8 ITSM implementation pitfalls and how to avoid them

ITSM implementation might be tricky

IT service management projects differ in scale, the scope of activities, time and human resources investment. Although we will not find two identical implementations, the common goal is to achieve strategic business goals.

Our experience shows that some of the problems, mistakes, and challenges repeat themselves, regardless of the organization’s maturity. Here is a list of 8 errors associated with ITSM implementations, which we face most often, and best practices to avoid them or minimize their impact.


Pitfall 1: Superficial analysis of business needs

Successful ITSM implementation will change the way your business works. Clarity about the current challenges, problems you intend to address, and the expected benefits, is crucial. Mapping it requires a well-articulated business grounding. As part of developing your ITSM deployment plan, define how ITSM will directly support, fulfill your requirements, or help your business meet its needs. The more you can tie your ITSM initiative to the business mission, vision, and goals, the greater the chance of success.

While creating an RFP, many organizations are so focused on the technical aspects of ITSM tools that they fail to find the key values ​​that explain why they are looking for this tool in the first place. Rather than collecting an extensive list of technical requirements from IT stakeholders and related processes, Gartner suggests using the MoSCoW method to clarify business requirements and avoid overly complicated checklists:

M – MUST – a requirement that must be met in the final solution.
S – SHOULD – a high priority item that should be included in the solution, if possible.
C – COULD – a desirable requirement which will be concluded if time and resources permit.
W – WON’T – a requirement that will not be implemented in a given release, but may be considered in the future.

In the introduction phase, mutual understanding is essential, especially when it comes to the organization’s functioning. Failure to obtain basic requirements and acceptance criteria (precisely described and specified) may lead to problems when receiving the partner’s implementation. Properly analyzed business needs help to avoid disappointments. Make sure your requirements are clear to your implementation partner.

During ten years of our presence on the ServiceNow market and over 250 completed projects, the vast majority of our clients knew this methodology. However, only about 50% of them skillfully used it before starting cooperation with us.


Pitfall 2: Poor communication

Gaining support for the new ITSM project is the first milestone on the road to implementation. However, it happens that the project manager does not formulate a clear communication strategy. Consequently, it may provoke internal conflicts and even stop the project. That is why it is worth deciding at the beginning of the road how the project will be communicated in terms of important statuses, milestones and essential information, directed to the company’s management. At this stage, messages regarding business benefits are equally important.

You need to be clear about who is responsible for approvals and how to approach them, so that project progress does not slow down. At this point, you should analyze the needs of all system users, without narrowing down the target group. Effective communication means using various channels and techniques – from internal marketing campaigns, mailing, to articles on the Intranet, information campaigns in the workplace, or even employee engagement programs through gamification. This approach has the power to effectively guide you towards your goals, streamlining collaborative practices, and holistic work, all while promoting transparency and building relationships based on trust.

Change management is as crucial as skillful project management. Even the most technically successful ITSM implementation may be a disaster if it is not communicated correctly. The organization should be adequately prepared to benefit in the long term from the implementation.


Pitfall 3: No training phases

ITSM functionalities workshops and trainings (e.g. ITIL, incident, problem training, etc.) are critical. Why? Because they create a connection between the organization’s professional role and the overarching strategic goals. Without proper training, people will make decisions in an incompetent way, based on their experience. That kind of knowledge is valuable, but the opportunity to become a strategic business partner results from best practices that have already proven themselves in the industry. Service and support personnel may also require training in management, meeting facilitation, negotiation, and project management.

Remember that ITSM tools training is not a one-off as the processes are improved continuously. You should provide it to both new employees and those who need to refresh their knowledge. The training saves time for IT users and end-users, supporting tool optimization, thus increasing their efficiency and productivity. It can also turn out to be a source of feedback, which translates into new business requirements. It is an excellent way to obtain information from users (both IT and Business). And if you do it right, employees will notice and appreciate that you respect their time and help them work more productively.

The concept of implementation should be refined and prepared on time by appropriate specialists. Nevertheless, it is worth paying attention to differences in the training of key users and end-users and various methods, such as training the trainer, which helps build internal competencies or self-paced training. Initial training, prior to project implementation, also brings value. It can improve the understanding of everyday life problems, increase the level of acceptance of the tool, obtain feedback from the business, and promote the new initiative.


Pitfall 4: Flawed change management

Change management is usually underrated. Many companies neglect this aspect, especially when it comes to ITSM system change. When a company moves to a higher-class platform, it often wants to use ready-made solutions and the best practices associated with them – which means organizational changes. An equally common mistake in managing change is that company leaders do not involve managers in implementing, promoting, and facilitating the changes that must occur. We need to bear in mind that it is a creative process that all employees should be involved in as their feedback is essential. You should use these inputs to design future changes that will reduce the workload for your employees.

The implementation of a new or replacement ITSM solution can be a giant leap for growing organizations. It is human nature to resist change, especially if you have not clearly stated your motivation or communicated the value it will bring to your business. For these reasons, your team must be involved.

During ITSM deployment projects, companies spend a lot of time discussing how to accurately configure the system to fit the organization’s current structure but rarely pay enough attention to how the system will handle scenarios such as reorganization, growth, and mergers. If the ITSM system is optimized for change, it does not matter if the current implementation is correct as it is easily adaptable. However, since the system is implemented based on a static organization, supporting changes turns out to be complicated. Change management helps align IT operations with business goals. We can say that it is a critical factor in transforming your organization from a mere service provider into a business innovator.


