Tag: servicenow

Service Portal with an E-commerce Feel? Design cues in the digital era

Posted on by Malwina

As we continue to navigate the digital era, one thing has become clear: user experience is king. It does not matter anymore if you are designing an intranet page or web store – all companies must prioritize visual appeal, user interface, and ease of use when it comes to their online presence. And nowhere is this more critical than in the business and workspace. Yes, ServiceNow with its Service Portal or Employee portal counts as well!

Service Portal – user experience and user interface

User experience and user interface are crucial in designing a webpage as they directly impact how users interact with and perceive the website, ultimately determining its success or failure. Traditionally, service portals have been clunky and utilitarian, focused solely on getting the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible. But with the rise of e-commerce, there’s been a shift towards creating a web design with an e-commerce feel and user-friendly interface.

Design plays a crucial role in the success of any webpage, as it directly impacts the user experience and influences the likelihood of conversions, clicks, and overall success. How can you translate e-commerce design into Service Portal design? Well, for one, it means focusing on the user experience. Good e-commerce is designed with the customer in mind, making browsing, searching, and buying products quick. Service portals can adopt the same approach, making it simple to find what they need and get the help they require quickly.

Efficient access to data is critical to any solution, and incorporating user experience and user interface into ServiceNow design ensures that users can easily and effectively access the data they need. By treating ServiceNow’s design like consumer products, we can modify and improve the experience to better serve your customers.

-Jacek Witek, UX Designer

Clean and Clear Navigation

A clear and easy-to-use navigation menu helps visitors find what they are looking for quickly, reducing frustration and making it more likely they will complete their purchase.

How can you translate it into a Service Portal design?

To achieve successful navigation in ServiceNow portal design, consider organizing the portal logically and intuitively, for instance, grouping related services together, and ensuring the header menu is prominently displayed on every page. Descriptive labels and subcategories can help users find what they are looking for more easily.

source: Decathlon
source: Garmin
Image: example of clear navigation in the Service Portal

Strong Visuals

High-quality product images, videos, and interactive 360-degree views can help shoppers enhance confidence in their purchase decision and increase engagement. 

How can you translate it into a Service Portal design?

Service portals can take a similar approach, using visual hierarchy and design cues to the user experiences, making the Service Portal’s layout feel more polished and professional. You should use clear, high-quality images and videos showcasing the services. For example, a Service Portal for IT might include images or videos of computer hardware, software, or cloud computing and data storage. Achieving a proper balance and ensuring that the visual elements are logical is crucial. In some cases, incorporating contemporary icons and colour schemes may suffice.

By providing visuals that accurately represent the services, users can better understand what they are requesting and feel more confident in their decisions.

source: SMEG
source: Marshall
Image: Example of strong visuals in the Service Portal

3 reasons you should migrate from Service Portal to Employee Center now

Consistent Branding

A consistent visual identity across the website can create a sense of trust and reliability with the brand while also establishing a memorable brand image.

How can you translate it into a Service Portal design?

Choose a colour scheme, typography, and iconography throughout the portal. For example, if your company logo is blue and white, the portal’s colour scheme should use the same shades of blue and white to create a cohesive visual identity. Being consistent with design elements such as buttons, forms, and icons can help develop a sense of familiarity and ease of use. Another critical aspect of creating a visual identity in a Service Portal is using high-quality graphics and images that align with the brand’s aesthetic and reflect the brand’s personality and values.

In addition to visual elements, you need to ensure that the tone and language throughout the portal align with the organization’s voice and messaging. This can create a coherent user experience and reinforce the brand’s identity and values.

source: CoffeDesk
source: ZARA
Image: example of consistent branding in Service Portal

Discover 7 ways to improve your ServiceNow Platform User Experience in >>EBOOK<<

Responsive Design

A responsive website design that adapts to different devices, screen sizes, and orientations ensures the site is accessible and easy for all users to access.

How can you translate it into a Service Portal design?

ServiceNow has built-in functionality that allows Service Portal to adapt to different devices and screen sizes. It provides a range of responsive design features and techniques, such as fluid grids and media queries, that allow you to create a flexible and adaptive design. In addition to the built-in responsive design features, you can also use tools and resources to develop accessible and mobile-friendly portals. For example, ServiceNow offers documentation on best practices for designing accessible portals and provides testing tools to ensure the portal is optimized for mobile devices.

source: ZARA
Image: example of responsive design in Service Portal

User-Friendly Search Functionality

A search function that allows users to find products quickly and easily can improve the overall user experience and encourage visitors to stay on the site longer.

How can you translate it into a Service Portal design?

Implement an intuitive search bar that is easy to locate and use. The search bar should be placed prominently on the portal’s homepage and designed to be visible. Additionally, the search bar should provide users with relevant search suggestions as they type, helping them quickly narrow down and customize their search results. If the results are not promptly displayed, users may discontinue using it. To improve the accuracy of search results, you can utilize auto-complete, synonym matching, and natural language processing. These features help ensure the search function is accurate and returns relevant results, improving the overall user experience. Additionally, allow users to sort and filter their search results based on different criteria to help them quickly identify the most relevant results. ServiceNow’s AI-powered search with natural language processing can perform various tasks, including but not limited to understanding and interpreting user queries expressed in natural language.

source: Amazon
source: Marshall

Personalization

Personalization in e-commerce usually means tailoring the offer to the user, such as displaying recommended products on the homepage, using a general principle like Google Ads, i.e., personalized marketing.

How can you translate it into a Service Portal design?

Personalization within the ServiceNow platform is typically done at the group or role level. The goal is to present the user with relevant information about their job functions or responsibilities. For example, an employee logs in to the Service Portal, and depending on their role in the organization, they may see a customized homepage that features specific services, forms, or knowledge articles that are relevant to their job duties. This could include different categories of information, such as IT support, HR services, or facilities management. However, it’s important to note that personalization within ServiceNow is not as extensive as what you might find in a dedicated e-commerce platform. The focus is primarily on providing users with the information they need to do their jobs effectively rather than tailoring the user experience to drive sales or conversions.

source: Apple
source: Garmin

Are you more into Social Media? Discover how to give your Service Portal an Insta-feeling.

