Author: Malwina

ServiceNow – an ITSM leader by Gartner

Posted on by Malwina

The unqestionable leader

At SPOC, we knew it already 11 years ago, what the last 7 years of Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools showed. ServiceNow is an unquestionable and uncompetitive leader in the field.

ServiceNow switched from visionaries in 2008 to challengers in 2012, arriving in 2014 as Leaders. Since then the gap between ServiceNow and the competition was getting bigger and bigger, every year. Gartner states that ServiceNow’s revenue market share is more than four times that of its closest competitor. Numbers speak for themselves. By competition, we should consider Remedy (BMC), Ivanti, and Atlassian (Jira).

ServiceNow pros and cons

The most impactful ITSM targets are large and mid-size companies. In fact, most customers are enterprise-scale, although we have more and more examples where ROI and value implementation is achieved by mid-size.

Let’s start with the good things:

  • ServiceNow customers give positive feedback regarding time to market and the high quality and maturity of the default configuration processes. In 2021 Gartner emphasizes the platform’s global presence. It is a critical aspect, especially in times of pandemic, restrictions, and remote work. From our SPOC perspective, we can assure you that ServiceNow is present in most customer shortlists. Our task is to enlighten you and indicate how you can get the highest value from ServiceNow implementation, minimizing the time required for ROI.
  • Products and functionalities are second to none. The investment in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning goes to the next level. Putting pressure on IT Operations management makes it easy to act proactively. In practice, it means more low code and no code as well as tools for process optimization.
  • High flexibility is a huge advantage. As an ITSM platform, it is highly agile, ensuring smooth management of the company changes. ServiceNow tools adopt Predictive Intelligence, Performance Analytics (reports, KPIs, performance measurements) and Virtual Agent. The platform also meets DevOps and SRE (site reliability expectations), giving you a unique tool that is not available in any native version on other ITSM providers.

ServiceNow gives enormous possibilities in terms of CMDB. Thanks to its flexibility and scalability, we were able to decide on CMDB reconstruction and development. The main beneficiary and the project’s primary sponsor will be the SecOps and not the IT department. – global cosmetic company.

Nothing is perfect, so the main cautions seen by Gartner are: 

  1. Especially in the last year, the I&O maturity level was not high enough for most Gartner clients to demonstrate substantial value from ServiceNow investments. At SPOC, we address the clients’ challenges within value realization, focusing on pre-sales and Customer Success actions to maximize the value. 
  • Product packaging challenges – the platform does not have high flexibility in the license model and product packaging as other competitors. Organizations with large numbers of occasional users have problems justifying the purchase of a role-based named-user licensing model. Since ServiceNow receives this feedback on many occasions, especially on the EEMEA market and within mid-size companies, there is a chance they will follow the request towards that kind of flexibility. Using our experience at SPOC, we help our customers optimize the license purchase and negotiate with ServiceNow.

Rome wasn’t built in a day

ServiceNow launches new releases twice a year, so joining the platform, you will need to upgrade once per year to stay on a supported release family. The last release was in Q1 – ServiceNow Quebec. A new release, Rome, is just around the corner, and it delivers more capabilities in terms of digital workflows, improving the hybrid work experience. Our Maintenance & Development team makes sure your updates run smoothly.

Want to learn more about The Now Platform Rome release? Go to our article about technical aspects of Rome, as well as the business perspective.

Following the changes in ServiceNow is not an easy task. That is why we are fully dedicated to helping you at every platform implementation and development stage. Since time is gold, we took a fresh and unique approach to implement ServiceNow – FastTrack. It lets you introduce the most important functionalities of ServiceNow in 120 days, with fixed scope and budget and more than 90% of the functionalities.

Choose #1 ITSM Platform

ServiceNow keeps being an ITSM leader for large and mid-size companies that require high flexibility, vast product offer, and high-quality service.

We are impressed by the outcomes of DevOps application. After evaluating this solution with our implementation partner, SPOC, we felt convinced about the need to support our software development and maintenance practices wherever automation and insight into the most important KPIs are required on an ongoing basis. – a major bank in East Europe.

If you are interested in our services, contact us here.

About “Digital Transformation” with ServiceNow – podcast

Posted on by Malwina

Jacques Clément, our Chief Technical Officer at Spoc Luxembourg took part in the 48th episode of the Alldus podcast, in their “Digital Transformation” series.

The aim of this podcast is to share an extensive conversation between leaders of companies in the fields of IT and Digital Transformation.

Therefore, Jacques has been invited to give details about his experience implementing ServiceNow across companies in Europe.

With hosts from Alldus International, during this podcast, Jacques has gone through his 30 years plus experience working in the IT industry, and 13 years plus working on ServiceNow powered projects.

Starting in 2008, his ServiceNow experience has led him to drive a worldwide implementation of the ServiceNow cloud computing platform in several companies with different needs.

Therefore, Jacques, thanks to his substantial knowledge of the platform, has been able to go through subjects as varied as:

  • The work we do at SPOC Luxembourg
  • The role of ServiceNow and the main projects we are working on
  • Challenges we need to overcome
  • Wins and learns on implementing ServiceNow within the business
  • The importance of system design
  • Exciting trends to keep an eye on in the future…

To get the full experience of this knowledge-packed podcast, listen to it in its entirety by clicking here.

Rome ServiceNow Release – business perspective

Posted on by Malwina

What’s new in Rome?

The Rome upgrade, which will be ready in September 2021, does not mean only improvement and automation capabilities to work faster and more efficiently for admins and end-users, but it also has a great variety of additional features for department leads and process managers. In this article, we prepared a list of the most exciting improvements from the business perspective.

