ServiceNow decerebralises to build Service Relationship Management

Here is an interesting example of decerebralisation – the process of making what had been a task or function of some consequence, inconvenience or importance, no longer one that needs to be thought about or considered; in other words, making it a `no brainer’.

ServiceNow has upgraded its capabilities so that users across the enterprise can instantly access applications and services running on ServiceNow from any mobile device. But this, many will say, is hardly new. Indeed, the company itself has integrated mobile connectivity for some time.

But the underlying story is more relevant, in that it also involves the Apps Creator service, which in the view of ServiceNow Senior Product Manager, Stephen Mann, is the embodiment of what Gartner Research calls `Citizen Programming’. Apps Creator allows non-programmers to build the applications they require for themselves. In practice, such people will usually come from the business management side of company, and will know what they want to achieve.

A classic use case, according to Mann, would be where a business manager in the hotels business sees the need for a new room booking application. The types of data required is well understood, the locations of the necessary data are known and all that is required is a toolset that allows the manager to build the accesses to such data and construct the order in which the data is to be processed. With the right tools, this is a task that a business manager should be able to complete faster than briefing a developer.

The major enhancement Apps Creator has received is the ability to build applications where teams work in parallel. This is complemented by the ability to publish the applications, and any subsequent updates, to the service catalogue – and therefore all team members – with just one mouse click.

This one click publishing ability is the key decerebraliser, as Mann pointed out.

“The enhancements allow users to change applications and publish the changes to all existing users of the applications at the same time, without having to re-engineer anything. They can just publish it and forget it. Till now, any change has meant that applications have to be re-engineered for each mobile type and then rolled out to users, which can cause significant time wastage,” he said.

This ability for business managements to now undertake quite complex, team-oriented applications and service development work, and publish it instantly to all relevant users with a single click, changes the dynamic of how businesses can adapt to changing business patterns and trends. It means they should be able to react not only more rapidly, but also with a much more `fix-forget-and-start using’ approach, which is the key objective of decerebralising IT’s relationship with business.   

It also forms an important part of ServiceNow’s wider objective of building what it calls a Service Relationship Management environment. Part of this is extending the reach of the company beyond providing a service provisioning and integration platform for users and on to providing selected horizontal market business-oriented applications.

The first of these is the recently announced Human Resources Case Management system, HR Service Automation. This new application makes it easier for organisations to automate HR case management and manage the service relationships between HR and employees.  This is achieved through an online storefront, similar to the ones people use at home for purchasing personal goods and services.

HR Service Automation eliminates the volumes of phone calls and email exchanges it takes for organisations to execute HR service delivery and gives control, insight and productivity back to HR management. 

In the typical enterprise, most interactions between employees and the HR department are still based on manual, unstructured, communications - email, telephone calls or personal visits. This masks what are actually simple and repeatable request/fulfill relationships. ServiceNow HR Service Automation complements human capital management software, such as Workday, by providing a self-service, online storefront for employees to make requests to HR. 

In addition to general HR requests, out-of-the-box categories include questions about benefits, vacations and leave, payroll, employee relations and HR systems. This catalogue experience combines with process automation to fulfil common requests and eliminates unstructured communications from the HR service delivery process. HR requests are auto-assigned, scheduled, tracked and reported for a higher level of productivity and efficiency.

Organisations can customise their service catalogue items and define their own processes for workflow and automation and create custom reports within the application. They can also use ServiceNow Performance Analytics for KPI-driven dashboards and scorecards, historical trending and predictive modelling.

Though Mann would not be drawn on the question, it seems clear that this HR package will not be the only example of its kind and that ServiceNow will be adding. This is because a lot of the background work needed to make the ServiceNow platform suitable as the basis of a service aggregation business now seems to be in place. For example, Man indicated that the latest release now has vendor performance management capabilities built in, which will be a key management requirement for any business looking to build an aggregated service package.

As Mann put it, “users can now manage a portfolio of different service providers.”

Though this certainly applies directly to large enterprises looking to build hybrid cloud business solutions, it could readily play a key part in the company becoming a cornerstone of many service providers. And the company is seeing a change developing in its partner community that reflects this trend.

“Our partner ecosystem is evolving,” Mann said. “it started out having a geographic orientation, but the future now looks as though it will include a new breed of partner, those that provide bespoke services and applications.”