10 Service Portal design mistakes

  1. Poor Navigation: Complicated, unclear, or difficult-to-use navigation menus can create confusion and frustration for users, leading to a negative user experience.
  2. Slow Loading Time: Long loading times can lead to user frustration and abandonment, especially on mobile devices where users expect fast load times.
  3. Overwhelming Design: Overuse of images, colours, or graphics can create a cluttered and overwhelming design that can be difficult to navigate and may distract from the main content.
  4. Inconsistent Design: Inconsistent branding or design elements across the portal can create a lack of coherence and may cause users to lose trust in the site.
  5. Complicated Forms: Lengthy or complicated forms can be intimidating and may discourage users from completing important actions.
  6. Poor Readability: Poor font choices, small font sizes, or lack of contrast between text and background can make it difficult for users to read the content on the portal.
  7. Lack of Mobile Optimization: A lack of mobile optimization can lead to a poor user experience for mobile users, who may struggle to use the portal on a smaller screen.
  8. Limited Accessibility: A lack of accessibility features, such as support for screen readers or keyboard navigation, can make it difficult for users with disabilities to use the portal.
  9. Unclear Call-to-Actions: Unclear or confusing call-to-actions can create confusion and may prevent users from taking important actions and abandoning the portal.
  10. Poor Search Functionality: A search function that returns irrelevant or inaccurate results can frustrate users and discourage them from using the portal.

Don’t worry if you find any of these ten issues in your Service Portal. It’s never too late to turn things around with the help of experienced UX designers and ServiceNow partners who can provide the necessary tools and guidance to achieve exceptional results. Book a meeting to discuss your improved future Service Portal.

Transforming your  business with digital maturity: From chaos to success

Posted on by Malwina

What are we talking about?

As a business leader, you’re likely too familiar with the challenges that come with digitalization. Investing in digital technologies is crucial to staying competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment. To make sure that your organization is making the most of the digital investment, you need to look into your organization’s digital maturity.

When managing the ITSM landscape, it’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day operations and lose sight of the bigger picture. But as a leader, it’s essential to take a step back and evaluate your organization’s overall digital maturity. While you may have some strong areas in your ITSM, there may also be parts where you need certain implementations or solutions. The key to identifying these areas is conducting a comprehensive and integrated assessment of digital capabilities.

Overcoming digital technology challenges in the digitalization process

Digital maturity measures an organization’s proficiency and sophistication in utilizing digital technologies to support its business objectives. Assessment of digital maturity provides a clear understanding of your organization’s current digital state and identifies improvement opportunities. With this knowledge, you can make informed decisions about where to invest and how to achieve the most significant business impact.

But why is it so important to have a good understanding of your organization’s digital maturity? For one, it’s vital for making progress. Without a clear understanding of where your organization stands in terms of digital maturity, it’s difficult to set goals and measure progress. To identify areas for business improvement and stay competitive in the digital future, companies must assess their digital maturity and implement a broad range of new technologies in their digital strategy. An assessment provides a benchmark for tracking that progress and measuring the success of digitalization initiatives. There are several primary challenges that you may face when trying to implement digitalization across your company. Some of these include: 

  • Silos within the organization: It is hard to break down silos within the organization, which can impede the flow of information and hinder the implementation of digitalization initiatives. 
  • Costs: You may struggle with the costs associated with digitalization, such as new technology, training, and hiring specialized personnel. 
  • Problems with information sharing: You can see a lack of standardization and data silos, which can make it challenging to implement digitalization initiatives. 
  • Lack of equal level of digitalization across the organization: You may need help ensuring that all parts of the organization are at the same level of digitalization. 
  • Focusing on resolving current problems rather than on long-term goals: You may need help with resolving current issues rather than on long-term goals. 
  • Chaos: You can face challenges in navigating chaos within the organization, making it difficult to push forward. 
  • Difficulties with planning a budget when there are differences in digitalization: You may need help with planning a budget when there are differences in digitalization across the organization, which can make it difficult to allocate resources. 
  • Low or no engagement from the employees: You may struggle to get engagement from employees, which is another obstacle in implementing digitalization initiatives.
Resource: ServiceNow

Digital transformation and digital maturity assessment

The first step is to understand your organization’s digital maturity and how to achieve it. You can use the insights from such an assessment to make informed decisions and drive real change within your organization. The ability to navigate chaos is admirable, but it’s not necessary. You can take control and lead the organization towards true digital transformation with the right approach and evaluation.

Being part of a company can make it more difficult to ensure that a digital maturity assessment is objective. This is because employees may have a vested interest in the outcome and may be less likely to identify and address areas of weakness or inefficiency. Additionally, employees may be less likely to speak out or raise concerns if they feel that doing so could negatively impact their job or their relationships with their colleagues or superiors.

An external digital maturity assessment can provide valuable benefits such as objectivity, expertise, experience, and fresh perspective. It can help your organization to make sure that the assessment is unbiased and that the results are reliable and actionable.


Adam Bernas, Chief Product Officer with the highest ServiceNow certificate (Master Architect), is experienced in guiding organizations through complex digital transformations. 

One way to mitigate these risks is to hire an external consultant or company to conduct the digital maturity assessment. A third-party assessor is less likely to be influenced by internal politics or biases and can provide an objective perspective on the organization’s digital maturity. Additionally, it can bring expertise and experience from other companies and industries, providing valuable insights and best practices to your organization.

How to address the digitalization challenges

To really make sure that you have the right picture of what is needed to be done, you still need a digital maturity assessment, and that is where you should start. After mapping your organization’s challenges, you can take the following actions:

  1. Break down silos: Encourage cross-functional collaboration by setting up cross-functional teams, promoting open communication, and breaking down physical and organizational barriers.
  2. Control costs: Develop a detailed digitalization initiatives budget and closely monitor expenses. Prioritise projects based on their potential business value, and be prepared to adjust plans and cut costs if necessary.
  3. Achieve digital maturity across the organization: Develop a digital maturity model that can be used to benchmark different parts of the organization. This helps identify areas that need improvement and prioritize resources accordingly.
  4. Long-term vision: Develop a long-term vision for digitalization and align digital initiatives with overall business objectives to ensure that all parts of the organization are on the same page and working towards the same goals.
  5. Navigate chaos: Implement a project management framework to help keep digital initiatives on track and manage priorities.
  6. Plan budgets: Develop a flexible budgeting process that allows for adjustments as digitalization initiatives evolve. This will help to ensure that resources are allocated to the most critical projects.
  7. Engage employees: Involve them in digitalization by providing training, promoting open communication, and recognizing and rewarding their contributions.
  8. Communicate progress and success: Communicate the progress and success of digital initiatives to employees, stakeholders and the board to keep them informed and engaged.

Addressing the digitalization challenges may require a combination of different approaches and continuous adaptation. Also, it’s essential to remember that digitalization is an ongoing process, and it’s vital to evaluate and adapt the plan as the digital landscape and the organization’s needs are changing. 

Light-keeper or business influencer? Become digital transformation!

In today’s fast-paced business environment, the decision-makers must choose whether to be an orchestrator of chaos and a light-keeper or a business influencer. By investing in a digital maturity assessment, you have the power to become a business influencer, make informed decisions and drive real change within your organization. 

Resource: SPOC

When all parts of a company are digitalized at the same level, it enables the organization to work more efficiently, collaborate more effectively, be more agile, make better decisions, improve governance and compliance and be more scalable. All of which are key factors for organizations to achieve their business goals and stay competitive in today’s digital landscape. By taking a holistic approach to digitalization, you can ensure that all aspects of the organization are aligned with the overall business objectives and that digital transformation is driven by your organization’s needs. 