Pitfall 5: Unordered processes

Lack of standard, documented ITSM processes, and the definition of the group of people involved in the process turns out to be a common problem. It is worth defining the responsibility matrix (RACI) from the beginning. This way, you will significantly facilitate and improve cooperation with the implementation partner.

Moreover, the lack of description of the existing system and integration with third-party systems is a big challenge. Indeed, unstructured processes do not follow a specific pattern, and you cannot model them in advance. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be documented and optimized. Unstructured processes are highly information-dependent, and much of this information (such as documents, e-mails) is probably already stored by the organization. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) modules provide collaboration, capture data, and offer many other capabilities used for managing unstructured processes. Knowledge base, forums, collaboration tools, an application for versioning or processing documents – these are the solutions we recommend to our clients.

With the change of the environment, some data in the ITSM system becomes obsolete. In such a situation, you need a process and a set of rules to systematically delete old data, archiving those elements that have analytical potential. At the same time, it will keep the operating system ‘clean’. Most companies wait to encounter performance issues before implementing a data archiving and cleaning strategy on their ITSM system. However, if you think about it in advance, it is easier to avoid negative performance impacts.

Using efficient and agile processes based on guidelines and best practices that allow for flexibility might become helpful. Larger organizations should remember that the workflow goes through many departments, which may create an additional challenge. Process management tools ensure that each department has an owner, the process is transparent, and guidelines and best practices become available to everyone. Therefore, it is possible to measure both the process and the organization, draw conclusions, set ‘thresholds’, and aim at continuous development. The first step to success is realizing that the real purpose of the ITSM initiative is to establish a collaborative and effective cross-domain approach that operates within the internal and external IT value chain. Tools are simply a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

The established structure is to ensure supervision and the method of approving the proposed changes or improvements. To avoid problems, external suppliers should be included in the processes and their management structure.


Pitfall 6: Never-ending prototype phase

A key feature of prototyping is the possibility of partial, iterative presentation of the project’s final result. It happens that this phase is protracted, and the developed prototype turns out to be too complex. Consequently, it doesn’t bring enough gains to make up for the time spent on developing. Users can get stuck in debates over prototype details, pausing the team and delaying the final product’s implementation. Rapid prototyping allows errors to be adopted as a means of learning and improving. In such a case, you should assume that not everything goes well the first time and that innovative breakthroughs result from failure.

Prototypes go through many iterations where user feedback is taken into account, and changes are made to arrive at an effective end-solution. Therefore, it is worth setting a specific, limited time to create a prototype and release it for users’ testing. Prototyping aims to generate experience, get feedback, and make continual changes to achieve a better solution. Always try to balance the benefits of frequent focusing on continuous improvements and the costs.


Pitfall 7: Far away from standard

The temptation to transfer the current functionality of an IT system to a new one can be huge. But it is associated with replicating the same, not necessarily correct or valuable functionalities and wrongly designed processes. It may result in an excessive number of extensions to the standard functionality provided by the software manufacturer. As a consequence, you will see an increase in the costs of implementing, testing, and maintaining an ITSM (TOC – Total Cost of Ownership) solution.

When you choose non-standard paths, with a high level of customization, the upgrade process becomes complicated. Depending on the company’s changes, the effects may include testing regression or rewriting the custom code. That is why the best approach is to deviate from many changes in the tool or limit them as much as possible, making the (frequent) update and maintenance process as simple as possible. Our experience shows that relying on available and proven solutions is the right approach for most companies. It does not mean implementing 100% of the basic version as minor changes are needed to reflect specific customer requirements. The victory comes with the right balance. We recommend following best practices while making configuration changes, which allows smooth system updates performance.


Pitfall 8: No process automation

One of the key benefits of implementing the ITSM system is increasing the efficiency of data management processes. The ones that consume time and energy of employees result from the lack of automation, which is a response to optimal time management. In practice, it means limiting manual work, improving the interface (both for operators and end-users), and service speed. Besides, automation makes it easier to provide operators with information in the right context, increases self-service, and proactively prevents breakdowns. At the same time, employees are more satisfied with a tool that eliminates less exciting and repetitive tasks.

When you ignore the possibility of process automation, it will probably cause you the added value of investing in the ITSM by perpetuating manual processes and replicating them in the system. In such cases, implementing a new IT platform is slowed down, and the platform itself begins to be seen as inefficient. You can easily avoid it, with the help of automation.

Checklist: what to remember while implementing ITSM?

  1. Prepare a list of critical functionalities and set the expected order/priority for their implementation (remember about the sequence in the process!).
  2. Focus on a clear definition of strategies and organizational and business goals (IT for Business, not IT for IT).
  3. Choose only tools and processes that are necessary to achieve ROI.
  4. Bet on well-thought-out communication.
  5. Create an internal team that will quickly and efficiently support the implementation partner team.
  6. Conduct the right training at the right time.
  7. Manage change proactively.
  8. Document and optimize processes by assigning owners at the very beginning of implementation.
  9. Implement a strategy for archiving and cleaning data in the ITSM system.
  10. Choose available and proven ITSM solutions, without unnecessary changes in the system and deviations from best practices.
  11. Where possible, take advantage of process automation.

Fill in the form to download the checklist.

More resources

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

If you want to learn more about the most powerful methods of conducting a successful ITSM implementation or share your observations, drop us a line!

Successful Platform Owner’s guide

7 ServiceNow challenges & recommendations

You finally work with the most effective platform on the market that defines, manages, automates, and structures services for your company. You are more productive while managing workflows and tasks but even the best products and most successful relationships face some challenges.