ITSM – Digital Portfolio Management

Service, Product, and Application Owners will finally have a unified place for managing the entire portfolio of their offerings. This new unified Workspace will be provided via ServiceNow Store at no additional cost, except for the corresponding ITSM/ITBM.

A single place where you can track and manage the lifecycle of your Services, Applications, and Products will give you great insight into your portfolio from a high-level perspective, which is invaluable, knowing how complex and intricate those things can be.

ITSM – Workforce Optimization Enhancements

ITSMSource: SPOC

Workforce managers and admins will have new capabilities within their workspace, enhancing Scheduling possibilities, managing their teams’ KPIs, and providing Coaching options to Agents.

Forecast admins will modify Forecast Parameters from the workspace to verify and compare different forecast versions. They can also fine-tune the forecasts manually, adjusting the default forecast properties for greater accuracy.

Shift planning admins can add on-call shifts from a Shift tab or the calendar. They can swap shifts of agents’ within their teams without a need for additional approval and view their agents’ demand and utilization for each day of the week.

KPIs can be added for teams and individual agents, goals can be set to track and monitor how teams and respective agents deal with, e.g., incident resolution. Multiple teams can be given the same set of KPIs/Goals for consistency.

Assessments and Surveys are now available in the manager workspace. Surveys can be added automatically to an assessment when the coaching opportunity triggers it or manually ad-hoc. Skills can be analyzed in the Skills Overview and added to teams, and assigned to individual agents.

All in all, this provides excellent insight and a unified tool for workforce optimization, which is a pretty unique offering in the marketplace.

Find out more.

ITSM – Vendor Manager Workspace

Another Workspace-based enhancement will provide Vendor Managers with a great tool for tracking their Vendors’ performance.

The Rome release adds a new landing page to that Workspace for a unified view of your contracts, improvement initiatives, ranking of Vendors’ performance against their success characteristics, and Vendor satisfaction scores. Improvement Initiatives are a new way to track the Vendor’s improvement of a service, process, or tasks assigned in a structured way. You will also be able to manage the Service Credits that particular Vendors owe you when they are in breach of their Service Level Agreements and view the details of the breaches, analyzing the incidents, outages, and general service availability.

ITSMSource: ServiceNow

Find out more.

CSM – Messaging Services

Knowing that paperwork, analysis and approvals are the biggest hurdles in getting things done, ServiceNow offers pre-negotiated SMS and WhatsApp messaging deals.

You can order messaging credits with a separate SKU and leave all the setup to ServiceNow. This additional offering can be added to any of your existing CSM packages.

The messaging is handled by the industry-leading company Twilio, which is no surprise.

CSM – Playbooks

Playbooks are now even more focused on the current task at hand. The layout has been modified to provide contextual information, depending on the type of task the Agent currently handles within the Playbook. Thanks to that, Agents resolve issues more quickly and efficiently.

Playbooks can now be used for an entire workflow, including record creation. The corresponding playbook activity will be triggered, e.g., when a CSM Agent creates a new Case record, prompting them to gather additional information about the customer and their case.

The focused playbook activity view allows the Agents to see the entire workflow, focusing on the current stage and activity. The lifecycle panel displays the workflow stages and following tasks, while the main work area covers the current task’s content.

Dynamic related records can also be configured and displayed, eliminating jumping through multiple screens/tabs.

ITSMSource: ServiceNow

Find out more.

HR – Employee Center

The Employee Center is a new portal for your end users within ServiceNow, centralizing the experience from various departments like HR, IT, Legal, or Procurement.

It supports omnichannel self-service and support for your employees to make their experience the best possible. This modern, employee-focused environment boosts end users’ productivity and efficiency and empowers them to solve their issues.

You can easily link the HR Case ticket page with your Employee Center using the provided Portal Configuration module.

Note that if you sed an older version of the Employee Center, you will be advised to download the latest app from the ServiceNow Store. The app is supposed to be getting frequent updates and new features.

ITSMSource: SPOC

HR – Employee Journey Management

Managers and department leads can now create complex Employee Journeys, which span multiple departments for increased employee productivity, efficiency, and engagement.

Based on templates, dedicated workflows, and interactions, you can offer your Employees a personalized experience, measuring their satisfaction throughout their journey during the critical transitions.

Employee Mentors can support Employees within respective Journey Accelerator plans by managing, updating, and tracking to-do tasks.

The configuration starts with defining a new Plan type, for example, “Employee Relocation.” Plans contain various Stages as well as to-do Tasks. Task templates allow you to specify unique triggers for each task type. You can define the different stakeholders’ levels of access (Managers, Mentors, End Users). Managers will then use the defined Plan Types to create new Plans for specific Employees, assign Mentors, etc.

ITSMSource: SPOC

ITSMSource: SPOC

IT Asset Management – Asset Health Dashboard

The Asset Health addition to Hardware Asset Dashboard leverages ServiceNow’s single-source-of-truth platform and provides insights into the overall health of your Hardware Assets.

Asset Managers can receive recommended actions, alerts and gain insights based on the Asset’sAsset’s health. The dashboard comes with reports focused on the health and compliance of hardware asset records. It allows to identify any risks with Assets from Hardware or Consumable models which fall into one of the below categories:

  • missing purchase information,
  • could not be discovered within a month or are missing,
  • scheduled for retirement/nearing end-of-life/requiring refresh,
  • having most frequent incidents.

