, channels, and meetings) in Teams.
Another new product called Employee Journey Management can help guide employees to complete multiple tasks across multiple departments, including onboarding, job transition and leaving. When developers use code-free tools and complete all operations on a single platform, the product also makes it easier for HR managers to personalize resources and plans.
Unlike ServiceNow’s traditional focus on IT workflow, the inspiration for focusing on employee workflow is to reduce the occasional fatigue experienced by some users working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, which lasted much longer than expected.
Dave Wright, ServiceNow’s chief innovation officer, said: “When we move to a mixed work environment, we think it will cause six weeks of inconvenience, and then it will return to normal.” “But over time. When developing Rome, we pay more attention to employees, not to increase productivity, but to reduce the fatigue of remote employees performing repetitive tasks through automation. This allows them to choose the way they want to work.”
However, one analyst pointed out that staff turnover should not be attributed to repetitive tasks or general burnout.
“Burnout is not the main reason for leaving,” said Larry Carvalho, principal consultant of Robust Cloud LLC. “Higher-paying alternatives and work-life balance are the causes of staff turnover. It is a crazy assumption to say that a better HR application experience can reduce burnout.”
Positioning a tool at the IT service desk and extending it to non-IT workloads can catch ERP vendors by surprise. Oracle and Salesforce may have to catch up.
Charles BatesPrincipal Analyst, Forrester Research
Redesigned interface
ServiceNow said that using the new AI technology and the features already built into the Now platform, the new version can more easily aggregate information from multiple departments, targeting a single employee. Knowing that users start searching for new internal information in the same way as using Google, the interface of the new product has adapted to this trend.
Scott Smith, ServiceNow Technical Product Marketing Manager, said: “We have redesigned the homepage to put search at the forefront to ensure that the AI search function we launched earlier this year is there when employees log in for the first time.” “This helps Put information at their fingertips faster,” he said.
An analyst agrees that the nature of the improvements, which are mainly aimed at remote employees, is just right, because the pandemic is still going on and there is no clear sign of its end. Making the Now platform more collaborative between departments and providing employees with an experience that makes them feel closer to their colleagues can create a more collegial corporate environment.
Forrester Research principal analyst Charles Betz said: “At present, this is an urgent issue for companies large and small.” “Now is the time for enterprise customer service management providers in this new environment to take action on this. NS. [ServiceNow] Their competitors have ample opportunities to take advantage of this. “
Expand Now user base
Betz said that it might be wise for the company to use the existing and new features of Now Platform and expand its focus to employee workflows. This move may give ServiceNow an advantage over Salesforce and Oracle, which ServiceNow is in conflict with the latter, who wants to take advantage of its advantages in the ERP and CRM markets.
“Adopting a tool that is positioned at the IT service desk and extending it to non-IT workloads can catch ERP vendors by surprise,” Betz said. “It reminds me of Wayne Gretzsky’s famous saying, he said to skate to where the puck is, not where it is. Oracles and Salesforces may have to catch up.”
Dave Wright
As ServiceNow has gone through the development of Rome and can see that the mixed working environment far exceeds all predictions, the company has begun to focus more on providing users with a seamless experience. But as the company talked to a range of different businesses, it realized that the seamless hybrid experience differed from industry to industry, Wright said.
“For life sciences, they want to know what we can do, not for customers, but for their patients, or with the government, what we can do for them, but not for them, but for their citizens,” Wright Say. “We realize that this concept is something they have known from the past. If you think about the old intranet, information is only presented to people. But now people also need to process this information.”
If the chief experience officer eventually deals with more long-term remote employees because of better remote software, ServiceNow plans to re-platform its recently acquired Mapwize to the Now platform. The former is an indoor mapping program seat reserved for temporary office employees. Work area. An analyst believes that combining the two can reduce real estate spending.
IDC Group Vice President Stephen Elliot said: “Many executives are most concerned about managing real estate expenses when managing mixed work. “CEOs have already benefited from employees not traveling. Many people Already satisfied with this, but with the adjustment of real estate and energy issues, new business decisions need to be made. It may be advantageous to merge Rome (and Mapwize). “
With the theme of adapting to the needs of remote workers, ServiceNow also launched its mobile application generator, a low-code product that allows third-party and internal developers to use a single interface to create mobile applications for iOS and Android devices. ServiceNow platform .
“You can build a mobile interface on the ServiceNow platform and be able to create drag-and-drop components,” Wright said. “If you haven’t, we have added a guide to guide you through the process of building an application and delivering it quickly.”
Carvalho of Robust Cloud agreed, saying that App Builder “is a great tool” for applications where there is no built-in mobile access alternative.
Mobile App Builder may broaden the ServiceNow developer ecosystem, especially for mobile applications that can be created by internal developers and third parties.
Elliot said: “Opening the space for application development on the Now platform is a huge driving force.”[ServiceNow] There is a need to make it easier for companies to create mobile applications that can be used by remote workers. “
Other AI products bundled with the new version include: Automation Discovery, which uses ServiceNow applications (including Virtual Agent and Agent Assist) to identify the top 10 opportunities for automation from more than 180 topics; and Health Log Analytics enhancements, which Promote service operations through anomaly detection and recommended remediation across mixed environments.
As a contributing editor of the TechTarget news group, Ed Scannell is responsible for writing and reporting breaking news, news analysis and special reports, focusing on technical issues and trends affecting corporate IT professionals. He also worked at Infoworld and Computerworld for 26 years, covering enterprise-level products and technologies from large IT companies such as IBM and Microsoft, and served as the editor of Redmond for three years, overseeing the editorial content of the magazine.
