Customisation vs Configuration

February 20, 2019
by Nicole Bailey

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.

Resource

Where to make styling changes in your Service Portal

February 11, 2019February 13, 2019
by Nicole Bailey

Demonstrated by –
Darren You
SERVICENOW TECHNICAL CONSULTANT
Tribe – ITSM

Resource

Software Audits – Don’t be at their mercy.

January 31, 2019February 10, 2019
by Dan Pirone

One of the big software houses are sending their auditors, are you ready??

Having a good software asset management strategy along with the right tool can help you.

You are happily going on with managing your IT operations and juggling a stream of demands from the business when you get that email. Auditors walk in the door and start doing an audit on our installations and could you please complete the following 300 worksheets prior to our team arriving at your door step next week.

Here are a few things to consider:

• Have you made any ad-hoc purchases of software lately?
• Do you track your installation and licence usage?
• Have you got a central repository of software and licences?
• Do you track your renewal dates and renew your subscriptions?
• Do you have complete visibility of your application landscape?
• Are you up to date with any licence rules or changes to your key applications?

In your mind did these questions spark any panic or doubt? If yes, you and your organisation may be at risk, legally and financially.

How to prepare:

• Review your Software asset management strategy
• Asses your tool-set
• Consider ServiceNow and the Software Asset Management offering
• Talk to an expert like us, in the field
• Get sorted before it is too late.

Written by –
Dan Pirone
SERVICENOW SENIOR CONSULTANT
Tribe – ITOM

Resource

Service Mapping vs Discovery

January 31, 2019February 4, 2019
by Nicole Bailey

Presented by –
Fed Mantagazza
SERVICENOW CONSULTANT
Tribe – ITOM

News

Introducing your business to ServiceNow

January 29, 2019February 3, 2019
by Nicole Bailey

How driving awareness will ensure the ongoing success of your ServiceNow program.

Once your ServiceNow program has been implemented, it’s important to introduce the rest of the organization to this new service. Expanding service management helps elevate the platform to bring value across the enterprise and all teams interacting with it. Here’s how to introduce your organisation to your newly implement ServiceNow platform:

Lay down strong foundations.

During the implementation process it is key to introduce departments to the upcoming change. Knowing, ahead of time, why the company is changing, what has already been accomplished and having a great success story is foundational to the creation of marketing and communication materials.

The Role of Organizational Change Management

Organizational Change Management (OCM) is the accumulation of activities related to communication, training, and measurement of success about the new capabilities introduced to the organization. For the purpose of ServiceNow, OCM is about appropriate communication & training, pre-launch, to ensure the organization is prepared for appropriate adoption of the new capabilities being introduced.

The Role of Governance

Governance of the ServiceNow platform includes platform, capabilities, and business technology. Platform governance is focused on the technical good practices to effectively “keep the lights on,” maintain what is currently on the platform, and manage basic activities such as upgrades.

Introducing ServiceNow for Service Management

Marketing includes many complex concepts and execution methods. For the sake of marketing the capabilities of what the team can do with the ServiceNow platform, introduce the value the team can provide and the issues that can be solved. This is done through communicating what has already been accomplished and how it aligns to other teams’ service management needs.

Methods of delivering a positive message about change

Two methods for introducing ServiceNow for service management to the enterprise: •

Driving Awareness
Targeted Approach

Driving awareness activities include:

Success stories
Sharing the road map
Go-live celebrations
In-platform advertising •
Company-wide communications
Being visible

Targeted approach approach includes :

Understanding what the ServiceNow platform is best suited to solve
Utilising a coach
Identifying which departments have an issue that aligns
Identifying who is responsible for solving those issues
Approaching the person and asking for a meeting
Conducting the initial meeting – confirm value
Bring in the ServiceNow account team

Prepare the New Service

Whether another department is considering ServiceNow because of a targeted approach, or because of general awareness, once they express interest in ServiceNow, it’s important to prepare them for the process of implementation. This includes the following:

Educating the other department on the internal demand, project, and release processes
Documenting the department’s requirements
Understanding the value and outcomes the department wants to achieve

What’s in It for them?

Ensure the department is fully aware of the value of the platform as it relates to them, ensuring a plan and value statements specific to the team are included. It’s not enough during this crucial time to present ServiceNow as a whole. Instead, focus attention on achievable goals related to specific business issues the department is experiencing

Plan for success

Be prepared to explain what will change for the interested department with visuals and workflow scenarios that explain the current user experience and process compared with the proposed updates, ensuring these proposals have not been created without intervention from representatives within the department.

Determine departmental maturity

During this phase, prior to kicking off development, it’s important to identify and share the maturity level of the interested department’s service delivery model.

Measuring success

Once the ServiceNow team and the interested department have planned for success, it’s imperative to determine how that success will be measured. A good place to start is with surveys. KPIs can be transitioned from the previously- implemented process model, but they generally don’t consider fulfiller and user satisfaction with the new program. This is a key component to determining the success of the implementation, and surveys can be built right into the instance where the activities are completed. This will provide insight into possible defects or future enhancements, and it provides a communication conduit between the ServiceNow team and end users.

