What is ServiceNow and Why it is so popular ?

What is ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a cloud based software platform which follow ITIL service guidelines and caters ITSM (Information Technology Service Management) , IT operations management (ITOM) , IT Business Management(ITBM) . It makes work better for people by defining, structuring, managing and automating assets and services while breaking down into small for enterprise operations.

ServiceNow is a publicly traded company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Founded by Fred Luddy, who created a first-of-a-kind cloud platform in 2004. He wanted to make it simple and easy for employees to get work done with minimum efforts and time. Fred took the building blocks of work and converted them into a simple way for individuals and teams to collaborate on solving a shared task and saving time. ServiceNow is uniquely positioned to be the connective tissue that helps in smooth-running and simplifies the workflows across the enterprise, eliminating depositories and creating more seamless interactions with digital enterprise.

ServiceNow concentrates on cloud based operations , operations portfolio management and it allows users to perform various services and processes like handling priority tasks, incidents , activities project management , problem management and providing support to customer via addon and inbuilt plugins.

In the present era ServiceNow is fully fledged workflow automation and enterprise service mangement platform and it has unique ability to integrate with different tools and system such as CRM , ITSM , FSM , HRIS , VMware , Airwatch etc. It also provides a greater flexibility in terms of integration , customization , functionality , reliability etc. The following features which enhance the servicenow platform are:

Employee Experience

ServiceNow provides users with a single portal featuring a consistent, consumer‑like experience that can be used for all service requests. Innate mobile competence have been enhanced with the acquisition of ‘SkyGiraffe’, soon becoming a seamless part of the Now Platform. ServiceNow customers can deliver consumer‑like mobile experiences for any application built on the Now Platform for employees who want to work mobile‑first, anytime, anywhere.

Time card management

ServiceNow provides users with a time card which helps to record and track the time for your assigned task such as projects, problems, change requests, incidents. This plugin help user to identify their actual efforts spend on particular task.

Low code development

Non‑traditional application developers, business analysts and IT generalists can create codeless workflows, or flows, using a new, natural-language environment and intuitive user interface, permissive the consultants to focus on the business outcome, rather than developing or coding .

Intelligent Automation

Machine‑learning capabilities are infused directly into the Now Platform and are accessible to all ServiceNow cloud services and other applications built on ServiceNow. Artificial Intelligence technology helps customers a roadmap of work and easily provide self‑service and multi‑step problem resolution.

Now Platform Services

This is a platform where user can do the customization according to their requirements . The servicenow as a platform abstracts database management/SQL , java/javascript server side , javascripts/HTML/CSS/UIUX client side to manage your IT needs and requirements. It is most commonly used to wrap around the management of IT assets, delivery management, service management, operation management, risk management, customer relationship management (CRM), HR services and lot more. ServiceNow not only help you in completing 75% of your work as soon as you set it up, but also has a very open friendly architecture so you can easily integrate it into different systems or processes that are otherwise not represented. 

The entire ServiceNow platform is built on a relational database, a collection of data elements arranged into tables. Tables allow data to be reorganized and used across the platform without the need to change the underlying database. Earlier Servicenow was using mySQL database as a default database. Now since SUN was taken over by Oracle, due to licencing issues in near future, MySQL community developed a new DB similar to mySQL named “MariaDB”. Following the footsteps, ServiceNow has also moved from MySQL to MariaDB when opting for new instances/ Helsinki Release. ServiceNow runs MariaDB at a pleasant remarkable scale, nearly 87,000 databases globally to be exact. To further convolute matters, ServiceNow has each customer on its own database or multiple databases. It also allows customers to  illustrate queries and run custom workflows on its platform too. The basic performance and key staging indicator for ServiceNow, like many technology companies, is availability. This is one reason it runs so many instances across eight pairs of data centres globally, so that it can limit failover to a single customer.

Business Model of ServiceNow

The business model of ServiceNow is based on Software as a Service (SaaS).The biggest perk about it being cloud-based is that there are no ties to a local resource, and it can easily scale across multiple networks. Unlike other platforms, ServiceNow was natively designed in the cloud and it shows. Many cloud‑based services are not designed to combat the stresses of enterprise IT solutions. mostly they are used to operate or process somewhat low transactional volume and support department‑level, less critical workloads. ServiceNow differs as it is specifically designed for minimizing human efforts and complexities. It has the ability to withstand the pressures of the IT industry, scalability, and customer requirements.  In servicenow users are free to select interface in which they are comfortable and it also involves systems to define , automate and manage well structured services for companies. ServiceNow platform can be used for various fuctionalities in IT industry such as :

• Service Portals & Catalogs
• Reports and Dashboards
• Workflow Modelling
• Subscription and Notification
• Knowledge Base (KeDB)
• Single and Contextual Collaborations etc.

ServiceNow is now a good player in IT sector, It has evolved well beyond its IT service management roots. The Now Platform is capable of supporting broader enterprise efforts around business process and workflow automation. The key value of the ServiceNow Now Platform is in how it can help reduce work frictions and inefficiencies that often result when tasks and workflows extend across different business units.

