ServiceNow turns pasta into chocolate-blog

In the software-as-a-service world, there are not many parties that achieve annual turnover of more than one billion dollars. I thought of NetSuite, Salesforce, Workday. ServiceNow (written as Servicenow from here on) is also one of those big men. It started in 2004 as a supplier of IT service management software (for example, when it needed to provide equipment for new employees), but the company now has to do more. This creates a considerable drive for expansion. During Knowledge 18, approximately 18,000 people learned about the company’s development in Las Vegas. We are there too.

On the one hand, the question of what Servicenow is going to do is not difficult to answer. The company provides service management, which now has a very broad meaning. However, the exact meaning is a bit difficult to define. Most importantly, Servicenow must ensure that all software that the company runs must be able to communicate with each other in the field of service management. Events are created, and the right people (or machines) solve them.

The latter is certainly not an easy task, because many companies have already purchased software that is used independently of each other. Therefore, it has almost no integration by itself. Servicenow must use that to make chocolate. It wants to do this in a way that is invisible to the end user. The latter is characteristic of our time. Focus on the customer’s user experience and hope to make everything that can be experienced invisible.

In order to achieve a smooth operation of all components, even if many different software packages are involved, not only Servicenow must be delivered. Philip van der Wilt and Michael Maas at least told us that. Within the company, all C-level personnel must also work together. In the final analysis, simplifying the way an organization operates is all about change management. Everyone in the company must work with it.

Multiple service levels

In order to better understand what we are talking about here, Servicenow outlines these four aspects experience The company’s focus is on: IT implementers, employees, supervisors and developer managers.

For IT implementers, it’s all about providing support when a service request is received. For example, if such a person searches for VPNs and iPads, the system must be smart enough to display all related articles related to this. By the way, a flesh and blood person can provide a solution to the problem, but at the same time, the Servicenow environment also supports chat tools.

Service requests can come from outside the organization or from employees. Then, he can use the virtual agent developed by Servicenow. You can carry out each Servicenow promotion through this chatbot. As a manager, I am also very happy to know that Servicenow has established a cooperative relationship with Microsoft Teams. This led to NowBot. The idea here is to make your team perform better.

Finally, the developer manager. In DevOps, the team is responsible for all stages of application development: planning, development, testing, deployment, and operation. You can use ServiceNow for planning, testing and operating components. In addition, Servicenow has also developed Enterprise DevOps, which you can use to track the status of the build. This is not only helpful for overview, but also legally useful.

Far from growing

Servicenow is a company that has not yet completed its growth. The latest announcements such as Flow Designer and IntegrationHub show that more and more things are being bundled together. Using Flow Designer, you can adjust all work processes company-wide, and through IntegrationHub, you can link third-party enterprise applications (ERP, etc.).

In a conversation with Chris Pope, we asked him whether Servicenow will eventually be further reduced in the infrastructure. After all, if you can link all the different departments of the company together, you must also write the software required to integrate with Workday, for example. Then, it may be equally useful to integrate the HR package into the product itself.

However, according to the Pope, this is not Servicenow’s goal. They don’t want to replace parties like Workday. He did point out in the subsequent conversation that the gap between Servicenow and Workday in the field of human resources is getting smaller and smaller.

The Pope is also very clear about what Servicenow wants to achieve.He said the so-called potential market It is of great significance to Servicenow. Much larger than, for example, NetSuite and Salesforce. Potentially, it should be possible to generate a turnover of 60 billion euros in the future (the company is currently less than 10 billion euros). The target is set at a low 25 billion euros. According to him, this can definitely be achieved.

We would not be surprised if Servicenow also achieved such a turnover. Ultimately, the work they do-linking different software within the organization from a service perspective-is something every company needs. Witnessing the pretty good new features that Servicenow announces in each new version (twice a year since this year), the extension of features is definitely not over yet. For example, they are working on a no-code development platform from scratch, for example, companies can develop their own applications without any programming knowledge.

Can it do too much?

One form that Servicenow may encounter in its expansion momentum is Empire overexpansion. The company wants to do too much and loses focus. During the event, this feeling made us a little uncomfortable.

According to the Pope, they have realized this danger at Servicenow and are working hard to achieve this. It all starts with better conveying the message they want to convey. We certainly welcome this, because during the event, we often think that we are listening and watching a buzzword bingo game. This is not necessarily wrong, in fact every company is “guilty” to some extent. To some extent, it is even necessary to use relatively elusive products such as service management. Fortunately, the presentation we received clearly showed the meaning. However, more explanations are always welcome.

According to the Pope, Servicenow is currently working on this. We will pay close attention to this matter, and of course other developments in Servicenow.