At the Now Summit in Paris in 2018, ServiceNow under the Grand Place La Défense demonstrated the new features of its platform to its French ecosystem.
A continuation of the following article
This time, Engie came to testify for its ITSM project, which will soon be expanded to other functions.
One-third of France’s human resources and customer service prospects
This is the message of ServiceNow. Now, it has more functions than ITSM or ITOM (IT Operation Management). Its services have been extended to human resource services (HR service management) and customer service (customer service management). While waiting for other functions.
It is said that this diversification is bearing fruit. In France, Bruno Buffenoir, who is in charge of ServiceNow in the country, has a business portfolio that now consists of a third of CRM and HRIS projects.
In the country, publishers are also experiencing continued growth. We do not have any turnover, but the editor of Southern France Europe Manager said: “France is the center of ServiceNow’s strategy in Europe and the world,” and “We will invest heavily in this country.”
In an interview with MagIT, Bruno Buffenoir made clear these intentions: “Our economic growth rate in the country this year is 50%, and we expect the growth rate next year to be similar or even higher. We are increasing the workforce accordingly. [Ces recrutements] It is a huge investment.”
80% of CAC 40 companies are now ServiceNow customers…now interested in medium-sized companies
Today, ServiceNow has appeared in more than 80% of CAC’s 40 companies-Engie, Unibail, ArcelorMittal, Veolia and Danone attended the public testimony at the Now Summit.
“This is an interesting number, but not homogeneous. Some people use the entire solution extensively, while others (frankly) can do very little with ServiceNow alone. Bruno Buffenoir explains Say, we have more in front of us than in the back. Especially because publishers are now also targeting mid-sized companies (Cegid, La Poste and AG2R La Mondiale cited event speakers).
HRIS announces functional restoration
However, the fact that it has expanded to HR services (HR SM) makes ServiceNow compete head-on with other participants: PeopleDoc in HR services-even HRIS editors such as Workday, Oracle or SuccessFactor provide HR portals. self-service.
For the French manager of ServiceNow, this new situation will not change much in the end. “We can’t say that we are working together. We are working together…so there won’t be much change,” he smiled.
But functional restoration does exist-with Ultimate’s clear desire to take over the human resources department of PeopleDoc or Workday, this restoration is increasing.
“The change of core human resources is always an important moment for us”
Bruno Buffenoir, ServiceNow
Bruno Buffinor is again confident here. In the HR portal type bidding, he did not see-at least not in France-Workday or its competitors. “We recently signed a very good client, which is being deployed on weekdays. […] Same as CornerStone, SuccessFactor and Oracle HRMS. The change of core human resources is always an important moment for us, and our solutions are seen as bringing added value.”
It is not enough for him to have a workflow engine to provide services applied to transactions. “There are many applications that allow you to create a portal, but you must also package enough things to provide a solution that can be expressed very quickly.”
Face-to-face competition with CRM publishers
In customer service management, the overlap with CRM tools applied to after-sales service is more obvious.
However, in addition to its proprietary technology in portal and request management (consideration, splitting, attribution, solution monitoring), ServiceNow also emphasizes the difference from ZenDesk or Sales Cloud (Salesforce). Its tools not only manage requests, but its goals are increasingly responsible for follow-up.
However, this kind of monitoring usually involves communicating with multiple departments of the company-so horizontal, and simpler, vertical solutions, which seem to be ServiceNow’s new strategic focus (see below).
Components of the Now platform: IT services, security, low-code development (PaaS), human resources services and customer services
SaaS urbanization
However, these overlaps in HRSM and CSM require customers to make choices. If you listen to ServiceNow, it’s very simple, less in real life.
For Bruno Buffenoir, the issue of “urbanization” is crucial in a world where every publisher logically tries to sell the most to customers.
“You must use the correct application alone to solve the problems we encounter, just like on a smartphone with an application. I really agree to achieve the urbanization of the SaaS platform as objectively as possible.”
French customers often ask themselves this question (“Where to stop Salesforce and where to start ServiceNow?”).
“Professionals still need to put in a lot of effort to explain this. […] Consulting companies and integrators play a real role in leading the company toward the right model rather than in a specific direction.”
New horizontal approach
In addition to extending to IT services, ServiceNow also plays a more intuitive use, according to business needs (through AI) for more contextualization and automation. This point of automation is particularly important because it complements the publisher’s new horizontal approach, which emphasizes due to its unified software platform (and single data).
“The greatest added value of the platform will be its ability to connect businesses to manage processes, such as onboarding, from order to cash, from purchase to payment”
Bruno Buffenoir, ServiceNow
Bruno Buffenoir explained that this horizontal development “occurs naturally.” “Historically, we have equipped the reactor core IT. Then, we copied this case to other business departments of the company in a fairly uniform way. What we are doing today is “subverting” our positioning. We are no longer just Reasoning based on business cases, but based on cases involving different industries […] The greatest added value of the platform lies in the ability to link them together to manage processes, such as “onboarding”, “from order to cash”, “from purchase to payment”-in short, it is always complicated because they involve different Organization, responsibilities and systems.Workflow engine [comme le nôtre] Very suitable for this operation”.
BPM? Yes, but…
Will this horizontal positioning bring ServiceNow closer to business process management? Bruno Buffenoir replied: “Yes, but for users, it uses a more packaged and service-oriented approach, while BPM is for back-end processes.”
However, he was careful to point out that ServiceNow is not a “Force.com toolbox”, and according to one of his competitors, this expression has recently been used to emphasize the complexity of the Now Platform.
« [Cette expression] The French manager replied. “The real fact is that we have a PaaS (Editor’s Note: Intelligent Apps). We provide customers with opportunities to develop their own business workflows.” This will allow ServiceNow (and its low-code tools) to compete more with Pega Systems.
“We are not a complicated platform”
Bruno Buffenoir, ServiceNow
As for “complexity,” Bruno Buffenoir retorted: “ServiceNow did provide a lot of flexibility in configuration and best meeting customer needs in the past. Over time, this could lead to complex settings being maintained. At that time, we An organization is defined, then processed, and finally tools are provided. Today, it is a reverse model. Suddenly, it is no longer complicated. The platform inherently has good practices that can be used quickly […] The ITSM project on the Intermediate Account (NDR: ETI) with ServiceNow is less than three months old. I don’t call it a complex platform.”
Components of the Now platform: IT services, security, low-code development (PaaS), human resources services and customer services