It is easy to filter the above database on Asset model or Location.

ITSMSource: ServiceNow

All roads lead to Rome

By the end of the year, you will be able to take advantage of all new improvements in the Rome release. You will have one place for your entire portfolio of the offerings for better tracking and insights. The scheduling and managing teams’ KPIs will become more smooth due to Workforce Optimization Enhancements. You will also get additional Workspace for tracking your Vendors’ performance, with significant analysis options.

Messaging Services will add more speed to getting things done. Your work will be quicker as well in CSM due to enhancements in Playbooks, and the HR process will be supported by the Employee Center and improvement in the Employee Journeys.

Are you interested in the upgrade? Contact us!

Explore Rome ServiceNow Release for Admins, Developers, and Security Teams.

Rome ServiceNow Release – technically speaking

Posted on by Malwina

The Rome release is just around the corner, so as usual, we took a sneak peek into the new instance to give you a summary of some great new features being added. This article focuses on the technical aspects primarily relevant for Admins, Developers, and Security teams.

App Engine Studio – Collaboration and Delegated Development

Those much-needed enhancements allow your App Engine developers to work better together. They help minimize the risk of impacting your platform by ensuring the right level of user access.

You can define collaboration descriptors (think “profiles”) such as Owner, Editor and then assign to them the required permissions. Possible types of permissions include Application Management (ability to access source control app versions or delete the app), File Type Access (accessing only specific App File types), Programming Tools (access to script fields),

Deployment (submitting the app to go live). These descriptors can be added for individual users or user groups as needed.

Rome releaseSource: SPOC

If you allow them, users will be able to invite other users to collaborate on their app! An admin must, of course, approve those invites. Overall, you gain much more control over what your (citizen or pro) Devs can do, all from one place.

This plugin can be installed and used either together or separately with Application Engine Studio.

Find out more.

Mobile App Builder

Mobile App Builder will be your new go-to place for Mobile Apps, replacing the current Mobile Studio. A powerful, streamlined interface allows to create and configure rich mobile experiences.

Mobile App Builder is based on the now UI Builder / Now Experience framework, similar to the already introduced, UI Builder-powered Workspace or Portal experiences. It will make it easier for your App creators to move around and tap into the power of this unified design framework and be more productive, providing guided experiences for a quick start. The Builder will manage and organize the flow of the screens which constitute your mobile app. It works together with the Mobile Card Builder, in which you can visually design the individual screens. Some of the benefits include:

  • Easy to navigate the structure of your app artifacts,
  • Guided configuration of mobile apps, prevention of misconfiguration, auto-population of necessary fields for data relationships,
  • Quick and transparent insight into how your app artifacts connect and how they will be presented within the overall app.

This plugin can be integrated with the App Engine Studio but will also be made available on the Store as a standalone plugin at no additional cost.

UI Builder / Now Experience – Portals, Workspaces

A lot of enhancements are coming out in those areas as well.

In the previous Quebec release, it became possible to create new Portals using the UI Builder / Now Experience framework, in addition to Workspaces. Workspaces built using UI Builder now have configurable layouts, with each page being fully configurable as to the placement of individual components. This adds much-sought flexibility compared to previous versions of the Workspaces.

Both Experiences will now benefit from new UI Builder functionalities, some notable additions being:

  • Viewport components.

With those, you can add custom pages or third-party interfaces within your UX Portal pages without actually modifying the pages themselves! The viewport allows you to create tabs with different content and manage those using UI builder’s “Manage content” mode without interfering with the parent page. The tabs can have their audience, making it easy to create page variants without worrying about the OOTB pages and upgrade processes. For example, if you add your tab and logic to the Record form page within a new viewport/tab, the out-of-the-box page will still be updated with new features while your new component remains unchanged.

Release RomeSource: SPOC

Find out more.

  • Themes – CSS Editor and Preview Page

You can use OOTB themes, extend those or create your custom themes. Themes also support CSS variables in the CSS editor, making applying your styling to a Workspace or a Portal much more flexible and straightforward. Your UI Builders can reference any Theme variables you define while styling individual components within the CSS Editor.

Release Rome

Servicenow RomeSource: SPOC

Find out more.

  • Condition Builder

Whenever you add Data to your components, you now can use the full power of Condition Builder to specify which data should be fetched for your component. On top of static filters, you can bind conditions to dynamic values like data resources, page properties, client state parameters, etc.

Servicenow RomeSource: SPOC

Find out more.

Flow Designer

Error Handling

Make sure your Flows always run – even if they don’t run! It becomes possible with the new Error Handling feature, which allows you to trigger separate flow logic if the default logic fails for any reason.

You can add a system log, a notification to an admin, or perhaps automatically create an incident to be solved or manually assign a task to a team if integration fails within your flow.

The Error handling part can use Actions, Subflows, and Flow Logic, just like the main part. It is the high-level equivalent of a try-catch statement.

Servicenow RomeSource: SPOC

Find out more.

Disable logging

The considerable amount of logged execution details (on by default) which allowed to debug a flow quickly, was also causing instance performance problems. Many of our clients reported this, wishing there was a way to disable the logging or only enable it for specific flows.

In Rome, the logging is globally disabled by default and will only happen when a Flow is tested. You can still enable it globally for real Flow executions by updating the com.snc.process_flow.reporting.level property. What’s more useful is allowing this flow-by-flow to create a record in the Process Automation > Settings table.

Servicenow RomeSource: SPOC

Find out more.

