Customisation vs Configuration

Two buzzwords that are often thrown around the IT space are Customisation and Configuration. Broadly speaking customisation is a feature, extension, or modification that requires custom coding or some form of unique implementation. A configuration is when you leverage the native tool’s functionality in the system to change its behavior or features.

With ServiceNow… why is it important to understand the difference between configuration and Customization?

Firstly let’s look at a re-working our two definitions to fit ServiceNow.

Customise: “To modify existing code (program, scripts), the schema or to add custom code that meets specific requirements.”

Configure: “To make use of tools capability in the application to meet specific requirements.”

Why then should companies consider using configuration when implementing an out of the box ServiceNow solution?  Because, in most cases, custom code tends to break in an upgrade, and ServiceNow upgrade their platform every 6 months on average. Configuration means less effort and less risk. This is because tools within the application are being used to make changes in a way that the application was expressly designed to have changes made. Configuration is inherently better because it is working within the application.

Why then companies customise?

Because in most of the cases they tend to echo out of the box tool capability sometimes due to lack of expertise, mostly due to lack of visibility to the product roadmap and some extent to fulfill some unique requirement. This, in turn, leads to added complications in tool support and upgrade.

Enable has a robust set of propriety configuration tools that allow extreme flexibility using configured rules to meet specific business requirements.

A guiding principle Enable Professional Services is to approach all projects being as pragmatic as possible our team uses this approach when implementing ServiceNow is to rely on the configuration as much as possible and only customise when a requirement can’t be met with a simple configuration.