The smart way to digitally transform your business with ServiceNow

5 steps to successful digitization with the SeviceNow platform

Joanna Lesinska
Principal ESM Consultant in Projects & Consulting Team in Capgemini Poland

The ongoing pandemic has irrefutably shown how important digital transformation is for an organization’s success, especially when the availability and reliability of IT services can determine the company’s existence or not. Therefore, companies, previously skeptical about digitalization, have become more open to new solutions, as well as innovative and agile approaches to doing business. Read in Polish >>>

The challenges of digital transformation

The year 2020 has almost turned our world upside down. It has affected many aspects of our lives, not only our approach to health, contact with loved ones, or ways of spending leisure time, but it has also forced many companies to rapidly change the way they do business. Almost overnight, many organizations have had to switch to a remote work mode without any preparations, and quickly change their operations and business models, not only to remain competitive in the market but often to stay there at all.

According to IDC, the challenges posed to companies by the pandemic have confirmed that the direction toward digital transformation that the global economy has been taking for some time now is the right one – by 2022, approximately 65% of global GDP will be digitized, and the total value of the direct investment in digital transformation, between 2020 and 2023, is expected to exceed $6.8 trillion. However, such a high level of interest in digitization is by no means an indication that all of these investments will be successful. According to another study conducted by IDC, on average, only about 26% of organizations undertaking digital transformation will achieve a return on such an investment.

This low success rate may be due to a fragmented approach to IT vendor selection – many companies choose to work with several vendors simultaneously, offering different solutions and delivering different platforms. As a result, organizations get processes, data, and expert teams that can’t effectively interoperate between the available platforms. This type of fragmentation of different solutions does not later bring the planned revenue growth or improved market position and the business does not grow as expected when the decision to digitize was made.

ServiceNow to support your digitization process

Many of Capgemini’s clients face similar challenges, where the lack of integration between processes and the fragmentation of IT services blocks the company’s ability to grow, despite very high investments in digitization. In such cases, we propose a model that helps integrate multiple components within a single, stable tool, and provides support for different processes in one place, while minimizing manual tasks. This approach allows employees to focus on delivering measurable value to their organization while saving companies time and money.

A tool that has been helping our clients achieve such a goal for many is ServiceNow. The platform, which has been in business for nearly 15 years, is one of the leading platforms supporting digital transformation for nearly 7,000 clients worldwide operating across all major sectors. Capgemini, as an Elite ServiceNow Partner, supports many organizations during their transformation to move from a distributed multi-vendor model to an integrated single platform. This helps to break down silos and integrate multiple processes while maintaining data transparency and emphasizing the ultimate value to the business.

What is ServiceNow and how does it work?

The success of this approach relies heavily on 5 key aspects of ServiceNow that can significantly impact the result of an organization’s digitization.

1. Automation – let yourself get a help out

The challenge facing many companies going through a digital transformation is not only to achieve the measurable business goals that digitization poses, but also to ensure operational fluidity for their employees. The key to effectively combining these two elements is to automate the most basic tasks where employees usually spend the most time, and which not only do not produce measurable business results but also require the employee to repeat the same tasks, not using the full potential of people. This results not only in a lack of productivity of employees, but also low customer satisfaction with received services, which translates into reduced costs for the company.

ServiceNow helps you get out of this risk by introducing automation for managing IT services, HR and even collaboration with external customers. Through the use of artificial intelligence, defects reported by employees can be identified much faster, diagnosed, and an appropriate solution proposed directly to the reporter or, if more specialized knowledge is required, assigned to the appropriate technical team. As a result, incidents are resolved faster, communication between teams is more efficient, and employees can smoothly return to their duties.

Processes that require tight integration of multiple departments and disparate procedures can also be automated, e.g., the admission of a new employee can now be automated in a way that allows the employee to start work as soon as possible with minimal administrative involvement or reduced contact with the IT department, even when working remotely. For new admissions, organizations that have used automation of this process have reported an average 25% increase in new employee productivity compared to before the automated solutions were introduced.

2. A fortress conquered – access to IT anytime, and anywhere

In many organizations, the IT department is considered an inaccessible, closely guarded secret, and access to IT services, new equipment or the ability to report a defect is almost unattainable.

If it is possible to report a need for equipment or IT services, receive appropriate approval and place an order, an employee faces another obstacle – practically no insight into the progress of his or her application or problem solution. There is no communication between employees and the IT department or clear, transparent timeframes according to which IT services are delivered.