We have been listening to our clients and supporting their ServiceNow Implementations for over 10 years. We decided to collect their main challenges and share them with you. Get inspired and find the right path to your ServiceNow happily ever after!

1. I don’t see the expected results

Challenge
Your ServiceNow project came to an end. Together with your team, you put lots of work, time, and energy to make the most out of it. You chose the world’s finest solution, named a market leader another year in a row. Yet it is not as successful as it should be…

The business is skeptical, resistant to the use of the new platform, or not satisfied with “another ticketing tool”. To some managers, the results are disappointing, and they are not necessarily willing to talk about ways to improve the situation. You are asking yourself, what went wrong, or what you would have done differently.

Recommendations
You need to find the ‘why’. The reasons behind a not (entirely) successful ServiceNow project might be anything from improper implementation, misunderstood or missed requirements, to poor user experience. It is worth considering another ServiceNow partner to step in. An experienced company will help you to make a new opening and understand the issues in a better way.

With the right approach, the partner will educate and inspire both IT and business, consult you on how to develop and refine your platform. With exemplary commitment and the right motivation, natural transformation leaders and platform ambassadors will appear along the way.

2. I’m overwhelmed with demand & insufficient capacity

Challenge
You constantly have to overcome a considerable demand problem. Your stakeholders from different parts of the business have higher expectations, and knowing ServiceNow is faster and more powerful than any other solution – they think it is possible to get everything and to get it now! You find yourself trapped, as the demand grows, creating a steadily increasing backlog of unmet needs.

Recommendations
Putting your BAU in order is going to result in finding more time for your projects. An experienced ServiceNow partner can spot the problems, finding more of them in the fastest way. They are here to help you organize the work, prioritize, reduce the number of your stakeholders to a minimum.

Another way is to get direct access to the project progress on the fly through the portal – that means that whenever you need to control the process, you can do it by yourself without wasting time. Do not be afraid to use your partner’s expertise in work organization, which will sustain your workflow despite the changes and extensions during the development process. Your partner will help you to choose the most suitable methodology and tools for your needs.

3. I don’t know how to maximize ROI

Challenge
You don’t have defined processes, or they are a total mess. You know your end goal, but you feel lost when it comes to maximizing the investment in ServiceNow. How to get the best out of it?

Recommendations
First, you need to stop thinking about single applications. Instead, start to see the platform as a whole. Your partner can help you by providing you with the right steps and road maps. Their role is to give you the suitable form and indicate which features will turn out to be the most profitable for your business.

By putting you on the right track, the ServiceNow partner can help you to discover your real needs. Coming from business requires a lot of learning and understanding of the technical aspects of the project. The mentoring role of your partner is essential here. It will enable you to define your goals, benefits and respond to the question ‘why this solution and not others?’

4. It’s hard to keep up with the changes

Challenge
ServiceNow is dynamic, and every 6 months, there is a new version of the platform and hundreds of additional features. The platform policy provides support for the 2 most recent release families which means you need to upgrade at least once a year to stay current. It requires some extra work on the upgrades of already realized projects. You need to compare the new release functionality, deciding which one to keep.

Recommendations
The upgrades require testing to spot all the possible problems and make sure no damages are going to disrupt your projects. Don’t count only on yourself! Your ServiceNow partner should be able to help you with part of the tests and the bug repair.

Also, getting to know what should be particularly taken care of is an excellent weapon against the time pressure! The number of new features can feel overwhelming as well. Implementing automated tests (ATF) can take some weight off your shoulders! A professional partner will support you with up-to-date platform knowledge and provide you with a new roadmap. Ideally, he has the right resources like SPOC labs that are up to date with all the platform novelties.

5. The decision-making process limits me

Challenge
Before you take any decision, you need to consult it with a significant number of people. That is time-consuming and may create some problems with the project on-time delivery.

Recommendations
You are not alone. Your ServiceNow partner can support you in mapping and organizing the right work structure. It means that in the project, there should always be one decision-maker responsible for their department.

As a platform owner, you should focus on organizing the workflow most effectively instead of decision-making. By having a decision-maker on board along with your ServiceNow partner, you can get rid of the limits.

6. I feel a lot of pressure

Challenge
You are in the spotlight for the good and also for the bad. Any mistake that happens, and that is influencing the work of the business will be noticed. That is why you feel pressure and a huge responsibility to deliver fast without any errors.

Recommendations
Regular daily, weekly and monthly sessions enable you to react dynamically to problematic situations and update you on any changes in the estimates. While your project team will ensure the smooth implementation, the M&D team will take care of your needs in the next phase, when the project is running.

Transparency is essential! The more you know, the more you can influence the workflow and positive changes. Realizing how much time you have for each phase of the project might be extremely useful. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and get some of the tasks out off your shoulders. Remember, a trustworthy partner will ensure you with stability and minimize the errors in the production process.

7. I don’t know enough

Challenge
Jumping into the ServiceNow platform owner’s role, you might have felt that you don’t have enough technical knowledge. Perhaps it is a new role for you or you have not been working before with the ServiceNow solution. You feel unprepared and in the dark.

Recommendations
Ask your ServiceNow partner to recommend training and workshops that you should take to start to build your technical knowledge. The right partner will use the business language and tailor their communication to your needs, being ready to guide you instead of overwhelming you with technicality.