READ MORE ABOUT Holistic approach here: Digitalization done right – how to enable a holistic approach for your organization.

Remember, you are not alone, you can always get help in evaluating your situation – we’re here to help. Contact us or join us during our webinar about digital maturity. We will discuss how you can measure your organization’s digital maturity and why it is important. The webinar will be held by:

Leaders should regularly check their company’s digital maturity to ensure that they have a holistic view of their organization’s digital capabilities. Through digital assessment, they can identify areas of strength and weakness and ensure that all parts of the company are on the same page regarding digitalization. Thanks to such a deep understanding, aligning digital initiatives with overall business objectives and achieving true digital transformation is easier.’

Adam Bernas – Chief Product Officer with the highest ServiceNow certificate (Master Architect), experienced in guiding organizations through complex digital transformations. 

Digital maturity assessment provides a bird’s-eye view of the company, enabling stakeholders to identify areas of adequate digitization and those with great potential for development. It allows decision-makers to prioritize future investments based on clear evidence and expert recommendations for processes with the biggest business impact

Piotr Górnikiewicz – Senior Account Executive

From fragmented to integrated – how to facilitate a holistic approach to digitalization

Posted on by Malwina

How to start?

Are you struggling to fully leverage the capabilities of your ITSM platform despite its wide range of possibilities? If so, you’re not alone. Many organizations find themselves in the same boat, facing challenges in effectively utilizing the platform to support their business objectives. The root cause of this can often be traced back to a lack of understanding of their current state of digital maturity. But how can you overcome this challenge and achieve better results while improving your ROI? 

The answer lies in adopting a holistic approach to digitalization. You can do it by conducting a digital maturity assessment to comprehensively understand your organization’s digital maturity and identify areas for improvement in your systems landscape. We will guide you on how to effectively leverage the ServiceNow platform to drive business value and achieve your organization’s goals.

Digitalization with a holistic approach

It means taking a comprehensive and integrated approach to digital transformation. A holistic approach involves considering all aspects of the organization, including its culture, processes, and technologies, and aligning them with its overall business objectives. It recognizes that digital transformation is not just about technology but also about people and how they work.

You want your organization to improve constantly, at the same pace, ensuring that all parts of the company are on the same page. When each part is digitalized at the same level, it allows for a more efficient flow of information and resources across the organization. This can improve service delivery, cost savings, and customer experience. It also influences positive way collaboration across departments and teams.

When all parts of a company are digitalized holistically, it enables employees to share information and resources more efficiently, leading to improved teamwork and increased productivity. The same level of digitalization allows for greater scalability, enabling the organization to expand into new markets or services more easily.

How to check your digital maturity?

Digital maturity assessment is becoming increasingly important for organizations looking to stay competitive in today’s digital landscape. You can use different tools, e.g., ServiceNow DMA, to evaluate your company’s proficiency in utilizing digital technologies to support its business objectives.

A digital maturity assessment can help you understand how your company is currently using the ITSM platform and identify opportunities for improvement that will enable you to leverage your solutions to drive business value in a better way. The assessment covers service management, automation, integrations, governance, and analytics.

What does it mean in practice? The assessment might reveal that the organization effectively uses ITSM to manage incidents but is far from fully leveraging the automation capabilities. In this case, the organization could develop a roadmap with the help of an experienced ServiceNow partner. The goal: enhancing the use of your systems landscape to automate more processes, which would ultimately lead to more efficient service delivery and cost savings.

The great value of such an assessment lies in understanding how the digital landscape is being used by employees, which may be different from the intended use. This can help your organization optimize the tool and make it more user-friendly, increasing employee engagement and productivity.

Business advantages of using DMA

Conducting a Digital Maturity Assessment (DMA) with a holistic approach can provide many business advantages. By identifying areas for improvement, you can develop a roadmap for enhancing its use of digital technologies to drive greater business value. This can lead to more efficient service delivery, cost savings, and improved customer experience.

“Being aware of your organization’s digital maturity level is vital for leaders who want to make informed investment and optimization decisions that align with their organization’s strategy. Maturity level awareness helps leaders with making decisions on which areas to focus first so that they best suit their organization’s current needs.”

Krzysztof Patyk – ServiceNow Solution Consultant

A DMA helps you identify new opportunities for digital transformation that lead to gaining a competitive advantage. For example, you can improve your ability to innovate and respond to changing market conditions by automating manual processes or integrating new technologies. You may count on improved performance. DMA ensures that you focus on the right initiatives and invest in the right areas. It can lead to enhanced performance and a better return on investment.

Other advantages are better governance and risk management by identifying compliance and security risks, and improved employee engagement and decision-making. DMA provides a benchmark of your digital maturity, which you can use to track the company’s progress over time and compare the performance to that of other organizations in your industry. 

How to digitalize equally

To ensure that all the different parts of the company are digitalized with Digital Maturity Assessment equally, there are a few key steps you can take:

– Involve key stakeholders – to get comprehensive and accurate results, involve key stakeholders from across the organization. This might include representatives from IT, operations, finance, marketing, and other departments.

– Define clear goals and objectives – before conducting the DMA, define clear goals and objectives for the assessment. This will help to focus on the areas that are most important to the organization and will enable your organization to measure the success of the assessment.

– Use a standardized framework – ensure that all areas of the organization are assessed in the same way and that the results of the assessment can be compared across different departments.

– Focus on the business processes – all areas of the organization should be assessed in terms of their digital capabilities, and the assessment results can be used to develop a roadmap for improvement.

– Communicate and share the results – after conducting the DMA, communicate and share the results with all relevant stakeholders to ensure that everyone in the organization understands the current state of digital maturity and that the assessment results are used to develop a roadmap for improvement.

– Create an action plan with specific tasks and owners –  once the DMA is completed, create an action plan that includes specific tasks and owners to ensure that the recommendations from the DMA are implemented in a timely manner and that progress is tracked.

– Regularly review progress – conduct regular reviews of progress to help identify any areas where your organization is falling behind, allowing you to make adjustments as necessary.

Get support to check your digital maturity

Conducting a digital maturity assessment allows organizations to comprehensively understand their digital maturity, identify areas for improvement, and develop a roadmap for enhancing their use of digital technologies to drive greater business value.

With maturity assessment, you can optimise the tool’s use and get more out of the platform investment, as well as accelerate the transformation process and save time in making strategic decisions in the future. Strategic investment plans should be based on “well-informed decisions” rather than solely focused on “risk and uncertainty management.

To apply such an analysis and make sure that it is done from top to bottom,  allowing you to follow the holistic approach – you might want to use a knowledgeable ServiceNow partner. 