Dev Studio – create UX Applications

It is now possible to create and manage UI Builder-powered experiences in the Dev Studio. Once the initial configuration record is created in Studio, a “Go to UI Builder” button further develops your Portal or Workspace in the UI Builder.

Servicenow RomeSource: SPOC

ATF – Headless Browser support

This new feature will help you further automate your testing, whether using a CI/CD pipeline or just running automated unit/regression tests using Automated Test Framework.

You will no longer need to manually open a browser for the Client Test Runner as part of your testing steps to test the User Interface functionality. It will now happen using the headless browser functionality in a Docker environment. This feature requires installing Docker on one of your servers and is supported for Linux and Windows environments. Thanks to that, you can test both backend and frontend without interruption for manual steps.

Find out more.

Security

Several interesting additions, enhancing the security of your ServiceNow Platform:

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) now supports hardware security keys and biometric authentication.

You can give your users more, safer ways to authenticate when accessing ServiceNow. Those include using hardware security keys (which you plug into a USB port on your device) and biometric scanners, such as fingerprint readers or facial recognition scanners.

In order to allow those, you need to install an “Integration – Web Authentication” plugin. Your end-users must first register an Authenticator application and then the specific Biometric scanning device (such as a built-in camera or fingerprint scanner) under Self Service > My Profile. After doing all this, they can see the registered method of authentication when prompted for MFA.

Find out more.

Data Export Metrics

With this new feature added to your Instance Security Center, you can control and monitor which users export data from your instance.

Utilizing the existing Data Classifications defined in your instance, under Export Metrics settings, you can determine which classifications should be included in the Classified exports metrics reports and or in security alerts/notifications (e.g., Confidential, Private).

ServiceNow RomeSource: SPOC

You can then view a dedicated Chart and Metrics breakdown, which will inform you what data is the most exported one, which users export most of the data from your instance, how often that happens, and so on. Currently, the breakdowns are provided per User per Table.

Find out more.

Platform Encryption

Platform Encryption in Rome makes it possible for certain business logic to access encrypted data, which means you no longer have to make a compromise between encrypting data and loss of functionality. When specifying Cryptographic module access policies, you can now define if specific Scripts should have the possibility to decrypt field values “on the fly” and if the System user should be able to decrypt those values.

It also enables orchestration and reporting on those data, giving critical system processes runtime access to decrypted values.

Administrators must still approve or reject a request made by a script or a system user/process the first time it is asked, meaning you remain in control of what is allowed.

Find out more.

Rome wasn’t built in a day

But the Rome release will change your day-to-day ways of working. It will improve collaboration with developers through App Engine Studio, with more options for assigning access to different users. Better cooperation will be possible also thanks to new ways of configuring mobile apps with the Mobile App Builder. Enhancements in UI Builder will improve flexibility, enriching your flow with automatic error handling in Flow Designer and automated testing functionalities in Automation Test Framework. Predictive Intelligence will take the automation process to the next level, spotting which manual work can replace with automation tools. On top of that, you will get better security with Multi-Factor Authentication, Data Export Metrics, and Platform Encryption.

Explore Rome ServiceNow Release for Process Owners and Managers.

Quebec release for Developers & Platform Admins

Posted on by Malwina

What’s new in Quebec?

Do you want to know what Quebec brings to the table for you? We checked it and chose the most exciting features to make your work effective. From UI Builder to Mobile enhancements – use the new update and explore new ServiceNow possibilities!

You hold the keys to the company’s business processes, and you are in a constant juggling act that helps the gears turn and fit together. The Quebec release gives you the possibility to become quicker, more efficient and to be more agile.

ServiceNow UI Builder

UI Builder allows you to create sophisticated pages out of a plethora of components quickly. Up until Paris, we could only use the UI Builder to develop and expand the Workspaces. Starting in Quebec, you can unleash the potential of UI Builder to create Portals the new way.

Why should you use it?

It is very useful when you need to connect your instance with your client’s instance and work on both sides. Thanks to this builder’s simplicity, you might also let others use it to create workspaces and portals, even if they are not developers. Pre-defined components, configuration options, styling, routings, dynamic event, and parameter binding make it easy to bring the portal alive. One exciting feature is the Page Variants. Based on User Criteria, you can specify entirely new content for different Users. E.g. managers can see entirely different content than their Team Members, and the page URL stays the same for everybody.

ServiceNow Quebec

Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-application-development/page/administer/ui-builder/concept/ui-builder-portals.html 

Integration Hub – Remote Process Sync

If you are one of the Integration Hub Enterprise users, you can now use the above feature to connect your instance to your Vendors or Client’s instances. It can be one-way or bidirectional communication.

Why should you use it?

Using Flow Designer Subflows, Remote Process Sync can capture relevant data from a ticket created on your instance and then create or update related tickets in other instances. Whenever updates to those tickets are made, an inbound flow keeps your instance records up-to-date and in sync. Attachments can also be moved between instances if required. It is a highly secure way to create cross-instance workflows and processes. Remote Process Sync also supports Domain Separation, allowing you to synchronize workflows in a MSP setup easily.

Quebec Servicenow

Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-servicenow-platform/page/administer/integrationhub/concept/integrationhub-remote-process-sync.html

Script Tracer

This feature is part of the platform now and can be accessed from its module. Once launched, whenever you perform any action in the system, it will analyze the scripts running in the background and show you the “call stack” of those scripts and their progression.

Why should you use it?

With Script Tracer, you can stop guessing which scripts might affect your pages’ behaviour and business logic. From within the Script Tracer, you can go into any particular script’s debug mode to analyze further and debug the behaviour.