Get in touch

Do you recognize these challenges in your organization? How do you face them? Perhaps you are encountering different obstacles you want to share. We would be more than happy to discuss them with you and address your needs.

As a strategic, fully dedicated to ServiceNow partner, we transform old, manual ways of working into modern digital workflows. We deliver your ServiceNow projects on the dot and first-time-right. Contact us to see how we can support you!

ServiceNow Paris release

Paris release is the latest version of the platform of platforms, where ServiceNow offers new features and integrations for process facilitation and cross-team collaboration. If you’re an admin, process owner, or a manager, you’ve come to the right place! We’ve chosen 12 features and integrations, giving you here an overview of the productivity boosters you may find exceptionally valuable.

1/12 Process Automation Designer

Process Automation Designer allows Business Process Owners to easily create and manage cross-enterprise, end-to-end process workflows without any code. Multiple separate flows and actions can be connected to create one unified process flow.

You can pass information between different stages of your process, visualize and manage the activities comprising your process. Those flows or actions are then gathered using Lanes – typically to represent the different Actors taking part in your Process.

This provides you, as a Process Owner, with a high-level overview and control of all your distributed Flows created in Flow Designer by Developers. In Addition, you can work with Workspace Admins to create new features called Playbooks (see below). Those can help to guide your Agents or End Users on how to follow your process – step by step.

Paris release - ServiceNow Process Automation Designer

2/12 Playbook Experience

Playbooks are smart little guidebooks for your Fulfillers or other Users, which facilitate the handling of specific tickets according to… well, your playbook (ensuring best practice and adherence to your process). This adds a “to-do” type of list to the Agent Workspace whenever a ticket is opened and provides a streamlined view, combining both the ticket or other relevant data with the actions to be taken by the Agent.

For example, one step can show a ticket form to edit some fields, another step can require additional input (comments) from the Requestor, another one can show relevant Knowledge Article, and so on. Every step can then be “Marked as Closed”. This is not unlike the Guided Setup you might have seen for ITSM or ITOM configuration.

You can use an existing default Experience with its content renderers or create your own ones. Although technically Playbooks have been available in ServiceNow for some time now (e.g. for Security Incidents), the Paris release provides this platform-wide, with better management and configuration tools.

3/12 Predictive Intelligence Workbench

The current trend is that AI should serve anyone, and anyone should be able to use AI. With this in mind, Paris gives us the Workbench dedicated to the low-code approach. With it, you can configure and fine-tune your Machine Learning solutions, without any prerequisite knowledge of ML theory or coding skills.

You can select one of the pre-configured “typical use-case” templates or start from scratch. Again, the experience is very similar to that of Guided Setups. Typically, you first create and train one or more different models. Then you evaluate the results and make fine-tune adjustments. After testing the models, you can select the model with the best performance or accuracy, and deploy that model into your business process.

4/12 Change Success Score

You can now analyze the success rate of all changes, which is automatically calculated for your Change Teams based on pre-defined formulas, taking into account things like successful changes, unsuccessful changes, changes with issues, P1, P2, or P3 Incidents generated by the respective Team’s changes. The scores are calculated daily using the familiar Performance Analytics engine. You get a new Change Success Score PA dashboard where you can observe the trends from a high-level point of view.

But you can also see this for every change – on the Change form, there will be a mini-dashboard shown when you click the new icon next to “Assignment Group”. If a specific Team’s score is high, change approvals can be automated – as there should be no need to review every change manually for high-performing teams, thus saving a lot of valuable time.

5/12 Analytics Center for Agent Workspace

This brings the Performance Analytics capabilities to your Agent’s Workspace. You can ensure that they have their critical KPIs and targets immediately available to them, so they can proactively control them. Agents can filter the indicators, watch the daily score, and change trends, according to your Performance Analytics scores configuration. Every Indicator can be drilled-down into, to see KPI details.

6/12 Source Control for global apps development

Now you can use Source Control (e.g. GitHub) also while developing global apps from the Studio. Although we recommend creating scoped apps, sometimes this option could come in handy, allowing you to build new features or customize your platform, with style.

7/12 Portal Analyzer

We feel that this is a stub of something potentially much bigger. Could this be the first step in the direction to provide comprehensive User Interaction analysis for your Service Portals, similar to the Mobile Analytics for native mobile apps?

Currently, this little feature churns out a list of all widgets used on your service portals, together with the information on the level of customization for each widget (ready-made, customized, cloned, new), number of views, and users who have viewed each widget. It can be pretty helpful to determine which widgets are not-so-helpful or how your customization impacts interaction rate. To use this, you need to install the plugin, fire the “Portal Analyzer” scheduled job, and then view the records in the “Service Portal Analyzer Entries” table.

8/12 Software Asset Management – MSP Support

The SAM application was enhanced with support for Managed Service Providers, allowing you to deliver hosted Software Asset Management services. Multiple clients’ software data and services can co-exist in a single, multi-tenant instance now. Domain separation provides for safe separation of their data and processes. You can easily switch to specific customer domains and perform any actions there, resulting in your single source-of-truth platform for a global SAM offering. If you are not an MSP company but still think about separating your data (or are using Domain Separation already), this might be good news for you as well.

9/12 Telecommunications Service Management & Network Performance Management

ServiceNow launched a whole new industry-facing offering with the Paris release – TSM and TNPM, which supports the telecom industry. This offering combines CSM Pro and ITOM capabilities with Telecommunication-specific capabilities.