At SPOC, we have over ten years of experience as a ServiceNow partner. We’re focused on helping organizations get the most out of their ServiceNow platform at competitive prices. We follow a holistic approach with a solid and ambitious goal to help companies reach equal digitalization internally. 

Our strategic consulting services focus on the overall system landscape and architecture. As a framework, we utilize the ServiceNow DMA in conjunction with other tools to evaluate your organisation’s digital maturity. With a clear and comprehensive assessment, we can create a roadmap for digitalizing the entire organization and track the progress regularly to ensure all the company divisions are moving in the same direction.

If you want to know more, reach out to us or join us during our . We will discuss how you can measure your organization’s digital maturity and why it is important. The webinar will be held by:

Digital maturity assessment provides a bird’s-eye view of the company, enabling stakeholders to identify areas of adequate digitization and those with great potential for development. It allows decision-makers to prioritize future investments based on clear evidence and expert recommendations for processes with the biggest business impact.

Piotr Górnikiewicz – Senior Account Executive

Leaders should regularly check their company’s digital maturity to ensure that they have a holistic view of their organization’s digital capabilities. Through digital assessment, they can identify areas of strength and weakness and ensure that all parts of the company are on the same page regarding digitalization. Thanks to such a deep understanding, aligning digital initiatives with overall business objectives and achieving true digital transformation is easier.’

Adam Bernas – Chief Product Officer with the highest ServiceNow certificate (Master Architect), experienced in guiding organizations through complex digital transformations. 

3 reasons you should migrate from Service Portal to Employee Center

Posted on by Malwina

A new employee service centre

Here comes the new – Employee Center ServiceNow feature you should get familiar with immediately. It is supposed to replace Service Portal, which seems to be slowly pushed back by ServiceNow. Although the exact date of withdrawal is unknown yet, the sooner you decide to upgrade to ServiceNow Employee Center, the sooner you will take advantage of its countless business benefits and start developing your platform on a supported and secure solution. ESC means a lot of new, fascinating opportunities. It enables companies of all sizes and industries to achieve their business goals much faster. It is also a response to employee needs, rapidly changing in the era of workplace transformation.

What is Employee Center? ServiceNow presents its newest feature

Employee Center is a single, unified and modern portal for all employees. It is one place where they can find all the information and get all the help they need from HR, IT and other departments. Moreover, it’s a free feature for all ServiceNow users. It can already be said that it is a great product that will certainly be developed, promoted and improved in the future – this is one of the reasons why you should start using it immediately.

A solution for the changing workplaces and employee service

ServiceNow’s Employee Center is an excellent answer to the transformation of the employee experience. In the changing world of work where remote and hybrid work model is becoming more and more common in many companies, it is a must to digitize employee experience. In a world where digital processes enable flexibility, Employee Center comes in handy. This out-of-the-box ServiceNow solution was created for employees’ information, communication, and engagement and to ensure exceptional HR service delivery and customer experience. 

Read how to improve the work from home experience thanks to ServiceNow platform here.

source: SPOC

Employee Now vs. Service Portal – main differences

Service Portal is already considered to be an easy-to-use and modern tool that helps you quickly reach your employees. Employee Center is an even better employee service center as it has many new features that solved previous challenges and limitations that Service Portal made hard to address. ServiceNow advertises Employee Center as a great way to keep every employee engaged, productive, and informed, and I couldn’t agree more.

Read why you should upgrade to Employee Center now and let your employees make use of the ServiceNow platform to the fullest.

I created a lot of Service Portals and there was always one challenge – content management and its architecture. Luckily for us, ServiceNow introduced the Employee Center.

Mateusz Grześkowiak, Senior ServiceNow Developer

Easier Content Management ensures user freedom, self-service and data security

Before Employee Center, all organizational knowledge was placed in many portals – therefore, it was difficult to find the desired information. Employee Center enables to gather of all necessary data in one place. Thanks to this, it is no longer scattered among catalogues and knowledge bases and, as a result, it is much easier to use. All users can quickly find what they are searching for and get HR service delivery in one place.

Unified taxonomy makes all information in the Employee Center organized in a clear and transparent way. Content management becomes easier and tailored to the user’s needs. Users get much more freedom in the process of creating and adjusting the portal’s look. They can define names, categories, subcategories, and topics ourselves, thus gaining independence from the fixed ServiceNow structure and getting more self-service. Each user can not only display the content they need but also easily manage it. Now it is the company itself that builds the organization of its information, which enables greater control over all content.

All information available in one place not only saves users time and energy. The multitude of portals also meant high maintenance costs. Information scattered in various places was associated with a high risk of data leakage. Employee Center, a modern ServiceNow solution in the changing world of work, solves these problems. It lowers maintenance costs and ensures greater information security.

source: SPOC

Topic personalization results in great Return On Investment

Topic personalization is another feature that all employees will be happy to use. Each team wanted a place for themselves, and now this desire is fulfilled. This wasn’t easy to do on the Service Portal – if a team wanted its own brand, a separate portal had to be created. Now, not only are all teams in one place, but they have topic pages that can be personalized according to their preferences. IT team can have its own home page, as well as HR and other departments, and each of them can adapt and design it to their needs. They can have their own banners, icons and colours as pages don’t have to look the same anymore.

This is a significant change that also offers a greater Return On Investment. Topic personalization makes teams use the portal more willingly. What is more, it is easier now to convince employees to use it, as they can get a better service experience, tailored to their needs. Each team thus gains greater independence. 

source: SPOC

Targeted audiences facilitate information flow

Another great advantage of the Employee Center is that while everything is in one place, some information can only be displayed to specific audiences. As a result, thanks to targeted content, they only see banners, messages and changes they are interested in – not all of them. Thanks to this, the amount of information is no longer overwhelming. Teams become more independent, and it becomes much easier for them to use the portal.

This feature gives Employee Center one more significant benefit. It facilitates information flow, which improves communication, facilitates collaboration and accelerates decision-making processes. This has a powerful impact on the entire company.

Read how to attract more users to your platform thanks to a great User Experience

Employee Center – strategic approach of global consulting company [Case Study]

Before ESC, our client with its team of more than 1000 employees used 6 different portals on a daily basis. It generated many problems – knowledge was scattered in other places, therefore it was challenging to find the required data. The maintenance and development costs were also really high.

The client decided it was necessary to create a single employee service portal that would fulfil the functions of all 6 previous ones. We recommended Employee Center ServiceNow and the implementation turned out to be a strategic decision for the company’s operations.

Employee Center is not only easier to configure and requires less development, but it is also an out of box ServiceNow solution. Since that. Its implementation was also several times faster than Service Portals.

Ready for your Employee Center experience?