ServiceNow was able to improve the collaboration between employees and IT departments and dispel the sense of „unavailability” of the IT support. This has been made possible through the use of multiple communication channels through which the employee can easily either find the answer to his problem himself or forward the request to the appropriate expert. The employee can use many user-friendly tools, such as a chatbot, a knowledge base for employees, a mobile application, or a store-like catalog of services.

Using the above-mentioned channels, the employee, without moving from his/her place, can send a request for hardware, software, or IT service, as well as report a defect using clear forms with the use of the mobile application, web browser, or chat. Once the request is approved, it will be automatically forwarded either to a manager for appropriate approval, or directly to the appropriate technical team, and the employee will be able to track the progress of the request and the time remaining for its delivery at all times.

By leveraging the solutions available within the ServiceNow platform, companies can reduce IT support team response time by up to 75% and the employee does not have to be physically in the office to be in constant contact with their IT department.

3. Together we can do more – teams collaboration is a must

Another challenge faced by companies undergoing digital transformation is fragmentation and a chaotic value chain. Many teams try to achieve a similar effect, but they forget about communication and synchronization of their actions, which usually ends up, at best, in postponing the realization of a given goal or, worse yet, incomplete business failure or abandonment of a project. The need to improve team collaboration has been highlighted by the ongoing pandemic when contact between teams now working remotely has become even more difficult. What can make a culture of collaboration between teams more effective is integration – systems, departments, and processes must be based on a single, common model across the organization, supporting agile teams based on continuous information share. This will enable companies to accomplish even the most ambitious tasks, the success of which depends on the smooth and efficient cooperation of many teams.

Such projects can be controlled directly from the tool using a special module for agile project management, and the members of the project teams themselves have the possibility of constant communication and consistent access to the necessary information.

Each record change or status update is recorded and reaching the person responsible for a given activity is extremely easy. This not only improves data security but also enhances collaboration and protects against blurred accountability.

4. Data doesn’t lie – learn, manage and plan with intelligent reports

ServiceNow allows you to take a holistic approach to digital transformation and cover the entire organization. This gives managers at various levels wide access to data such as the effectiveness of their teams, information on the quality of IT services, or insight into the level of satisfaction with available services.

This enables more efficient management within the organization, better decision-making, acting on „hard data”, and preventing crises before they even happen. Automated, transparent, and easy to use reporting module (giving us a picture of the situation at a particular point in time) or Performance Analytics module (extending the standard reports with trends or behavioral patterns) are indispensable tools in the daily work of managers of small teams, managers of whole departments or senior directors.

Thanks to appropriately configured indicators, managers can browse trends and predictions or break down available data into stockpiles, basing their decisions on specific examples, e.g. a given problem or trend. Accurate but transparent data presentation allows managers to manage their teams more effectively while emphasizing higher priority tasks or assigning activities based on variables relevant to the organization.

The ability to track trends and predict behavior patterns allows you to identify potential threats to organizational performance on time, or if such a risk becomes too imminent – alert specific teams so they can respond promptly.

Performance Analytics gives an organization the possibility to compare its performance with other players on the market thanks to Benchmarks functionality, where similar indicators are presented against the average for similar organizations, e.g. within a given service sector.

5. Tool for business, not a business for tool – adjust the platform to your needs

ServiceNow is one of the few tools available on the market supporting the digitalization of business, which gives so much freedom in adapting its functionalities to the needs and individual guidelines of a given organization.

From visual identity, to complete freedom in creating user experience for employees, to specific modules and applications for specialized teams, ServiceNow gives you the freedom to customize the out-of-the-box version to meet your business needs.

With built-in configuration solutions, employees at different levels and in different departments can have the interface tailored to their specific team requirements. What is more, each employee can adjust the look and feel of the tool to his or her own needs (of course, within the limits of rights resulting from their role), thus facilitating the performance of everyday tasks.

Developers with different levels of experience supporting organizations in their digital transformation have a wide range of tools thanks to which they can implement and release modules and applications for specific teams, sometimes with practically zero additional coding.

The pandemic has meant that digitalization of business has ceased to be a luxury afforded to a few, and has started to be a necessity, often conditioning the success of a company on the market. However, regardless of whether the ongoing epidemic forces us to do so, it is worth considering a digital transformation of the entire organization, based on an integrated model that will ensure long-term success on many levels, rather than short-term change introduced under the influence of the ongoing epidemic.

Check out professional development opportunities with Capgemini Poland!