Some highlights worth mentioning are eBonding for Telecommunications – this is an OOTB integration to synchronize your instance as a Telecom service provider, with your B2B client’s instances. This will help you engage your clients more, provide better service while keeping development and maintenance costs low. It fosters your client’s self-service by allowing them to request services directly from their instances.

Dedicated, network-based workflows are best-practice workflows designed based on the experience of the biggest players on the market. They support the resolution of network-initiated Incidents and Changes to services. They have the necessary support for multiple API interfaces as well as sufficient business logic to maximize your time-to-value potential.

10/12 Agent Workspace for HRSD

We will just mention here that HR Service Delivery now has a dedicated Agent Workspace. This should facilitate turning your HR cases into success stories even more. HR Workspace increases your HR Agent’s efficiency and comes with other nice additions like the HR Playbook or AI-powered Agent Assist – helping them to close the cases faster.

11/12 Single Sign-On: OpenID Connect (OIDC) support

This is a pretty cool addition, allowing you to create “Quick SSO login” options directly on your login page. By doing this you allow your users to choose an external Identity Provider they would like to use, in the same way, a lot of commercial services allow you to log in using your Facebook or Google account (…not that we recommend using Facebook as your ServiceNow IDP. But it should work).

12/12 Mobile Apps – new components

The Paris release adds a couple of handful new Component types for your native mobile apps:

  • Campaigns – create content-rich, complex, targeted communications for your Users to keep them engaged.
  • Native Dashboards – support for mobile-optimized charts & KPI dashboards.
  • Scheduled Offline – manage regular app caching intervals, includes mobile app settings to handle the offline mode.
  • Actionable notifications – this is really good. Your Users can now take quick actions from their main phone screen whenever they receive new push notification – no need to even open the mobile app! Approving tickets has never been so quick.
  • Mobile filters – similar to standard UI, you can now filter which records should appear on your mobile screen.

If you’d like to compare Paris to the previous ServiceNow Platform releases, you can check them here: Orlando (Q1, 2020) | New York (Q3, 2019)Madrid (Q1, 2019).

ServiceNow IT Service Management for Polpharma Biologics

Polpharma Biologics is the biggest Polish biopharmaceutical company developing and manufacturing biosimilars and novel biologics.

The company includes, among others, one of the most modern R&D centers in Europe, specializing in biological drugs, which is located in the Gdańsk Science and Technology Park. In autumn, the company is planning to open the largest in Poland and most modern in Europe biotechnological plant, which is located in Duchnice, near Warsaw.

Together with other companies in the group, Polpharma Biologics offers a fully integrated chain of biotech services, from the development of cell lines to the delivery of finished products.

Polpharma Biologics will produce biosimilar drugs on a commercial scale, providing both its own products and contract manufacturing services to industry partners around the world.

About ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a leading supplier of the ITSM software. The platform offered by ServiceNow supports the management of IT services, business operations, customer service, and employee service processes. ServiceNow gives the possibility to use ready-made applications or choose the platform itself as the environment for creating dedicated applications from scratch.

SPOC’s role in the project

SPOC S.A. provides comprehensive ServiceNow services – implementations, support, and training and has the status of Elite Partner. SPOC S.A. will provide and implement ServiceNow IT Service Management based on the ServiceNow best practices. The project will be run by experts with many years of technological and industry experience. The delivery process started in July 2020, with the platform go-live planned for early 2021.

About the implementation

As a part of the project, Polpharma Biologics will implement ITIL processes – including ITSM (in terms of hardware and software management), Incident Management, Change Management, Order Management, Service Catalog, and Self-service Portal. At the same time, users will receive access to ServiceNow both from desktop and via a mobile application. To improve the implementation and validation of the system, automated tests will be used, which will additionally facilitate the platform’s regression tests in the future.

If your organization operates in the validated environment and you’re interested in the process optimization, reach out.

ServiceNow GRC – leader in IT Risk Management in 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant

ServiceNow GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) was recognized as a Leader in the latest 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant* report of IT Risk Management (ITRM) solutions.

Gartner reviewed a number of ITRM solutions for their ability to handle risks following from the changes applied to the management of digital and security, information, business continuity planning, IT and security compliance. The report recognized ServiceNow especially for the solutions for risk assessment and analysis, control assessment, as well as compliance and cybersecurity risk management.

ServiceNow GRC - Leader in 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant

Magic Quadrant for IT Risk Management tools and how they rank in July 2020.
Source: 2020 Magic Quadrant report for IT Risk Management

ServiceNow GRC – Governance, Risk, and Compliance

ServiceNow Governance, Risk, and Compliance specializes in risk assessment and analysis, control assessment, as well as compliance and cybersecurity risk management. From the Orlando release, the ServiceNow GRC provides a range of risk assessment improvements and supports an increasing number of out-of-the-box risk assessment types and automation of control monitoring.

The GRC suite is already widely applied by organizations that operate in the area of financial services, healthcare, education, life sciences, and government. The decisive aspects for customers who chose ServiceNow are platform functionality, performance, and a roadmap. The platform constitutes a single source of record. Apart from risk management, it offers a wide choice of features, workflows, and processes which may constitute valuable IT-risk data sources for GRC.

ServiceNow GRC solution - functionality map

Source: GRC Product documentation / Orlando release

The other capabilities identified by ServiceNow customers and highly valued by them include sophisticated integrations with third-party tools, digital asset discovery, and near-real-time assessments.