If you are still using the Service Portal, do not wait and get ready for the upgrade – the clock is ticking and the Service Portal will slowly become the legacy application. There is no point in waiting – thanks to the Employee Center, you will not only save time and costs but also create an incredible employee experience and make everyone’s work easier and more productive. We are here for you to talk and guide you through the endless possibilities of Employee Center.

CMDB – 4 things you need to do for successful implementation 

Posted on by Malwina

The Configuration Management Database has been a hot ServiceNow topic for years. We already know how important it is when it comes to IT decision-making and finding dependencies among processes, people, applications and IT infrastructure. But to fully enjoy all the benefits of CMDB implementation, it is good to get prepared before it is up and running. How? Here you can find a few tips based on our and our clients’ experience! 

What is a configuration management database?

CMDB is a standardized database repository with all the relevant information both about the hardware and software used in your organization and how these components relate to each other. Getting this clear overview of configuration data lets you examine it from different perspectives, finding opportunities for improvement, faster resolution of incidents and fewer errors. Implementing this huge data warehouse and storing information about your IT infrastructure is not an overnight task, but it allows you to have a purpose-built database for configuration management. 

Source: ServiceNow

Business benefits of CMDB implementation

Growing organizations face a common challenge: keeping track of all the assets. The great benefit of using CMDB is that you have everything in one place, which means transparency, visibility and improved IT infrastructure management, considering compliance with software license agreements. The risks carried by change deployments can be easily contained through CMDB, ensuring smooth transitions without business disruptions caused by unplanned changes or misconfiguration. Sourcing data from different parts of the business improve the incident management process, helps track changes over time, and automates software discovery processes. With CMDB, you do not stick to a stiff solution, as it changes over time with your organization, reflecting current knowledge and best IT practices. You will not only diagnose and fix costly service outages but also reduce service delivery costs, maximize ROI and accelerate time-to-market for new services.

Explore and find data in CMDB Workspace

The biggest advantages seen by our customers are:

  • Reduced incident volume
  • Reduced number of system outages
  • Improved vulnerability response
  • Increased automation to respond to issues faster

How to implement CMDB

CMDB implementation is not as straightforward as we wish. To make the process smoother for your organization, it is important to prepare the right ground for it. That means some extra work that will pay off when your CMDB is up and running. Investing your time into the following points will help map possible challenges, control the implementation process in the best way possible and ensure that the final result is successful and does not fail to generate value. By identifying the possible issues, like, e.g., lack of people and processes in place to move data into CMDB, you have more power over the CMDB implementation itself.

Data acquisition tools easily populate CI data

#1  Ensure compliance in configuration management

Security starts with proper management of your IT infrastructure. That is why it is so important to first identify and understand your compliance obligations, spot the risks of non-compliance and act to reduce the organizational risks. Understanding the relationships between an organization’s information assets and the applications that use them helps meet the audit and compliance needs. 

CMDB Compliance is a ServiceNow toolset to certify CMDB data – check their correctness and fix any issues. You can audit the CMDB for its adherence to predefined regulatory requirements, internal governance or certificates. 

Download EBOOK: Navigating CMDB Implementation in ServiceNow

#2  Apply data centre consolidation & improve security

When you have multiple data centres, your costs are higher, you become more vulnerable and prone to security breaches. Instead of using many servers, storage systems, and networking systems, it is better to have one data centre. Centralization reduces digital footprint, making the organization at the same time less vulnerable to cyber-attacks or risks related to data loss and downtime. It is not only going to reduce management overheads but also costs for your organization. 

You want to reduce and limit the impact of a potential threat against data. Once you have your asset inventory and CMDB in place, you should set up good practices. You could, e.g., allow deep network scanning to ensure only allowed devices are connected. Your database and inventory lists should be up-to-date, establishing a good baseline for all the IT activity. Staying on top of patches and updates for all the assets could lead to more accurate inventory and, consequently, improved security. 

#3  Implement enterprise change management

Enterprise change management is the constant process by which your organization implements and manages changes to maximize change capability. It is all about centralizing the organizational change process, and among its effect, you will find increased ROI, improved business agility or increased effectiveness.  

Change managers can use the CMDB to spot the relationship between different configuration elements that can be affected by a change in the future. Thanks to understanding the relationship between the components, assets can be reconstructed at any time. You can map physical, virtual, and cloud components using asset management and design services. 

You also need impact analysis to get information about the system areas affected due to the change in the particular section or application features. The impact analysis engine goes through CMDB, and located Configuration Items (CIs) expected to have outages. 

#4  Ensure transparency and visibility for innovation

Lack of visibility into service performance causes headaches to many organizations. It equals erratic assumptions, reactive decisions and speculative contexts. That makes introducing innovation a very difficult task. In a perfect world, CMDB should be thought-out and planned. It is not just limited to the selection and implementation of discovery technology to populate your CMDB.  

Knowing where you are and what your shortcomings might be is essential for transparency. When you address governance, configuration management data and technology plan and define methods for populating and maintaining health, there is a big chance for successful visibility for innovation. 

Powerful visualization for understanding CI relationships

 CMDB – make it successful

The above list might seem overwhelming, but by applying each step at the beginning of the CMDB implementation process, you will be able to improve the capability to diagnose service issues, detect root cause problems and find a resolution quickly.

CMDB has great business value. If applied properly, you can model your services and digital products, react in real-time, manage the life cycle of your services, keep the ServiceNow instance healthy, accelerate time-to-market and last but not least, improve processes effectiveness.

Implementing CMDB is a more complex topic; therefore, we encourage you to get some extra help to address the problems and ensure success. Contact us if you want to take advantage of our vast experience and best practices in implementing CMDB in ServiceNow.   

How do I get started with Predictive Intelligence?

Posted on by Malwina

You have probably heard about machine learning possibilities and how artificial intelligence can make your work easier within the ServiceNow platform. Perhaps you are a step away from deciding that you want your agents to get all the AI benefits like automatic categorization, assignments, and automatic recommendations. Predictive Intelligence and Predictive Analytics also bring many possibilities and functionalities to predict actions, make decisions, and plan the next steps based on analyzed historical data. Take a look at our summary of what Predictive Intelligence can do for you and your organization.

Predictive Intelligence as an operational brain

Predictive Intelligence covers three capabilities around AI technology – machine learning, natural language, and search and automation. Machine learning is a set of algorithms that, through historical data analysis, can make predictions, while natural language processing focuses on analyzing users’ language allowing more ‘human’ ways of communication. AI search delivers highly relevant results based on user context and natural language. Algorithms get information through deep learning, mimicking how our brains work, continuously learning and improving their ways.

By using predictive intelligence and predictive analytics, you can manage a higher volume of tasks and tickets while lowering costs. Automation, as well as AI and improved categorization, reduce:
* Task resolution times.
* The number of interactions required to resolve tasks.
* The error rates of categorizing and assigning work.

