ServiceNow, Salesforce for internal processes

In the past, publishers have been focusing on IT support, expanding their services to major business processes, from human resources to customer support. Goal: Quadruple its turnover, reaching US$4 billion by 2020.

At the beginning of October, ServiceNow’s annual Paris conference NowForum sold out. In La Défense, there are more than 800 professionals to discuss the management of business services. The recommendations of the publisher’s clients at this press conference reflected ServiceNow’s desire to diversify its business.

Historically positioned in the ITSM market (for IT service management), that is, a service desk type of IT support service (guided by the ITIL good practice repository), ServiceNow has gradually expanded its scope to all internal, IT or business processes.

From ITSM to HR process…

If ISD continues to operate, ServiceNow now also intends to engage in dialogue with human resource development, general service, marketing or financial management departments by providing tools that can help these companies build and automate processes. Related tasks. La Poste is about to testify at NowForum, so it uses ServiceNow to manage its HR service portal and Eiffage to manage its shared service center.

In 2015, ServiceNow had 3,200 customer bases (excluding subsidiaries), and its turnover exceeded the $1 billion mark. By 2020, the California company has set its own goal of quadrupling its business by significantly expanding the scope of its client companies.

Because if the Santa Clara-based company is ahead of HP, BMC and IBM in ITSM (especially after acquiring Peregrine Systems, Remedy and Tivoli, it is positioned in this area), then the market is still narrow. Matthieu de Montvallon, the pre-sales manager of ServiceNow France, said: “More than 60% of turnover comes from ITSM.” This graph includes IT services such as operations or monitoring. The manager added: “The goal is to reach a 35/65 ratio in 2017.”

Founded by the former Peregrine and Relief Foundation

By creating Glidesoft (which became ServiceNow three years later) in 2003, Fred Luddy realized this expansion through his own choice. The training developers chose the SaaS model, but also the platform approach. Matthieu de Montvallon explained: “From the very beginning, this was the issue of equipping the company’s departments with cross-functional processes and workflows. Unlike Salesforce, Salesforce is committed to solving external, customer-oriented processes.

ServiceNow spends 40% of its turnover in research and development.

Coming from the ITSM world, Fred Luddy is the technical director of Peregrine and Remedy. Therefore, the leader decided to attack this market first. Today, the ServiceNow platform hosts approximately fifty applications. In its latest innovation, we have discovered “Security Operations”: this is a solution for managing company security vulnerabilities and threats, dedicated to customer support.

ServiceNow spends 40% of its turnover in research and development. Goal: A new major version will be released every six months in the spring and fall. Whether a new service is developed internally or taken over, it will be systematically integrated into the platform rather than sold separately.

Market with 200 applications and connectors

Therefore, after acquiring the startup Neebula at a price of US$100 million in July 2014, ServiceWatch’s offer automatically realized the mapping and monitoring of IT services. In the acquisition of Mirror42 a year ago, the platform was allowed to expand through the Performance Analytics service. Report function.

In the ServiceNow roadmap for the next few months, we provide an APM (or application portfolio management) solution for companies that want to provide software modules on workstations from an internal “application store”. The issuer has also just created an investment fund, ServiceNow Ventures, dedicated to companies developing cloud applications based on its platform or partners working on common projects. Just like the second MuleSoft case, MuleSoft helped the company interconnect ServiceNow with third-party solutions.

The platform already has about 200 applications and connectors on its market. ServiceNow will also organize a contest CreatorCon Challenge to encourage developers to design applications for its platform.

CAC40 for more than 70% of customers

ServiceNow was established in France 5 years ago, and it has been several years since it was established in the UK and Germany. Matthieu de Montvallon recalled: “We are obviously unknown. In the first year, we must preach the gospel.” Today, the publisher has 200 clients in France (more than 70% of CAC40) and employs about 70 employees. ServiceNow first targeted the French ITSM market. Instead of niche markets, a large number of companies have been equipped with HP and BMC solutions.

We noticed: “On the other hand, Salesforce is ready, we don’t have to explain the advantages of SaaS. Today, the tenders we see only consider solutions in the SaaS world.” In ServiceNow. French publishers include Natixis, Pôleemploi, Total, Canal+, Dalkia, LaFrançaisedes Jeux, Haut-Rhin and ING.

ServiceNow is based on the main direct distribution model and also relies on some partners. Same as above for integration. Partners include Accenture (Accenture), KPMG (KPMG), Orange Business Services (OBS), Dvor Team… and some professional service companies, such as imaKumo.

Like Total, OBS plays the dual role of an integrator and a hosting provider by providing the hosting of ServiceNow solutions on its sovereign cloud (Cloudwatt). For its own infrastructure, ServiceNow relies on 16 data centers operating in pairs around the world (to achieve redundancy). In Europe, the first pair operates in London and Amsterdam. The other two data centers are located in Zurich and Geneva, Switzerland.

Small and Medium Enterprise Edition

In the last magic quadrant dedicated to IT service support management solutions (dated last August), Gartner ranked ServiceNow together with BMC at the top right of the leader. The research company noted that publishers appeared on the company’s shortlist and its platform matured due to acquisitions.

Still according to Gartner, but ServiceNow’s recent changes to the pricing and bundling of certain products may cause confusion. Local customers will also pay the same price as SaaS customers, even if they host the solution and will not benefit from automatic updates. Please note that publishers provide an easy solution, ServiceNow Express, for small and medium businesses that only hire a few employees to manage their processes.