Quebec Servicenow

Source: https://developer.servicenow.com/dev.do#!/learn/courses/quebec/app_store_learnv2_scripting_quebec_scripting_in_servicenow/app_store_learnv2_scripting_quebec_server_side_scripting/app_store_learnv2_scripting_quebec_script_tracer 

App Engine Studio

Do not confuse this with the existing Studio, which is a part of the Now Platform. This completely new App Engine Studio will be available in the Store later on. Taking a quick sneak peek, what is known so far is that the App Engine Studio will be a very low-code oriented framework, giving any citizen developers the possibility to create new apps quickly and adhering to the best standards. The new UI Builder is handling the front-end, User Experience part. With predefined building blocks, you can easily sculpt any Workspace or Portal and add many dynamics between the components and pages (like passing some data or triggering specific events). The information provided below might still change, as this is not a fully finished product yet.

Why should you use it?

The Studio uses a guided creator for every step, allowing you to combine all those elements within your app. Useful Resources are included within the Studio to help answer your most typical questions around automating the process, adding security to your app and many more. Everything is centralized in one place, which seems like a great step forward for low-and no-code developers (or should we say, creators, not to offend the pro-code devs). A dedicated UI will allow you to configure tables and columns quickly and modify them all in one place. You can start from scratch, extend an existing table or import your data from an excel file. Flow Designer will be used to create the business flow of the app. If needed, you can add Virtual Agent conversations to unleash the AI’s power and reduce the old-fashioned human interaction.

Quebec Servicenow

Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-application-development/page/build/app-engine-studio/concept/aes-ui.html 

Mobile Enhancements

Mobile enhancements utilize AI search, deep linking, and card actions to enrich mobile experiences with consumer-grade capabilities.

Why should you use it?

Now it is possible to access your instance from anywhere using the ServiceNow® Now Mobile, Mobile Agent, and Mobile Onboarding apps on your phone, away from your desk. You will get the basic information about the tickets, take actions without going into the ticket itself. It will also make incident management and collaboration faster.

Smooth Quebec upgrade

Do you need a team of ServiceNow experts to take the best out of the new upgrade? Do not wait, and contact us. As SPOC, we have been working for ten years with ServiceNow, obtaining the title of Elite partner. Check our application certified in the Quebec version here.

Quebec release for Project/Portfolio Managers

Posted on by Malwina

Quebec is here

Time to travel to Canada! The newest release of ServiceNow is here: Quebec. It was made available within the Early Availability program in January, and the intended commercial launch is going to happen in the coming weeks.

We have analyzed, at SPOC, the newest ServiceNow version and its offer from the perspective of Project and Portfolio Managers who work with Service Now. We picked three exciting features for you – check them and let us know if you have any further questions.

PPM Collaboration in ServiceNow

PPM Collaboration facilitates active and timely communication regarding the project among all the team members involved in it. You receive real-time updated on the project’s status, get involved in the discussion and make sure that all the team members are on board.

Why should you use it?

The most significant advantage of this new tool is that you can follow every detail about your project daily. Thanks to the detailed status, you will know which team members you need to contact. You can open the project directly from the collaboration channel (Slack or Teams) to work further on it. Thanks to the real-time notifications, you will not miss any milestones, risk, issues or decisions. Another advantage is that the tool automatically adds or removes a member from Slack or Teams, based on the assingments – one task less for you!

Workforce Optimization

Workforce Optimization manages productivity and team performance while getting real-time views of queues and agent activity. You may plan the work schedules, change and skills management, view the shifts.

Why should you use it?

With Workforce Optimization, you can make better decisions based on historical trends, schedule agents, manage the work shifts. It is possible now to do all of that within one Workspace.

Quebec Servicenow

Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-it-service-management/page/product/itsm-manager-workspace/concept/workforce-optimization-itsm.html 

Scenario Planning for PPM

Scenario planning for PPM, let’s you see all your work in one place, make strategic decisions by comparing different scenarios and move ahead by approving the most beneficial one. View the details such as funding, planned and actual costs for your projects and demands. The application is available through the ServiceNow Store.

Note that to avoid conflicts, you should deactivate the older, currently deprecated Portfolio Workbench.

Why should you use it?

Having the possibility to set up and compare different scenarios for your project portfolio allows you to make the best possible decision based on your criteria. See which projects and demands are aligned with your strategic goals and know what you should invest in.

Quebec Servicenow

Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-it-business-management/page/product/project-management/concept/project-workspace.html#project-workspace 

Time for upgrade to Quebec

If you feel overwhelmed with the new upgrade and need a partner to help you figure out how to make the best out of it, contact us. Our ten-year experience with ServiceNow and the position of Elite partner translates to the right level of expertise. Check our certified applications here.

Quebec release for Process Managers & Product Owners

Posted on by Malwina

Exciting future with Quebec

The latest ServiceNow release has brought some new features, highly interesting for Process Managers and Product Owners. ITSM Virtual Agent, Platform Encryption or Security Incident Report – these are just a few of the attractive new options offered by Quebec.

Probably you have been awaiting this time of the year to see what’s new in ServiceNow and how can it make your work easier. We looked into five exciting feature for you that can improve the previous ways of working.

What is Platform Encryption

This new feature is an alternative to the older “Column Level Encryption” plugin. You do not need additional infrastructure, as it is part of the Now Platform. After installing the dedicated plugin with a separate subscription, you will be able to encrypt both fields and attachments.

Why should you use it?