Predictive Analytics
Source: ServiceNow

Predictive Analytics is all about making intelligent predictions to improve efficiency and deliver better results on your platform. Classification and similarity framework allows searching through knowledge articles, open/closed incidents, problems, and changes. All of it is to give a ready solution to the agents as soon as they get their tickets assigned. Also, your agents have a single point of information in the Agent Workspace. The clustering framework helps them discover patterns and group tickets and lets them see the hotspots. The purpose is one – let your employees focus on more advanced tasks by powering workflows with machine learning.

Predictive Intelligence
Source: ServiceNow

Predictive Intelligence – similarity and clustering frameworks

The Predictive Intelligence similarity frameworks allow an instance to identify existing records to add new ones, thanks to the fact that they have similar values. It’s all based on building a corpus of words within a certain framework. A corpus of words is a collection of vocabulary that has been predetermined and trained, which the system relies on to find textual similarities. By reusing similar closed incidents that have a proven resolution, you can help agents and fulfillers quickly provide the best resolution for an incoming incident. It is necessary to keep the corpus of words up to date. For this purpose, from time to time, you should refresh and retrain solutions.

How can you use the clustering framework? It is very simple – just group similar records into clusters. Thanks to this function, you can deal with incidents collectively or identify patterns. For example, you can group recent incidents into a cluster to identify a serious incident. Examples of grouping into cluster frameworks are shown in the graphic below.

Source: ServiceNow
Source: ServiceNow

Why are AI and machine learning worth it?

Using Predictive Intelligence in the ServiceNow platform gives your agents advanced AI tools without data science expertise. Getting suggestions from the AI tool makes the work fast and smart and allows a quick response as well as spotting major incidents in the ServiceNow instance. Resolution times are shorter, the manual errors decrease, and the tickets are assigned to the right people at the right time. That naturally leads to better efficiency, increased customer satisfaction, and fast improvements.

Predictive Intelligence
Source: ServiceNow

Additionally, you get regression analysis to predict the time to resolution of a task. Connecting AI to analytics for real-time insights is a great advantage. You can surely count on data security, as you use your data, which means they never leave ServiceNow data centers. You also can measure and refine machine learning models thanks to Predictive Intelligence Workbench. The Predictive Intelligence tool provides your agents with recommendations in 6 languages (English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, and Dutch) and does not require coding skills as you can use out-of-the-box templates. You can also connect it with the Virtual Agent to use the automation to assist users quickly and effortlessly.

Here you can learn how to choose the right Virtual Agent for your platform

Machine learning success story

Implementation of any new technology may become difficult. You must educate your teams on machine learning benefits, find the best ways to collaborate and improve incident and case management performance, and build expertise and enthusiasm around AI. And this is how the University of Maryland has transformed its IT service delivery with Now Intelligence. To deliver a great experience to university staff and students, the IT department chose intuitive self-service to report issues, access services, find solutions and share questions and answers with other community members.

Thanks to AI technology, users can now automatically create a website for a new research project or schedule delivery of equipment for specific classes. Since the adaptation of Virtual Agent and Predictive Intelligence, the staff noted a huge increase in correct incident routing. It went from 56% to 85%, helping the IT team to get the right work faster. The incident resolution time was reduced by 75% because of more accurate incident routing and thanks to the ITSM Agent Workspace, which is intuitive and easily managed by IT support.

Predictive Intelligence
Source: ServiceNow

ServiceNow’s predictive intelligence and machine learning improve productivity and work experiences. You deliver better self-service, detect major incidents, discover hidden patterns and optimize knowledge bases. Agents’ work gets easier with automatic recommendations for actions and answers, while users are empowered with accurate and relevant search results.

Remember that adopting a new feature is an essential step for your ITSM maturity. We encourage always searching for professional support to ensure you get 100% out of your ServiceNow instance. Contact us if you are interested in more and want to know how you can adjust the AI processes to your needs.

Busting the 6 myths around ServiceNow Predictive Intelligence

Posted on by Malwina

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive intelligence have been hot topics for many years, and the presumptions around new technologies still bring mixed feelings in the business area. You might have heard some of these before, or perhaps you are still very cautious regarding machine learning. We are here to debunk these beliefs and set the record straight about what embracing predictive intelligence can bring to your organization and the ServiceNow platform.

MYTH #1   Using AI and predictive intelligence is not safe

Using the ServiceNow Predictive Intelligence function is as safe as having ServiceNow. The infrastructure and data security are highly resilient with its cloud-based services. Predictive Intelligence, formerly known as Agent Intelligence before the New York release, works on dedicated servers, which are as safe as the instance itself. Of course, cybersecurity requires regular checks. That is why ServiceNow enables you to access dashboards, which are crucial to the security and give the proper insight into what is happening with your data. 

Source: ServiceNow

Additionally, by using performance analytics, you can foresee any safety threats. Since the decisions are based on data, the risk of errors is lower with artificial intelligence. Analyzing data through AI tools, you are less likely to commit any bias – the machine is objective and does not choose one data over the other.

MYTH #2   Giving space to AI makes me lose control

Concerns about losing control of the technology are standard. Fortunately, ServiceNow gives you complete power over the AI function. You are the one who determines how to configure the Predictive Intelligence and when the algorithm should be decisive.  

Source: ServiceNow

For example, using Virtual Agent Professional, you can set an 85% accuracy threshold to automatically assign incoming requests from your users. This allows for the agents’ last word on giving less straightforward cases. At the same time, the most apparent tickets get posted automatically, improving the response time and customer satisfaction.  

By choosing the correct parameters, you check random cases occasionally to verify the predictive intelligence correctness. Thanks to the generated reports, you see the comparison between the agent and machine decisions and have the proper insight to take further actions in customer service management. So, long story short – you are in charge.

Source: ServiceNow

MYTH #3   My ServiceNow platform doesn’t need AI

What is wrong with service desk manual work? The agents have managed it until now, so they can go on without artificial intelligence. Indeed, they can. But isn’t it worth using predictive intelligence to make things quicker, more convenient, and more accurate? Wouldn’t automatic ticket assignment or predicting possible problems make your agents more effective? Also, what about the user experience? Nobody wants a separate channel just for sending requests.  

Virtual Agent lets your users contact the agents through their channel of choice, with integration in Microsoft Teams, Slack or Messenger, and many others. That leads to customer satisfaction and less frustration when the bot guides the user, resulting in fewer mistakes. So you get improved workflows, smooth and fast user experience, resources for more complicated tasks, fewer human errors, and predictive capabilities based on raw data. It’s a win-win.  

Source: ServiceNow

MYTH #4   Predictive intelligence is too expensive

Applying tools like Virtual Agent Professional or Performance Analytics might not be the cheapest solution, but it depends on how you look at it. AI in ServiceNow brings pretty fast ROI, not only improving the work but also letting you rearrange the assignments to your resources. It is more of an investment.  

