ServiceNow is a company dedicated to making work, work better. With many of its core competencies resting in IT services management and IT operations management, ServiceNow was founded according to a simple vision detailed by founder and chairman of the board Fred Luddy.
“When I started ServiceNow in 2004, my vision was to build a cloud-based platform that would enable regular people to route work effectively through the enterprise,” said Luddy.
FACT #1
ServiceNow regularly reiterates Luddy’s words at its annual ‘Knowledge’ conference. Remarkable for the number of sessions and seminars delivered by customers rather than ServiceNow employees, the event gets its name from the sharing culture its participants bring as they showcase workplace efficiencies achieved using the ServiceNow Now Platform.
FACT #2
Born in and of the cloud, the scope and breadth of the ServiceNow Now Platform extends far beyond basic ‘tickets’ as they would typically exist in a work tracking system. With a set of tools and functions designed to track issue requests and task requirements across the enterprise, ServiceNow delivers a service model designed to identify the root cause of issues and the core requirements for tasks to be performed. In this way, ServiceNow enables organisations to empower employees with self-service capabilities delivered by cloud services in any given workflow.
FACT #3
Key industry verticals for ServiceNow include healthcare, financial services, government, manufacturing, telecommunications and education. As core as those verticals are, ServiceNow is applicable to every industry and every workplace. By breaking down the workflows within any organisation – be it an industrial oil rig facility or a cake baking business – a business can start to classify processes by department, by team size, work methodology or some other core defining factor. At that point, the business can start to derive observations to decode best practice and then apply intelligent automation.
FACT #4
In live operation and usage, ServiceNow delivers a managed workflow service model built of tasks, activities and processes comprised and featuring ServiceNow products. The managed workflow delivered by ServiceNow is characterised by features including real-time communication, collaboration and resource sharing. The key user interface to access its tools, the ServiceNow Now Platform acts as a dashboard channel to enable users of all technical competencies to access the platform functionalities. Core functions in the platform itself include reports and dashboards, developer tools, knowledge bases, service portals, databases, contextual collaboration, orchestration functions, subscriptions and notifications, and workflow itself.
FACT #5
ServiceNow insists that its platform delivers agility and quality. As evidenced by customers of every shape and size, the time to implement ServiceNow is typically measured in days and weeks rather than months or years. If there is a secret sauce running through ServiceNow, it is the organisation’s approach to continuous development and platform iteration. The company explains its approach to agility and quality as a drive that determines and delivers a major innovation every six months.
Quality is continually enhanced, extended and augmented through the deployment of new features and functionality developed in line with customer feedback. With as many as 500 million new applications being written in the next three years, every industry needs a technology platform that will be intuitive, functional and actually capable of delivering functionality that will enrich people’s lives. This is the measure for agility and quality at ServiceNow.
FACT #6
ServiceNow has established a technical partnership with Celonis. This strategic move sees ServiceNow engineer its low-code workflow platform with the real-time process execution capabilities of the Celonis execution management system.
With many organisations harbouring outdated work processes that stifle business operations in the face of digital transformation, this partnership will bring a new digital automation advantage to workflows as they traverse people, processes and machine systems. ServiceNow and Celonis will help customers map their workflow elements out in real time as the combined strength of both platforms enables businesses to build digital workflows to more efficiently automate work.
This partnership will bring a new digital automation advantage to workflows as they traverse people, processes and machine systems
FACT #7
ServiceNow is a recognised leader in digital process automation (DPA). Named by analyst house Forrester in its Wave leadership index, ServiceNow attributes this recognition to its Creator Workflows, which offer a dedicated digital process automation platform for customers to drive innovation at speed using lowcode software development technologies.
ServiceNow Creator Workflows are designed to empower citizen developers with prebuilt templates and lowcode tools. Purpose-built for extended reuse, these technologies speed application and service delivery with modular building blocks created by professional developers. A perfect example of DPA-in-motion, users can harness the power of ServiceNow Creator Workflows to create a unified application experience across enterprise systems on a single cloud platform.
ServiceNow Creator Workflows are designed to empower citizen developers with prebuilt templates and low-code tools. Purpose-built for extended reuse, these technologies speed application and service delivery
FACT #8
ServiceNow is also a leader in enterprise service management (ESM). ServiceNow attributes this recognition to its key differentiator of offering a single platform, single data model and single architecture for ESM. Its continued innovation in this space sees ServiceNow deliver platform features such as AI/ML and natural language query.
ServiceNow’s approach to creating an effective functional enterprise service catalogue is departmentally holistic and comprehensive. Where traditional service catalogue efforts see a business limit its publication of services to those functions provided solely by the IT department, ServiceNow advocates a more wide-ranging approach so that organisations are able to catalogue services offered throughout the business, by all departments. The resulting ESM function that emerges is one similar to a commercial storefront where consumers enjoy access, purchasing power and freedom of choice.
FACT #9
ServiceNow has an expansive, progressive and genuine approach to Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging. The company has fostered an open and ongoing dialogue to empower employees to break their silence in order to increase everybody’s awareness and understanding. Insisting on driving talk into unified action, ServiceNow insists it is committed to making sure that conversations, work and progress continue. As president and CEO Bill McDermott has said, the organisation’s approach to diversity, inclusion and belonging is an opportunity for ServiceNow to be different and better. “I’m personally and professionally committed to that with everything in my body, everything in my soul,” said McDermott.
ServiceNow’s full leadership board has backed a five-point plan to accelerate the company’s work in this area and create meaningful, sustainable change. This encompasses areas denoted as workforce training, equitable processes, policies and practices, employees’ voice and a sense of belonging, lobbying for good and recruiting and career advancement.
FACT #10
Bill McDermott has stated his ambition is to become ‘the defining enterprise software company of the twenty-first century’ in no uncertain terms. For him, that means being an organisation that helps employees, customers, shareholders and communities thrive and creates a positive impact on the world. Now working to deliver upon a carbon net-zero status, the company is accelerating decarbonisation with what it calls ambitious short-term targets and medium-term science-based targets. ServiceNow’s global impact report sets out the organisation’s goal to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 across its entire value chain.
On the road ahead, ServiceNow’s mission may now be to make work, work better, for people, organisations and the planet.
This partnership will bring a new digital automation advantage to workflows as they traverse people, processes and machine systems
ServiceNow Creator Workflows are designed to empower citizen developers with prebuilt templates and low-code tools. Purpose-built for extended reuse, these technologies speed application and service delivery