The biggest advantage of Platform Encryption is the introduction of Customer-Supplied Keys and Key Management. The included Key Management Framework offers you much greater flexibility and autonomy regarding how the different encryption keys are used. There is no need to tie the encryption contexts to user roles. Thanks to the new feature, your data is encrypted through easily configurable cryptographic modules. You may create an access policy for each module based on Roles, Scope and specific Scripts Access.

Quebec Servicenow

Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-platform-administration/page/administer/key-management-framework/concept/understanding-kmf.html 

Reporting and Performance Analytics Enhancements

Reporting enhancements are a perfect way to expand your reporting by tailoring it with multiple formatting options, including calculations and robust dynamic design. The two applications are complementary to each other. You can now leverage the power of UI Builder to create, edit and share Performance analytics dashboards (Analytics Center) embedded in your Workspaces. Performance Analytics enhancements give you the flexibility to improve and configure the dashboard with calendar support like fiscal year requirements. Standard Reports include Calculated Fields for running on-the-fly calculations. You may no longer need all those additional tables to store partial data calculations.

Why should you use it?

Both apps let you respond to questions about the process development journey. Reports give you a current picture of instance data, while thanks to Performance Analytics, you can track performance against your Targets and compare it at different points in time.

Quebec Servicenow

Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-now-intelligence/page/use/performance-analytics/concept/pa-vs-reporting-pa.html 

Native AI Virtual Agent

Virtual Agent is a sophisticated AI-driven agent. ServiceNow included the AI into the Virtual Agent for ITSM package. By utilizing it, you can rapidly implement automated handling of various tasks and get quick value.

Why should you use it?

The Virtual Agent helps you provide topic recommendations, collect defects and issues, and better collaborate with third parties tools. Since it is a low code feature, you can build your own conversations, chatbots with AI. It lets you concentrate on more challenging incidents. Thanks to the Natural Language choice, you can improve understanding the conversation flow and the user experience.

Process Optimization

It allows users to improve outcomes by optimizing the process flow. By using Process Optimization, you will create business process flows from data in audit trails and you will be able to analyze the effectiveness of your processes.

Why should you use it?

It is a highly competitive feature. You will deliver better output for different processes, making sure they are more streamlined and efficient. Thanks to information about the amount of users, the user experience, you will be able to identify the bottlenecks and their reasons.

Quebec Servicenow

Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/quebec-now-intelligence/page/administer/process-optimization/concept/process-optimization.html 

Security Incident Response

Incident resolutions are the ones with the highest priority when it comes to ITSM processes. The new feature allows tracking the security incidents process from the discovery to creation of a knowledge base article.

Why should you use it?

By utilizing Incident resolution playbooks, you will enable your IT team to automate the resolution process tasks faster by visualization of the workflow. It will help minimize human error and any delays that might occur and resolve many incidents with a low effort from human intervention.

Source: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-security-management/page/product/security-incident-response/concept/what-is-sir.html 

Interested in the upgrade?

If you are interested in the QUEBEC upgrade, do not hesitate to contact us. We have 10 years of experience working with ServiceNow. As a ServiceNow Elite partner we provide our clients with expertise, dedicated teams, and more. Our applications are certified in the QUEBEC version – take a look at them here.

ServiceNow and nearshoring – a powerful means to grow your platform

Posted on by Malwina

Outsourcing – the new trend

Many companies decide to outsource the ServiceNow development to other entities. The decision is dictated by the lack of in-house expertise or resources to handle the transition.

Nearshoring ServiceNow contractors are in the same time zone as your company, and they share a similar cultural background, which helps avoid misunderstandings. A high level of expertise, closeness, and good price-quality ratio are only some of the reasons why companies consider nearshoring more and more to introduce ServiceNow.

Nearshoring advantages

No matter how good your internal IT team is, the specialized software development firms know the platform inside out. Their high-level technological skills, combined with business knowledge and fast implementation, guarantee a seamless experience and a smooth workflow behind. Nearshoring provides you with the best specialists in the part of the world you live in, close to you physically and from the cultural point of view. Thanks to the geographical proximity, you get high availability and on-time responses, minimizing the risk of delays and misunderstandings.

Contrary to the in-house teams that know your company’s ins and outs, the outsourced ServiceNow team doesn’t have that knowledge at the beginning. But its strength is their platform expertise that supports the in-house team in applying the ServiceNow solution. Hiring an external company and outsourcing their talents appear to be much more cost-effective, and spare you thinking about salaries, hardware and software costs, maintenance, and cloud services.

Doing it with the right neighboring countries allows you to choose the most economical option with the best quality, which in some cases matches or even beats the quality of onshore peers. What’s worth adding, if you decide to hire a vendor, they are also responsible for onboarding and training of ServiceNow specialists and they handle impediments following from employee rotation – whereas you and your teams focus on business.

Investing in ServiceNow nearshoring not only leverages a readily scalable solution but also expands and adjusts to your business needs as it grows. In this article you’ll find a comparison of compare nearshoring, onshoring, and offshoring.

Outsourcing formats

There are different ways to approach nearshoring. Based on our experience, we offer two approaches to our clients: team outsourcing and augmented staffing.

Team outsourcing

In team outsourcing, you get a fully dedicated team of developers, testers, analysts, SCRUM master, and/or Project Manager (PM). Our experts can work with you both remotely and onsite, depending on your needs and expectations. It is a perfect solution when you need a full project team permanently, with an end-to-end Now Platform delivery and execution. Our PM or SCRUM master is in charge, and his responsibility is to drive the agile delivery, provide forecasts and reports, managing the resources.