GRC implementation & licensing

Customers most often deploy the platform on the ServiceNow’s infrastructure, however, it doesn’t exclude the possibility to implement on-premises. The platform is available via SaaS, in 2 licensing options: overall employee count or named users. Based on the customer’s subscription complexity and inclusion of other workflows, ServiceNow allows bundling that brings cost optimization.

Learn more

Reach out to us to find out what GRC implementation can bring to your organization.

* Gartner Magic Quadrant research methodology provides a graphical competitive positioning of four types of technology providers in fast-growing markets: Leaders, Visionaries, Niche Players, and Challengers.

Trustworthy data tips & tricks in ServiceNow SAM

Our trustworthy data tips & tricks in ServiceNow SAM allow you and your organization to get valuable information about the software installed. To learn why it’s so important, you can read one of our recent posts where we take a closer look at the trustworthy data in ServiceNow SAM.

While implementing ServiceNow Software Asset Management Professional (SAMP), your first step is to start getting reliable information on the software you installed within your environment and/versus entitlements you possess. This is the most difficult and time-consuming part of SAMP deployment. But if done well, it’s a one-off activity.

Software installation sources
in ServiceNow SAM Professional

There’s a recommendation to use (in parallel) 2 sources of software installation data in ServiceNow SAM Professional. These are:

  1. ServiceNow Discovery – to gather information about the software installed on your servers,
  2. SCCM – to gather information about software installed on your desktops.

To ensure that those 2 sources do not interfere with each other, you have to switch only 1 plugin.

ServiceNow Discovery & File-based Discovery plugin

ServiceNow Discovery and ServiceNow SAMP communicate with each other, requiring (almost) no additional configuration. The tricky part is if you want SAMP to know about the software uninstalled from your servers. ServiceNow Discovery doesn’t track software uninstallation and doesn’t provide any “direct” way to achieve it. Nevertheless, while preparing some workaround, in the majority of cases such functionality can be implemented and brings huge value. At any point in time, you consider only software installed at that very point in time.

Enabling the File-based Discovery plugin enhances ServiceNow Discovery, providing even more accurate and configurable data on the software installed on your servers. The plugin is available from the New York release on.. Although it’s easy to enable it, remember that the plugin activation is not enough. The biggest value of File-based Discovery is that you can easily track any software you like and you can ignore any software you (don’t) like.

Microsoft SCCM integration

The first rule of Microsoft SCCM-ServiceNow SAMP integration is “Have a solid SCCM manager”. SCCM is a complex tool that (among others) independently stores the records of particular software installed on a particular device and particular software uninstalled from a particular device.

Moreover, depending on some SCCM configuration, different SCCM tables store those records (and these tables might change over time). What you need in SAMP, is a delta of those pieces of information, i.e. information about the software currently installed on all devices (software ever installed minus software ever uninstalled). To achieve this, you have to know:

  1. Which SCCM tables to query?
  2. What to query them about?
  3. What timestamp(s) and unique keys to use?

However, in many cases, the ready-made ServiceNow configuration (SQL statements) requires changes as well.

Challenges

What if I forgot to migrate software installations and refresh processor definition at the beginning of the SAMP implementation?

If you already configured ServiceNow Discovery or SCCM, before you enable SAMP in the ServiceNow instance, the records of software installations are stored in a different ServiceNow table than after SAMP enablement. ServiceNow recommends migrating those records into that new table just after enabling SAMP. We, as ServiceNow consultants, say “It depends”.

In a number of cases, this approach will be good and for sure the fastest. Yet, you have to keep in mind that:

  • By doing so, you’ll end up with information on the software installed at any point in time (since you started using Discovery/SCCM) and such old data might bring more noise than value.
  • In the table from which you are migrating, most probably some records represent installations already uninstalled. As a result, taking them into account during reconciliation will lead to over-licensing.

Instead, you can start over from scratch, carefully configuring Discovery and SCCM. And as for refreshing processor definition, you can run it any time, and most likely it’ll impact less than 10% of your CIs.

I’m still getting multiple software installations of the same software on the same device and information on software installed on the retired/stolen computers.

The second problem is easy to fix, the first one – not. Multiple software installations of the same software (product) on the same device are a serious problem. They cause licenses over-consumption. You can fix it after you:

  1. Install/upgrade to the ServiceNow New York or higher (and just here you have 80% of cases resolved),
  2. Very carefully configure your ServiceNow Discovery,
  3. Very carefully configure your SCCM Integration,
  4. Write quite a lot of code…

To stop getting information about the software installations on the retired or stolen computers, you have to only enable a single Schedule Job. For some reason, disabled by default.

How can I revert the manually normalized discovery model?

In fact – you can’t. When you manually normalize a discovery model (either “really manually” or creating custom Pattern Normalization Rule), you can’t revert it. To enable such functionality, you have to change some values in some OOB records in [sys_dictionary] table. But it’s not recommended. That’s why you should be very careful with manual normalization of discovery models, especially using custom Pattern Normalization Rules which impact multiple discovery models at once.

Data clean-up

By “data clean-up” we mean the removal of all records from the Software Installation [cmdb_sam_sw_install] table and from the Software Discovery Model [cmdb_sam_sw_discovery_model] table. Once you do it, you re-feed only the Software Installation table (with data from ServiceNow Discovery and/or SCCM). The records in the Software Discovery Model table appear automatically on the insert.

ServiceNow does not take a particular stand on that approach, advising neither for nor against it. Our experience proves it’s very handy, especially at the beginning of SAMP implementation, i.e. while configuring trustworthy data. What you have to take special care of here is:

  1. Deleting those records in batches,
  2. Re-feeding the Software Installation table in batches, so that neither you kill the instance nor the source(s).