The agents get time for other, more complicated tasks while machine learning solutions are doing repetitive jobs. In the long run, it should result in time and money savings. Obviously, every company has different needs, so machine learning capabilities should be adjusted to these specific requirements. By knowing how to optimize the ServiceNow paid solutions, you can get a pretty good deal.  

Source: ServiceNow

MYTH #5   Introducing AI solution is too confusing and complex

Every new implementation takes a little effort. If you look at the outcomes, though, there is no confusion or complexity. On the user end, it gets easier. They receive the right help and instructions straight away, through the communication channel of their personal preference. It becomes a streamlined path leading to a resolution. 

Source: SPOC

Conversely, agents have access to everything in their Agent Workspace, which is very convenient. Predictive intelligence is there to get all the information and displays it in a user-friendly way through the dashboards. All the historical data is in one place, and the overview is straightforward. Your agents do not need to know how to code due to the simplicity of the Predictive Intelligence feature.

MYTH #6   ServiceNow Predictive Intelligence is designed for simple tasks

The functionality is expected to affect the automation of repetitive tasks, solving issues faster, based on machine learning. All this is true. But Predictive Intelligence is a more advanced solution.

Predictive Intelligence ServiceNow is just opening the door to the world of AI capabilities. And what is behind those doors? Machine learning, automation, ticket rewriting, ticket clustering, performance analytics, event prediction, and response planning, Classification Framework Dashboards – and still only a part of the possibilities that ServiceNow Predictive Intelligence provides. You will be able to get acquainted with the description of all the possibilities and functionalities in the next article dedicated only to ServiceNow Predictive Intelligence. Stay tuned!

Source: ServiceNow

Maximized ServiceNow or the basic ITSM version? 

Adopting predictive intelligence is a great way to take your ITSM process maturity to the next level. But since it’s an important step, we always advise our clients to analyze their needs and see how such a solution might streamline processes and workflows.

With your implementation partner or even alone, you should be able to determine the most critical areas – sometimes the essential solutions can address your needs, e.g., when users mainly send requests about resetting passwords or ordering equipment. It can be easily handled by the Virtual Agent Lite solution and does not require a high investment or a long time. On the other hand, an experienced implementation partner can help you with more advanced needs and get the best value for the chosen solution. 

Sylwester Jassa, ServiceNow Presales Manager & Business Solutions Consultant at SPOC

Machine learning solutions are great tools, ensuring a better work experience and more satisfied agents and users. There are many scenarios in which the Predictive Intelligence feature makes sense, e.g., you want to cut time spent on resolving tickets, improve customer experience or know about possible issues through predictive models. Different frameworks, like classification or similarity frameworks, can be used to fulfill these various goals.  

Indeed, deciding to maximize your ITSM instance with predictive intelligence is not easy, especially when you consider that you need historical data in significant volumes to benefit from it fully. If you are interested in more and want to know how you can adjust the AI processes to your needs, contact us. 

Software Asset Management in ServiceNow

Posted on by Malwina

Software Asset Management – suggested phased approach

objectives of software asset management servicenow by spoc

The primary goals of the Software Asset Management process (abbr. SAM process) is to:

  • Reduce IT costs (optimize spend),
  • Limit operational, financial, and legal risks related to the ownership and use of software (ensure compliance and support software audits).

Both are achievable through management and optimization of software assets across their lifecycle (launch through to retirement).

SAM process objectives

Holistically, the objectives of the SAM process are:

  • To reduce/eliminate unnecessary purchases by requests execution with the use of available entitlements,
  • To identify and record all purchased software entitlements and associated allocations within the organization,
  • To assign correct license metrics and supporting software contracts to the software entitlements,
  • To create and maintain accurate software models, client access records, and software discovery models – these enable the establishment of entitlement compliance positions,
  • To proactively identify cost saving opportunities through removal and re-use of unused software (where terms and conditions allow),
  • To capture purchase order information that allow record cost of software entitlement,
  • To accurately allocate available and acquired entitlements to users and devices,
  • To ensure blacklisted or unlicensed software is not used to strengthen compliance posture against publisher rules and regulations,
  • To expedite audit response and to avoid non-compliance fines and financial penalties,
  • To provide accurate software asset information to other enterprise processes (e.g. Change Management), which enables business and financial decision making,
  • To eliminate human system integration via email, spreadsheets, and tribal knowledge.

How to start optimizing your SAM

Recommended approach is to start by working with the publisher that represents the largest software spend in your organization. You should shift the focus towards the normalization of software products that are licensable.

SAM and Capability Blueprint

software asset management servicenow best practices

Capability blueprint is a good practice for implementation and development of Software Asset Management program:

  • Tier 1 – Trustworthy Data
    Know what you have, so you can manage your assets.
  • Tier 2 – Practical Management
    Improve management controls and drive immediate benefits.
  • Tier 3 – Operational Integration
    Improve efficiency and effectiveness through integration with other process such as request procurement.
  • Tier 4 – Strategic Conformance
    Achieve best in-class.

To ensure the expected benefits of the ‘improved’ Software Asset Management process are achieved:

  1. Articulate the expected benefits before the ‘improved’ process is defined,
  2. List down all the audit findings you should focus on in terms of the remediation,
  3. Translate the expected benefits into performance measures,
  4. Define metrics for each performance measure,
  5. While designing the improved process, ensure that the data needed to calculate each metric are captured during the execution of the process,
  6. Document the requirements for each metric,
  7. If possible, capture ‘as is’ performance metrics as a baseline for measuring improvements/benefits realized.

What KPIs and metrics to consider

  • % of application installations which have not be used within the last 90 days,
  • Number of installations of application which are unauthorized (blacklisted) for use,
  • Value of unlicensed software identified and remediated,
  • Cost paid arising from software licence audit findings per year,

SPOC can always support you in your in endeavour in setting the E2E Software Asset Management Process.

What is ServiceNow?

Posted on by Malwina

ServiceNow is a Platform as a Service (PaaS), offering a selection of digital workflows for IT, Project Management Office, HR, finance and more. The platform was developed by an American company ServiceNow in 2004. Throughout years, the core and essence of the technology has remained the same, but the functionality and solutions on offer have expanded and improved.

ServiceNow continuous improvement

This article will give you a snapshot of what things look like in Q2, 2019.

ServiceNow value proposition

With the vision “We make the world of work, work better for people”, ServiceNow digitizes manual workflows. Thus you’re able to unlock the real productivity and cover for the main areas of the general business landscape.

Now Platform solutions ServiceNow

ServiceNow Platform is a scalable cloud that offers a range of applications, workflows and processes. Sharing common architecture and data, the platform incorporates a variety of ready-made suites catering for specific business areas:

The foundation – ServiceNow ITSM

ITSM has been the staple of the ServiceNow Platform from the very beginning. The company’s been driving ITSM sphere, taking the lead position in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for the past 5 years! (Get the full Gartner’s report here). In 2018 ServiceNow was marked as High-Productivity Application Platform as a service, which cemented the company’s success as a platform provider.