Augmented staffing

Choosing augmented staffing, you are in charge of the project management, whereas our specialists support you in the delivery process. You choose the specialization(s) in which we support your teams, and if they join your project onsite or remotely, full-time, part-time, and for how long you need our support. Augmented staffing is a perfect choice when you need one or a couple of specialists to reinforce your in-house team who handle system architecture, quality assurance, and/or testing.

What our customers say

There is no better way to understand if ServiceNow nearshoring is right for you than through the experience of other companies. After interviews with our customers, we spotted the reasons behind their choice of a nearshoring company, like ours. As a result, we have learned that they valued the most:

  • Seamless internal team extension,
  • Engaged/committed team members,
  • Professionalism, proactivity, efficiency,
  • Partnership,
  • Clear cooperation rules,
  • Efficient communication and addressing needs,
  • Positive attitude,
  • Optimal combination of cost, capability, and size.

81 % of our customers admitted that they have been searching for ServiceNow nearshoring services to grow and enable their internal teams to focus on more creative tasks. More than half told us that they treat the ServiceNow partner not as a development house, but as a transformation enabler.

First-hand testimonials

Having worked for such a long time, since the very beginning we’ve been building personal relations based on trust and common understanding with every person from the SPOC team. You’re not vendors/suppliers – you’re an invaluable extension of our team.

Waste, water & energy management company

Absolute professionalism, competence, knowledge – I have no doubts that SPOC is a good and recommendable partner.

Global Talent Acquisition and Management company

Why have we chosen SPOC? We worked with other partners for IT helpdesk staff, and we wanted to enhance IT and expand outside into other non-IT areas. We wanted to increase the development team and find more long-term partners to secure ServiceNow developments and boost our resilience to external factors.

Global Management Consulting company

If you want to know more, we are happy to help as your potential ServiceNow partner and advisor. Drop us a line.

Nearshoring – outsourcing that works

Posted on by Malwina

Introduction

Hiring a party outside the company has become a great commodity in recent years for many organizations. The three types of outsourcing – onshoring, offshoring, and nearshoring differ from each other. Why is the last one gaining on popularity?

Onshoring and offshoring – a tough choice

Cost-cutting and lack of experts are the most common reasons behind outsourcing. Staying competitive and keeping growth many times means choosing the most economical way of providing services. When you decide to give certain job functions outside your company, you can do it by choosing between companies that operate in the same country as you (onshoring), overseas (offshoring), or in a relatively close country (nearshoring). The choice not only differs in your service provider’s location, as it has more consequences in terms of the possible outcomes.

While onshoring might seem the most attractive choice due to the same cultural background, time zone, and language, the actual savings are usually the lowest. The advantageous position lays in quick responsiveness to market disruptions. Onshoring is a suitable choice for companies based in the big metropolises.

On the opposite pole, offshoring appears as the most cost-saving solution as it takes advantage of cost differentials between countries. Still, it is suitable mostly for less complex services or those requiring minimal collaboration. The downside of deciding to follow this type of outsourcing is the quality, impediments following from time zone differences, cultural incompatibility, and, in some cases, poor infrastructure.

Nearshoring, the golden mean?

Onshoring and offshoring are two extremes, and it is hard to find a balance between high quality and low cost. For that reason, nearshoring seems the right outsourcing choice. According to Hoffmann, Bove, and Rauser, this year, we will witness changes in the outsourcing job market, focusing mostly on nearshoring. Geographical neighborhood carries several advantages. Not having to cope with the time zone differences or cultural discrepancies is a big yes for many companies.

In the pre-pandemic times, nearshoring had another advantage: being close enough to travel so that the team integration could go perfectly. It is less of an option due to travel restrictions right now, but the online meetings can be still held during regular office hours, which is hard to obtain in offshoring. More than that, nearshoring means a similar expertise level which, as a consequence, provides you with knowledgeable and independent consultants. It saves your company a lot of time on, e.g., guidance.

All of it, keeping a high quality of delivery, with increased flexibility that allows you to choose the most suitable setup for your company. You save time and energy, keeping it cost-efficient.

Is nearshoring the right choice for you?

It depends on your needs, the technical capability of your teams, and business priorities. Only you can decide the right way of outsourcing for your company, but you should consider all the advantages of having a workforce that is close to you, as in nearshoring. Most importantly, it would be best if you focused on the outcomes you want to achieve. Nearshoring might be a perfect choice if you are searching for experts specialized in digitization or automation. Having them close to your home will make the work more convenient while keeping the rates reasonable.

To make sure it is the right choice for you, respond to the following questions:

  1. Do you need to extend the in-house team or to form a new team?
  2. Are you searching for subject matter experts?
  3. Have you defined your goals to achieve?
  4. Do you need remote workers with real-time availability?
  5. Are you focused on quality consistency?
  6. Do you want to cut down costs and time spent on hiring?

If you responded “yes” to most of the questions, nearshoring should work like a charm for you. If you are interested in the ServiceNow nearshoring, do not hesitate to contact us. Our teams in Poland have been working in nearshoring since 2010, providing our clients with expertise, dedicated teams, and more – you can check the details here.

Questions? Reach out to us.

Effective ITSM implementation in 7 steps

Posted on by Malwina

Why should we talk about ITSM?

Have you ever wondered what a model implementation of an ITSM solution should look like? What elements should be taken into account so that your teams can fully benefit from its advantages? Below you will find a few key principles which are the basis for successful IT Service Management implementations.