Though implementation-driven, these are only high-level trustworthy data tips & tricks. For a deep dive into the topic, we provide both SAM training as well as the implementation itself.

SLA in ServiceNow – a curse or blessing?

SLA in ServiceNow, and in general, introduces contractual responsibility for providing your service within a specified time – it’s definitely a binding element of the contract with the customer. From the Support Team’s perspective, the SLA (Service Level Agreement) configuration mainly applies to the Incident Management or Service Request Fulfillment. It allows the customer to measure response time and resolution time.

ServiceNow SLA definitions

SLA values stored in the contract can be simply transferred to ServiceNow, where they’re defined in an intuitive way. The configuration of relevant records enables easy monitoring of SLA status from the record level. SLA definitions in ServiceNow depend on the terms of the contract signed with the customer. The negotiations of this part are crucial to finding the values satisfying for both parties to the contract.

Every definition is built mainly per ticket priority or type. ServiceNow offers great SLA configuration options that include i.e.:

  • Naming,
  • Building comprehensive start, stop, pause, reset conditions and workflow,
  • Determining duration values in the chosen schedule.

SLA definitions in the system are fully reflected and adapted to the needs of customers, both those less and more demanding.

The response time may start from the ticket’s creation and stop at the start of the initial analysis. This means status change and new comment addition. The resolution time may start from the ticket’s creation (and include response time) or from the moment when the response time stops. Resolution time stops when the ticket is closed.

SLA in ServiceNow projects - condition start and stop

SLA for Change Management

Due to the specifics of the Change Management process, there are difficulties in measuring and keeping SLA times for normal changes. It makes more sense for the standard changes that have their own clear definitions and their implementation time is similar. The complexity of normal changes can be quite different. It can affect their implementation and testing time. Every normal change needs a separate analysis and estimate.

SLA reporting

To measure SLA effectively, it’s also worth implementing appropriate reports for team leaders on the supplier side, supporters, and the customer. Each of the report observers may have different needs but the goal is always the same – the provision of a high-quality solution, in a timely manner. The SLA reports need to be based on the task_sla table that stores all SLA records generated for individual tickets.

In the beginning, it’s worth considering which reports will allow every observer to identify inconsistencies and problems. They should be intuitive and user friendly. Regular tracking of SLA:

  • Helps to avoid breaches,
  • Prevents payment of contractual penalties,
  • Nurtures customer satisfaction.

SLA advantages by role

Depending on your role, the use of SLA brings a number of advantages.

For customer:

  1. Control of response time that helps update the tickets and informing end-users about the work progress on a regular basis,
  2. Control of resolution time that helps provide critical solutions quickly enough,
  3. Assurance of work continuity within important areas,
  4. Awareness of the process and working on tickets in a specific order, in accordance with the priority.

For team leader on the supplier side:

  1. Identification of the problematic areas in teamwork (e.g. overloaded people, the need for internal knowledge transfers, communication issues) and providing improvements,
  2. Identification of the problematic areas in the used tools (e.g. illegible reports) and providing improvements,
  3. Building a transparent relationship with the customer,
  4. Quick response to problems in providing solutions for the tickets or updating them.

For supporters:

  1. Work prioritization for better time management,
  2. An easy indication of tickets that require quick response and are critical for the customer.

Work on SLA is more and more often a standard in our ServiceNow support services delivery. If you decide on this cooperation model, we always properly cater for it in the contract to the benefit of both your organization and SPOC.

Trustworthy data in Software Asset Management

Trustworthy data is a critical piece for the configuration of a solid ServiceNow Software Asset Management (SAM) application/process, making up its first tier. For a brief reminder, there are 4 tiers:

  • 1 – Trustworthy Data (know, manage, and trust your data),
  • 2 – Practical Management (streamline management controls and run quick wins/benefits),
  • 3 – Operational Integration (Integrate with other processes, such as request to make the software asset management process more efficient and effective),
  • 4 – Strategic Conformance (strive for being best-in-class).

Software Asset Management ServiceNow best practices

To manage the data well, you need to measure these. When your data are consistent and accurate, reliable, credible, useful, and complete, you and your organization are able to reach the full potential and benefit of the SAM program. Thus, the most important in this tier is the definition of the right data that will:

  • Support your SAM,
  • Localize the sources of the data,
  • Upload these into your ServiceNow instance.

ServiceNow Software Asset Management includes

How to efficiently implement SAM

Effective Software Asset Management relies on solid foundational data and the ability to determine/report what software rights are owned/purchased versus used/consumed. Still keep in mind the phased approach “start walking and then run”:

  • Choose Software Asset Management Certified Partner (we’re here to help),
  • Ask yourself and your organization what really matters for you, meaning:
    • What information and details associated with it do we need to track as the organization?
    • How and who will use it?
    • Who needs it?
    • How and who will control it?
    • Is it really needed for the compliance position?
    • Who is interested in the cost and whether the tracking is really required?

The answers to those questions will support you in making the conscious decision on what collection and maintenance information you really need as an organization. Later on, there are 3 areas that require attention, therefore consider the following tactics to incrementally implement SAM product includes.

Environment:

  • Use phased approach by department or site,
  • Subset the data (e.g. desktops versus SaaS),
  • ServiceNow Discovery or 3rd Party Discovery tools are critical to automatically upload the software installation data.

