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ServiceNow’s latest code version “Paris” includes applications that help banks issue credit cards and enable telecommunications companies to manage services and network performance, which shows the company’s emphasis on organizing the workflow of the entire enterprise (not just the IT department) degree.
IT Service Management (ITSM) is just one of many applications that the founder of ServiceNow plans to run on the Enterprise Service Management (ESM) platform he built, but it has been the company’s definition for many years.
However, with its latest software update, ServiceNow’s corporate ambitions have become the focus.
ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott said: “We invent employee experience, customer experience, and low-code, uncoded experiences in every industry around the world every day.”
Even before McDermott joined the company last year, ServiceNow has been steadily acquiring technology to expand its platform and build new applications on top of it to attract users across the enterprise.
However, Charles Betz, Forrester’s chief analyst for infrastructure and operations, said that its competitors are also adopting similar strategies, and he pays close attention to ITSM vendors.
“It’s not just ServiceNow that is doing this; all traditional ITSM vendors have reported that customers are increasingly pushing their solutions to various problems,” he said. “For some time, they have been confused by customers torturing their systems for non-IT purposes.”
However, now, driven by this customer demand, many vendors have expanded their marketing (and possibly their code) to address these new uses, thereby turning their ITSM platforms into ESM tools.
“From my perspective, this is a very organic, customer-oriented trend,” Betz said.
In ServiceNow, it will be transformed into new features and integrations in the Now Platform of Paris Now, which is based on the new AI, analysis and mobile features in the old version of “Orlando” in March.
Application, application, application
ServiceNow’s latest product introduces applications for automating workflows: three applications that can be used in shared services (such as HR, finance, facilities or law) for any business, and three highlighting ServiceNow’s commitment to The ambition of customized services for major industry verticals.
Common applications include the delivery of legal services to help the legal department perform actions, such as reviewing and approving contracts in an uninterrupted email chain; the other two are for IT teams, as companies continue to adapt to new realities through Covid-19 , They will become more and more useful. .
Business continuity management can analyze business impact, help with crisis management and support the development of business continuity plans, which many companies must follow.
At the same time, ServiceNow’s hardware asset management application is not the only application-but through the Now Platform, it can communicate with HR’s onboarding plan or purchase approval process.
For retail banks, financial service operations aim to digitize the work flow of credit card application and payment, while telecommunication service management and telecommunication network performance management aim to simplify customer self-service and identify customers affected by network issues. Determine and resolve.
These moves raise the question of how far will ServiceNow take control of the former SAP CEO McDermott?
Larry Carvalho, research director of IDC’s research platform as a service, said that ERP vendors like SAP need not worry too much. He said: “SAP and ServiceNow bring different benefits to customers.”
Forrester’s Betz is not sure. He said: “ServiceNow is clear that they have no intention of becoming a system of record similar to ERP.” “However, their plan to become a common workflow framework agent activity between these systems may still attract the attention of ERP vendors.”
Rules of engagement
In this case, ServiceNow will become a key system for participation, and ERP vendors may be downgraded to only run workflows in their own warehouses. As the workflow technology matures, the CIO will decide how to play a role in the enterprise.
Betz said: “BPM vendors have never fulfilled their early promises. Many workflows are still handled by temporary means, such as shared email boxes and component software from the early 2000s.”
“This is the market space that ServiceNow and its peers enter, because knowledge workers need access to all the enterprise services they need to create and iterate on compelling new digital products.”
ServiceNow is not the only company targeting this area. There are professional work management platforms and many low-code/no-code tools-including some from former BPM vendors. However, IDC’s Carvalho said the biggest competitors are Microsoft’s Power Platform and Salesforce’s Force.com.
Among companies that use two or more of them, which one runs on top of the other may cause intense controversy.
Carvalho pointed out some of the advantages of ServiceNow in the upcoming skirmish: it provides an application engine with machine learning services to run tasks, an IntegrationHub that integrates other software-as-a-service assets, and other applications. The common data model of the company communicates in the form of its configuration management database (CMDB).
Carvalho said: “I find that ServiceNow is unique in that the technical components of the platform align with business use cases without code scripts, so that IT departments can easily clarify the benefits to line-of-business users.” “The CIO wants to be easy to use and shorten The time it takes IT to provide users with business value.”
Paris was built now
In addition to the six new applications, the Paris version is also based on the functions of the Now Platform.
For business process owners, there is a new process automation designer that allows them to describe and manage workflows without coding and determine the mature steps of automation, while Predictive Intelligence Workbench allows them to use machine learning to automate tasks .
ServiceNow said that its June acquisition of Sweagle enables it to add all service-oriented views to its CMDB, including technology, people, and processes through something called a “service graph.”
There is also a “Service Graph Connector Program”, which is a new name for software partners, including AppDynamics, Crowdstrike, Dynatrace and Solarwinds, who will use the “Service Graph” to make it easier for mutual customers to integrate and organize data on a single platform .
According to Paul Smith, the company’s European general manager, more than 1,500 ServiceNow customers have been able to try the new version first in the past 45 days. For the rest, it goes live today.
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