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ServiceNow hopes to become the key to the entire company’s process management. Dave Wright, the chief strategy officer of American software company, emphasized at the opening ceremony of the virtual customer conference “Where at Work 2020” that in times of crisis, this is more real than ever.
In view of the chaotic living and working environment caused by the corona pandemic, many companies will have to test their entire organization and usual processes. Wright believes that companies need to carefully consider what work means to the company. By decoupling the “where” from the “how”, the previous paradigm will suddenly become invalid.
Detlev Krause, Managing Director of ServiceNow Germany, said the relevant changes initially caused uncertainty. He did not rule out his company: “The crisis has swept over us.” For IT providers, the safety of their own employees is the first priority from the beginning. Overnight, approximately 12,000 employees were transferred to the home office. In order not to generate any fear, Klaus reported that in order not to cause any concern, management earlier stated that it would not lay off employees. This also contributed to the fact that the conversion effect was good.
Wright tried to position ServiceNow as a “shock absorber for digital conversion.” Regardless of whether the company still has an outdated old infrastructure or an established cloud strategy: In any case, it makes sense to organize the workflow properly and create the best experience for customers, employees, and partners. As a result, the company can significantly increase productivity overall.
“Work demarcation” happens, but on a small scale. Most people work as usual.
During the crisis, many skeptical executives changed their minds. However, they must still strive to lead behavior.
The nursing situation at home puts some employees under great pressure.
Corona’s lesson: Distrust of the home office has decreased. The company also hopes to reduce business travel.
Laptops, VPN access, video communications-most of the technical equipment that has become indispensable in the corona crisis are already in place.
The provider calls it a “platform platform”, and its foundation should be the ServiceNow platform. Robert Teed, vice president of corporate services, explained that this can simplify workflow management. Given the changing working conditions and the complex IT infrastructure made up of local and cloud components, there are more and more variables that control workflow, which adds complexity. Teed said this is where ServiceNow comes in, and they want to simplify workflow management.
To this end, ServiceNow is constantly expanding its platform. The next version “Paris” will only be released in mid-September. The new features mainly solve challenges such as flexibility and resilience. ServiceNow manager Wright reports that the focus is on three themes.
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For business continuity management, the platform aims to help users identify bottlenecks and optimize processes. The “Safe Workplace Suite” developed by ServiceNow after the corona crisis was designed to help companies control employees’ return to the office as safely and effectively as possible, and should also help improve business continuity.
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To increase internal productivity, users can use the “workflow manual designer,” Wright said. Among other things, they can use pre-configured standard workflows there, for example for new employee induction. The topic of artificial intelligence plays an important role, and ServiceNow hopes to anchor artificial intelligence more deeply and broadly on its platform. Users should be able to use the “Predictive Smart Workbench” to find and eliminate weaknesses in their workflow.
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For better cost management, the provider integrates various functions, such as functions for hardware asset management. Companies can use it to control the life cycle of their hardware from purchase to disposal. ServiceNow provides the “Cloud Insights” function to improve the transparency of cloud costs. Wright cited Gartner data as saying that the company wasted nearly a third of cloud spending. It remains to be seen to what extent ServiceNow assumes responsibility for its cloud products. In the past, users criticized the provider’s license model as being very different between service modules, which made it difficult to understand the entire license model.
In the virtual meeting, ServiceNow received many customers who reported on their projects. CIO Claudia Plattner of DB Systel GmbH explained that Deutsche Bahn’s ambitious future plans can only be solved through end-to-end digitalization. With ServiceNow, Plattner has established a digital portal where all 300,000 railway employees can process their IT purchases. However, the current collaboration has surpassed traditional IT Service Management (ITSM). Plattner reported that more and more train stations have pick-ups. Users can use the Smart Locker application to open their lockers. The user interface comes from ServiceNow.
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DB Systel has signed a framework agreement with this American provider to explore more options in service management. Plattner said that in addition to strong rail operations, customers also want to adopt modern methods to express their expectations for the future IT infrastructure. This crisis also shows the importance of agility and flexibility. The foundation is good integration capabilities and digital capabilities.
- Pierre André Eichliman (Cherwell)
“The focus is on the end user. Employees want to use all functions on a user-friendly service platform through a self-service portal. The ESM platform integrates all the company’s core IT systems and continuously automates processes in all systems. This also avoids Shadow IT.” - Patrick Büch of FNT
“I think the company is very concerned about process optimization and digitization in all areas of the company. However, not all areas have internalized the service concept. Therefore, ESM issues usually do not have the priority they should have, and they are not considered solutions by all departments. “ - Michael Geyer of Omninet
“Documentation and automation of business processes in IT service management has brought many benefits to the company. Let’s take an example of getting on, off, booking company cars or publishing documents in the personnel department. Simplified and error-free, Eventually, the automated process makes all relevant personnel feel relaxed and ensures that more efficient work makes people more satisfied.”
Virtual events also indicate that the application areas of the ServiceNow platform are expanding. It covers workflow control from classic ITSM to finance and human resources. For example, Munich Re (Munich Re) has completely reformed ITSM. Richard Fothergill, who has been in charge of service management at Munich Re since June last year, has done a lot of cleanup work. The manager said that he found that these systems have undergone extensive adjustments and decentralization, including various outdated versions of ServiceNow and old service management tools provided by third-party providers. The result: lack of transparency, proper control of the process and loss of cost control. Fothergill said: “For well-known companies in the financial world, this is not very pleasing.”
Read IDG Research Services’ research on what user companies plan to do in service management
The manager has integrated and standardized the system on the updated central ServiceNow platform-the release status is “New York”. He plans to migrate to the current Paris version soon. Fothergill has integrated all applications involved in service management in this consolidated instance. In addition, there is only one centrally maintained CMDB as a “golden resource”. Despite all the coronas, the project was completed within 9 months. The advantage is already obvious: the manager reports that user satisfaction has been greatly improved. There is greater transparency regarding the status of the ticket. In addition, with the help of automation, the service desk can work more efficiently and will be further expanded with self-service options in the future.
Fothergill said that ServiceNow is now a strategic platform for insurance companies. Other departments in the group will also be aware of this. Many people ask what tasks ServiceNow can perform in its area. The manager announced that this is still feasible.
This has already happened to other companies. Coca-Cola Europe Partners is an association composed of 13 European national organizations of American beverage manufacturers and uses ServiceNow in IT for incident, change and problem management, and project management. The platform is also used for customer service, financial and human resources affairs in Germany. Coca-Cola European Partners IT Business Partner Shared Services Deputy Director Martha Merk explained that at the same time, the European Shared Services Center is also based on ServiceNow in the financial sector and uses the platform to process accounting, invoices and payment transactions.
At the pharmaceutical giant Novartis, Holger Ness, who is in charge of personnel and organizational affairs, hopes to use the platform to automate all workflows to manage more than 100,000 employees as much as possible, thereby making users simpler and smarter. Ness explained that this includes everything from new hires to leaving the company, including classic human resources areas such as salary, time management and training.
Picture: ServiceNow
These examples illustrate how digital transformation can change a company’s work processes and processes. ServiceNow German boss Klaus said that with regard to transformation, the question is no longer “if” but “how” or “how fast.” He observed that more and more companies are taking a holistic view of the processing of workflows and are dealing with enterprise service management (ESM) topics outside of IT service management.
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