ServiceNow - raport Gartner 2008-2014

ServiceNow - raport Gartnera 2015-2018

The company founder – Fred Luddy, initially started with a much broader vision:

Fred Luddy vision of ServiceNow& Now Platform

As a natural effect, ServiceNow expands the platform functionality by the next business areas, outside of IT.

ServiceNow journey & features

Customers can start their ServiceNow journey from many points. Regardless of where they first start, they have the ability to follow a flexible road-map to bring continued success within the organization. Using ServiceNow, an organization can:

  • Implement,
  • Extend,
  • Expand.

This approach allows organizations to make the most and best value from the investment they have made implementing ServiceNow.

Now Platfrorm workflows& values they bring

Let’s review a selection of the main areas available in the recent releases.

Service Portal

An organization can provide services and applications to users via a sleek, modern, and intuitive self-service experience. The technology used in the Service Portal is meant to resemble the look and feel similar to the platforms users, people, engage with outside of work.

Now Platform Service Portal ServiceNow

Native Mobile Apps

Using ServiceNow means organizations are able to build native mobile apps, allowing users to consume products and services on any device. By taking advantage of Maps, Calendars, Lists, Forms, the applications provide a fantastic user experience. Offline mode enables users to even carry on working whenever they’re offline.

Flow Designer

Create workflows, simply with natural language. The flow designer is ideal for process analysts and less technical members of an organization to effectively produce useful workflows to drive processes. Technical members of the team can also develop reusable elements to be leveraged by colleagues in other departments.

Now Platform Flow Designer - ServiceNow

Integration Hub

This integration solution offers a way for people to connect with other systems at certain steps of a process. As with the flow designer, certain elements can be easily leveraged by non-technical resources, while coding wizards are able to set up a complete range of integration possibilities.

Performance Analytics

Take control of service delivery by gaining full visibility into the measures and metrics of the processes that drive them. Performance Analytics is perfect for looking to prioritize resources, improve resolution times, and deliver even better self-service by discovering automation opportunities.

Agent Intelligence

Support agent delivery services with supervised machine learning. Using Agent Intelligence you can efficiently assign and prioritize tickets and tasks with learnings taken directly from your own data.

Virtual Agent

Take chat from conversation to resolution. Virtual Agent includes an automated conversational Agent to respond to users’ questions in real-time. Virtual Agent works as standard with Microsoft Teams, Slack, and both Android and iOS operating systems.

Now Platform virtual agent designer - desktop & mobile

The Virtual Agent incorporates a simple but powerful no-code drag and drop designer, great for building quick conversation examples. There are also many pre-built conversations for ITSM, CSM & HRSD.

Time to Value a key focus of ServiceNow

As alluded to a couple of times already, the ServiceNow Platform is configured to maximize the time to value for Businesses. The approach of No Code / Low Code / Pro Code, which allows a full range of people to deliver solutions on the platform means businesses are able to roll-out applications and solutions quickly to align to changing needs. The longer-term strategic growth plans can be managed with more complex solutions prepared with the assistance of professional ServiceNow partners.

Bringing all these items together helps us understand the economic impact of ServiceNow use. In 2017 the neutral advisory firm, Forrester, produced a report showing the ‘Total Economic Impact’ of the platform. The figures included (see the full report here):

  • 195%
    ROI for new customers, with a payback period of only 9 months,
  • 30%
    Increase in dev resources via low code tools,
  • 290%
    Accelerated development efforts,
  • 57%
    Increase in employee productivity.

An Introduction to the Automatic Testing Framework in ServiceNow

Posted on by Malwina

Automated Testing Framework (ATF) has always been a key topic around ServiceNow testing, especially for those keen in Quality Assurance. One of those people is Zherald, SPOC’s Security and QA lead who has a passion for Testing and making sure systems are safe and working as expected.

Zherald’s Introduction to ServiceNow’s Automatic Testing Framework

The ATF is a solution that saves time and frustration. It allows previously built test scenarios to be used many times. Previously, the only real option for ServiceNow was to use a 3rd party solution. Many of which were very expensive. ServiceNow has solved this issue by introducing the Automated Testing Framework module, available since the Istanbul release. Since its introduction to the Now Platform, ATF has been greatly improved and now offers a lot of help for performing Automated Testing. It offers flexibility, especially for MSP’s as they are easily transferable from one instance to another; using XML update sets. From a Quality Assurance (QA) perspective, there are some huge benefits:

  • The possibility to create test suites, containing test cases that can be executed whenever they’re needed.
    Great Feature: Running and executing the suites in a scheduled job. This means you may schedule the time when you want the tests to run in the future.
  • Capturing screenshots when a defect is located. Very helpful to prove in which test case or element the test fails.

Assessing the Solution

We used the ATF for automating the testing for our internal tool Project Management Application, built on the Now Platform. The solution itself, as its name suggests, is used for project management and is utilised by various user groups – project managers, developers, testers, etc. The automation we have implemented is focused on the lifecycle of Agile Projects. This covers all components such as backlogs, sprints and stories. Another aspect we have managed to automate is the verification of forms. This applies to each project component and includes the presence of fields, their default values and attributes. Our test scenarios are divided into suites, each one covering the above-mentioned project component. Running an exemplary suite for the Sprint will trigger the following test to be executed:

  • Sprint lifecycle including every possible Sprint state change.
    • This scenario also verifies mandatory fields and button availability, as each may differ at various stages of Sprint lifecycle.
  • Availability of fields and their attributes on a new Sprint form.
    • Attributes include: mandatory fields, editability and default values.
  • Availability of UI actions on new Sprint form.

As the ATF in ServiceNow has been introduced quite recently, we encountered some issues and bugs. These were not critical issues that made it impossible to use ATF, but we are looking for them to be resolved in the next ServiceNow releases.

An Example

One issue was the inability to populate journal fields (Additional Comments or Work Notes) that can be mandatory while changing states of records. In the latest London release, users of the ATF now have the possibility to automate Service Portal and Service Catalogue testing. In our eyes, this is a huge step towards making the ATF an important part of the Testing Arsenal.

With these features (and others coming in the following releases for sure!) Customers can benefit in numerous ways:

  • Financially: well-designed automated tests are cheaper to maintain than using testers to perform manual tests Qualitatively: automated tests exclude the ‘human factor’ and potential mistakes or omissions related to the psychological state of the tester, their physical shape or even the weather outside
  • Personally: Testers released from long and tedious regression testing can engage in activities that automation will never do – creating standards, test plans and so on. I can’t wait to see what’s next with this application and ServiceNow testing.
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00-855 Warszawa, Poland
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