According to market forecasts published in „Market Insights Reports The Global ITSM Market Research Report Forecast 2019-2025”, the value of the global ITSM market, currently estimated at nearly USD 40 billion, will increase by another USD 9.3 billion by 2025.

ITSM, Information Technology Service Management, describes a number of activities aimed at managing IT services and supporting the user in a way that allows for comprehensive satisfaction of his/her needs in relation to IT. Progressive digitization, related to the growing needs of users, makes the product offer expand and the functionality of already proposed solutions increase with every day.

How to effectively implement ITSM?

Using our and our customers’ experience we recommend 7 elements that contribute to the success of ITSM implementation.


Competence of the implementation partner and responsibility scope

By joining the project, you present an implementation partner with your expectations, possibilities, and organizational or industry constraints for introducing potential changes. It’s also the time and place to ask questions about the construction and technical aspects of the solution, its advantages, operation, or expansion possibilities. At this point, it is also worth asking the partner about best practices, experience gained from the implementation of similar solutions for other clients, and solicited references.

While talking to a partner, pay special attention to their approach to the determination of the individual responsibilities of each party in the project and indicate paths for solving problems that arise during the implementation. An excellent tool for this purpose is the RACI matrix, which clearly defines the above – and is created for each implemented process individually.


Definition of your expectations

The analysis stage may seem like an additional cost and is often omitted or carried out superficially. In fact, it is necessary to understand what direction changes should take and whether the chosen implementation partner is able to provide a solution that properly addresses the challenges in your organization. For such a key deployment as an ITSM solution, identifying and understanding not only the goals for IT but also the organizational and business objectives according to the “IT-2-Business, not IT-2-IT” principle is extremely important.

It is worth to focus on the dialogue and to arrange time for direct meetings and workshops with your partner. By limiting yourself to a standard briefing or inquiry, you risk that your needs will not be properly recognized, and this may put the whole project under question. During properly prepared workshops, you give partners the opportunity to understand your organization, share best practices and experience from other implementations, as well as present innovations that can fit perfectly into your organization’s needs.


Out of the box solution or dedicated application

As a customer, you expect a solution ideally suited to the requirements of your organization and the way you work.

If the solution you expect goes beyond the offered standard, you have to reckon with the risk of incurring additional costs. Therefore, it is worthwhile to first verify the functionalities available within the ready-made solution, in the terminology ServiceNow referred to as OOTB (out-of-the-box). Its basic version should be comprehensive enough to address the key processes described for this area in the ITIL library.

Verification of business needs and costs will help demonstrate whether standard functionality is sufficient or whether it is worth investing in a dedicated application. The latter may require additional work while upgrading your instance to a newer version (here you will find the list of recent versions with descriptions).


The project team

Before you start work, you should form an internal project team, which quickly and efficiently integrate with the implementation partner’s team. Thus, one harmonious squad works on the project, with clearly defined roles (based on the RACI business matrix created by both sides of the implementation). The joint and regularly verified work allows to successfully carry out the whole implementation and improve competencies based on the knowledge and experience of the other party.

Openness, proactivity, and willingness to share knowledge will verify the partner’s working style and methodology. At this stage, you should also check to what extent you can count on technical support and professional advice from the partner, already after the implementation is completed. Cooperation with an expert doesn’t have to come to an end with the Go-Live.


Single-step method

An experienced partner, understanding the need and business context, will be able to offer an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that meets your key fundamental requirements as a B2B customer. In the next steps, along with the partner, you should prepare a sequential plan for further platform development.

This plan will allow to provide the maximum possible value from the implemented applications/processes and build an appropriate sequence and relationship in the context of their mutual communication and broad view of the business process.


Requirements and acceptance criteria

Never start implementation without specifying requirements and acceptance criteria! None of the parties wants to face the lack of acceptance of the individual stages, let alone the final acceptance due to requirements not defined by you and not confirmed by the implementation partner.

Formally confirmed acceptance criteria are as important for the success of the implementation as the full identification and understanding of mutual expectations, setting up a joint project team, establishing an action plan and its execution. The partner must be aware of what to do to ensure the implementation will be approved by you.


Training and information campaign

While starting to implement such a key solution as ITSM in your organization, you must remember to inform all interested parties about this fact. And we are not only talking about a manager or IT team. It is primarily “business”, i.e. internal customers should be aware of the introduced changes and know:

  1. Business objectives of the improvements introduced,
  2. Implementation schedule,
  3. Support agents in case of possible problems.

Before starting the implementation, check if the partner is able to support you and your teams from the technical point of view, as well as in the preparation of a comprehensive information campaign and in the education of your employees on how to use the implemented solution. The recommended training plan should cater to 3 training personas:

  1. App owner (“train the trainer”),
  2. Administrator,
  3. End-users.

First steps in successful ITSM implementation

The implementation of the IT Service Management solution is far too big and serious for us to summarize it in a few points. However, we hope that the hints presented here will prove useful for you and allow you to understand what aspects you need to pay attention to at the beginning of the implementation that should meet the growing development demands of today’s technologies – but above all, by ourselves.

We have prepared a list of questions that will help you gather the information necessary to start the process of ITSM deployment in your organization. You can download it by completing the form below.

More resources

Here’s the list of materials related to today’s article that might come in handy for your process as well.

Want to deep dive? Drop us a line!

SPOC S.A.
ul. Szyperska 14
61-754 Poznań, Poland
ul. Grzybowska 43
00-855 Warszawa, Poland
sales@spoc.eu +48 614 152 903

Products

Services

Company

Resources