Products:

  • Classify your software: from the least to the most complex,
  • Start from one type of license metric, suite, or cost of the specific product.

Entitlements:

  • Select most important Publishers from the organization perspective (by software spend for instance),
  • Get clean and up to date entitlements from your vendor(s),
  • Verify the completeness and accuracy using import function within SAM Pro.

Thereafter, you can report results to the leadership team using KPIs that are operationally important to your organization, and can fast and easily emphasize the countable benefits.

We prepared this material for you using the following resources:

  1. Software Asset Management Professional Fundamentals book (2020 version),
  2. Software Asset Management Implementation Practices Overview Deck.

SPOC is an ELITE ServiceNow Partner!

We’ve been involved in the ServiceNow delivery for 10 years, getting promoted to an ELITE ServiceNow partner today!

To be in the Elite ServiceNow Partner segment, a partner needs to meet specific criteria in terms of the go-to-market and offering development maturity. Learn more about these below.

ServiceNow Partner segments

There are 4 maturity segments for ServiceNow partners to go through, going top-down:

  1. Global Elite (our next milestone to reach)
  2. Elite – SPOC promoted in 2020,
  3. Premier (SPOC promoted in 2017 – at that time this was “a Silver segment”),
  4. Specialist (SPOC promoted in 2016 – at that time this was “a Bronze segment”),
  5. Registered (SPOC joined the ServiceNow Partner Ecosystem in 2010, as a dedicated team in MWT Solutions).

The promotion from the down segments to the top ones takes place gradually, segment by segment. It’s all about:

OFFERING DEVELOPMENT MATURITY

  • Customer satisfaction – to deliver implementations valuable to customers, who are willing to share their opinion about the cooperation and delivery answering CSAT surveys,
  • Platform training – to get and further expand the platform knowledge with completing certified trainings and exams by all the stakeholders on the partner’s end who take part in the sales, pre-sales, consultancy, and delivery processes (check our results here),

The former is the end result, whereas the latter is the foundation for the success of the go-to-market endeavors.

GO-TO-MARKET MATURITY

  • Platform implementations – to gain ServiceNow project delivery expertise and gradually enrich it within the new areas (ITSM, ITOM, ITBM, Security, GRC, HRSD, CSM, App Engine,
  • ServiceNow apps development – to develop applications that successfully undergo ServiceNow certification and from then on are available on the Store.

The assignment to a particular partner segment is a 365-rolling result. Thus it’s a continuous enhancement process – for the benefit of the customer, partner, and the very platform at the end of the day.

Digital transformation with ServiceNow

Digital transformation has proved to be the core of business resiliency and continuity in the new normal, and in general. The organizations that had been investing in this area before the COVID-19 outbreak, are way better prepared to mitigate its repercussions, getting an advantage over the peer group that didn’t.

Digital transformation in the new normal

9 in 10 organizations prepare digital transformation plans, however, only 4 in 10 are ready to face their competition. The more digitized the organization, the more market share you gain and the better off you are during the crisis.

The ServiceNow Platform delivers an environment for the transformation of your processes into UX-oriented digital workflows. Defined as the platform of platforms by the ServiceNow CEO – Bill McDermott, it evolved from an ITSM suite to a collaboration-oriented platform for all your teams and departments.

As a comprehensive hub for all your operations, available in the form of intuitive dashboards, ServiceNow caters for:

  • Technological advancement – thanks to Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, and Predictive Intelligence,
  • 500+ integrations – now you can integrate all the tools you need (for communication, data exchange, process management, etc.) within a single platform,
  • Flexible access – so you can use all the features from desktop and mobile,
  • Continuous improvement – the platform is upgraded twice a year. Each release offers new features and enhanced functionality to the existing ones.

ServiceNow capability


Hence the platform is available in the SaaS model (System as a Service), all you need is access to the Internet and a supported web browser or mobile app. Now your employees and customers can focus on the core business, whereas the platform takes care of the rest.

With all the suites and features sharing the same system of record, the platform makes up a single system of engagement for all your stakeholders. Thus your teams get a comprehensive insight into metrics, tasks, services, assets, people, locations, and information at their fingertips, in one place.

ServiceNow users’ results

But because the proof of the pudding is in the eating, let us bring a few numbers that visualize the cross-industry power of digital transformation. Here are the implementation facts and results from the organizations using the ServiceNow Platform.

Disney+

A video streaming platform, operated by a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, invested in the ServiceNow CSM to provide its audience of 50+ million users with customer service via:

  • 40,000 concurrent chats,
  • 160,000 daily chats,
  • 200,000 daily interactions,
  • 500,000 daily portal visits.

The implementation started in November 2019 and took 5 months. Including multiple integrations, it was successfully completed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chevron Corporation

Energy corporation, headquartered in San Roman, California, USA – globally consolidated its IT operations with the ITSM:

  • Implementation scope: 6 ITSM processes,
  • Coverage: 45 countries, 27 business units, 5,000+ ServiceNow operators at Chevron, 80,000+ end users,
  • Implementation time: 7 months.

Saab

Swedish defense organization standardized its HR processes, delivering the new employee experience and tangible results like:

  • Time savings: 12,000 hours back yearly,
  • Employee satisfaction rate: 25% boost.

Danske Bank

The bank standardized its IT operations and recorded:

  • Productivity: 6 fold improvement in terms of time to restore services,
  • Incidents: 93% reduction,
  • Internal portal adoption rate: 90%, after 2 weeks of use.

Interested in achieving similar successes in your organization?