Highlights of ServiceNow

1. ServiceNow provides a comprehensive portfolio of solutions to manage services consistently across IT, Security, HR and customer service to make work, work better.
2. The Now Platform provides a common user experience, workflow and integration framework as well as a powerful platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment for building and delivering custom solutions.
3. It offers a customizable dashboard that provides a graphic view of categories such as software and hardware assets and an IT self-service catalog in order to emphasize key business benefits in an easy-to-see, all-up dashboard setting.
4. Pricing for ServiceNow is higher than most of its competitors, ServiceNow does not publish pricing. It sells its solutions through direct sales and a network of resellers and value added resellers.
5. The ServiceNow can be deployed into cloud and On-premise for certain use cases.
6. ServiceNow has been improving in many terms i.e. increasing its wider ITOM capabilities and its appearance and global reach.
7. ServiceNow comes in express and enterprise versions.
8. ServiceNow IT Asset Management Suite provides IT managers with a real-time overview of how IT assets such as hardware and software are deployed.
9. Some of the customers of ServiceNow are Accenture, Adidas, AstraZeneca, Broadcom, Birlasoft, CERN, Cox Automotive, Discover Financial Services, Experian, GE Digital, H&R Block, Ingersoll Rand, KPMG, NetApp, Magellan Health, McDonalds, Qantas, Red Hat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Safeway, Siemens, SwissRe, U.S. Dept of Energy, Virgin Trains and many others.
10. Some of the top competitor of ServiceNow are Pregasystems, ServiceMax, Altassian, SAP, Yonyou, BMC Software, Jira, Zendesk, IBM, Salesforce, Oracle etc.

Why is ServiceNow so popular and successful

ServiceNow is a powerfull product and is respected because it has an ability to manage everything as a Service . The best part of ServiceNow is its comprehensive managed workflow that provides various support and enables enterprise service domains to define services, provide an intuitive service experience, deliver service, assure service availability and analyze critical service metrics, process delivery and management, real time communication, customer interaction, collaboration and resource sharing , testing, quality assurance and more. Some of the tools available to you in servicenow are :

IT Service Management

ITSM consolidates all the activities involved in supporting, managing, delivering, designing, creating the lifecycle of IT services. It also helps to automates service management processes, increase efficiency, lower costs and devote more time to creating the consumer‑like self‑service experience.

Field Service Management

ServiceNow FSM refers as a track keeping system which keeps records of various components of the field operations within a single system.

Finance Service Management

This helps in fulfilling and submitting requests including financial reports, procurement and payroll issues; gain visibility into work requests and trends over time.

Human Resource Service Management

HRSM creates a system of engagement that uses state flows and workflow to automate the delivery process ,works in lineup with existing applications for core HR, talent and workforce management.

Application Development

Refers to the set of programs developed to perform the certain tasks required as per the business needs. It includes SDLC process which quickly prepare, builds, test, deploy and publish servicenow applications.

Security Operation

Servicenow takes care of data security and authorization. Servicenow governance risk and compliance (GRC) manage security incidents, prioritize vulnerabilities, visualize the effectiveness of security investments, and adapt to changing conditions.

ServiceNow Services

ServiceNow has many service as well as management software for the following industries :

• Manufacturing
• Telecommunication
• Healthcare
• Government
• Education & Research
• Financial Services
• Automotive
• Utilities
• Industrial machinery & components
• Service Providers
• Retails

The best thing about this tool is its implementation , which is easy and less time taking relatively low amount of configuration required to get up and running the enterprise and an organization need not to think more about its infrastructure, servers, data centers, load balancing , clustering , security , quality assurance and many more all these are taken care by ServiceNow itself. It means you can immediately be productive and begin identifying concerns and start resolving them. In the present era ServiceNow has become more than the ITSM tool . It has grown into a complex cloud based system and extent itself in many different fields levaraging machine learning , neaural network processing (NLP) , Internet of things (IOT) to expand their core product functionality .

ServiceNow comes with pre-equipped annual knowledge conference. It has a feature of holding knowledge base articles which can be created by the customer and for the customer for easy understanding.

Best Practices of using ServiceNow

The popularity which servicenow gained and is gaining because of its potential of solving IT problems and management. It is developed to manage and present everything as a service, ServiceNow helps the public, private and modern enterprise operate smooth & faster and be more ductile than ever before. It does this by assigning a service-orientate monocle on the activities, tasks and processes that make up the day-to-day work life. The reason it is so efficient is that it gives you a solid platform, prebuilt tools including architecture, straight out of the box. From there you can work on the rules and build the forms and complete the tasks very quickly, and you don’t even have to worry about what structures your databases are. It provides multiple service management modules with many functionalities and customization which makes task easier and time saving. Some of them mentioned are given below:

• ITSM which includes incidents, requests, problems, change requests, tasks, support and many more.
• ITBM includes business portfolio management, performance analytics, demands, resource, application portfolio management etc.
• ITOM includes discovery, service mapping, cloud management, event management, project portfolio etc.
• IT asset management, software management, SaaS license management, HR service managemet etc.
• Portfolio Analysis and Reporting interacts with application management through dashboards, widgets, historical data.
• Stakeholder Feedback includes surveys, assessments and data certifications.
• Project portfolio management which includes roadmaps and execution, project demands, ideas, investment planing etc.
• ServiceNow is upgraded with APM maturity model which plays a significat role in smoothing down the overall process.

Summary

• ServiceNow is a software platform which provides Software as a service (Saas) & supports IT Service Management (ITSM).
• ServiceNow is used by different group of people working in industries i.e. Employees , developers, end users, administrators etc.
• ServiceNow helps to reduce resources and ITSM costs up to 50%
• It is not just stick to past software practices but it is upgrading as per the requirements and needs of the software industry .
• It is using machine learning to leverage facts , data and derive the insights and powerful workflows to help different departments and industries to grow faster and also reduces the resolution time which has helped many industries in their overall revenue growth.