Next steps

Now that the framework and ideas around how to introduce ServiceNow service management to the enterprise have been outlined, start thinking about the correct next steps.

Is there an upcoming event or go-live these recommendations can be incorporated into?

Create a success story
Plug data into an infographic template
Schedule a webinar. Don’t necessarily start company-wide; test it out on a group of fulfiller users associated to current services, and provide them with program updates
Start up a monthly governance meeting – pull in the Executive Sponsor and service owners, or kick-start the
platform team. Remind everyone why the journey was started in the first place and how much it could be.

Article adapted, with permission, from ServiceNow Success.

Read full article here : LINK

Source article used with permission

Resource

Madrid changes – A cheat sheet

January 28, 2019January 29, 2019
by Nicole Bailey

Madrid Features for Store Developers

Wipe away those January blues as its that time of the year again when ServiceNow’s next major release, Madrid, is almost upon us. Last week we opened up Early Access for Technology Partners to get their hands on Madrid, running it through its paces and preparing to submit their apps for certification.

The Madrid release has lots of great new features including some that we are very excited about and many other improvements across the platform that will enable technology partners to build apps on the platform that make work, work better.

In this post we’ll provide an overview of all the significant features and improvements that Technology Partners will want to be aware of, whether you are building apps for the ServiceNow Store or OEM. Over the coming weeks look out for more articles that deep dive into some of the specific areas and show how they can be useful to app publishers.

How does ServiceNow work with a core HR solution?

January 14, 2019January 14, 2019
by Clarence Mok

How does ServiceNow work with a core HR solution?

With ServiceNow’s HR Service Delivery app (HRSD) core HR solutions such as Workday and SuccessFactors can be used alongside ServiceNow to provide a total HR solution improving your employee’s engagement and experience.

The ServiceNow HR Service Delivery application will help your company to standardise documentation, interaction, and fulfillment of employee inquiries and requests in the scoped version of HR that includes:

• HR Service Portal
• HR Case Management
• HR Knowledge Base
• Dashboard & Reporting

“The ServiceNow HR Service Delivery application improves the employee service experience by automating HR interactions and providing a single platform for all HR services.”

ServiceNow HR Service Delivery will enable employees to:

search for HR knowledge articles that answer employee’s HR related questions and quickly access top-rated articles view informational and training videos
view employee’s manager, co-workers, direct reports, or group organization chart with contact information
view announcements and upcoming events from company management
access documentation, company information, or suggested reading
link to the HR Ticket Page to view employee’s HR cases, requests, and assigned tasks.
view requested approvals and cases or tasks awaiting approval
communicate with HR through email or chat with an HR specialist
accept or reject HR cases or tasks for HR specialists
approve HR cases or tasks for managers
create and distribute reports that show the current state of instance data for HR management and specialists to Reporting functionality
configure and display multiple reporting, and other widgets on a single screen

Enable’s approach has been designed from experience delivering enterprise HR solution across a diverse industry spectrum, and clients of ranging scale and size.

We will approach the implementation of ServiceNow through distinct phases using an Agile Methodology.

Book a session with our sales team right to explore how we could help you on your HR transformation journey.
Contact us at info@enableps.com for more HR Solutions.

Resource

Role Allocations in ServiceNow

January 13, 2019January 14, 2019
by Nicole Bailey

Presenter – Vishal Vernekar

Senior Consultant – ServiceNow

Resource

How to set up send/undo in Microsoft 365 webmail

November 28, 2018
by Nicole Bailey

Presenter – Nicole Bailey — Marketing Consultant – Enable Professional Services

Resource

How CSM can improve the way you work!

November 11, 2018December 10, 2018
by Siddarth Tiwari

This blog will help you uncover major Customer Service Management (CSM) offerings and will answer how can you use CSM to expedite your service behaviour.

The magic of Customer Service starts with getting to know your customer better. CSM provides you with simple but powerful objects to set-up structured data of your customer accounts and partners. You can identify sites and points of contact for your customers. You can also make system aware of entitlements your organization abides with your customer. These milestones elevate your customer service journey and help you serve them better. To go one step further, you can also authorize your contacts based on defining their respective responsibilities.

CSM offers you 2 major offerings –

1. Case Management – Cases act as very potential façade to capture any sort of customer interaction and later triage it into incident, requests, problems or simple enquiries.
2. Field Services Management – How often do you experience not knowing when a field engineer will get to your location to quickly help you resolve an urgent issues that you are facing.
With CSM – Field Services Management, you can now view available appointment windows, make a selection, and book a service appointment from the service portal. All this from the ease of your laptop/mobile. If you require immediate attention, the service desk dispatch agent can also view the map and assign field engineers that are near to you so that less time is spent on travelling and your issue can be quickly worked on. This provides transparency and ensures that you get all the attention you need to get your issue resolved

With self-serve capability, you can let your B2B and B2C users login into your own CSM portal. You can grant restricted privileges to some contacts in your customer’s domain to manage their own end users. This is like giving power back to the business where your customer can take care of some volumes of transactions like user provisioning etc, and thereby freeing up your Service desk resources for more potent cases.

Customer service management is a very powerful plugin available within your ServiceNow platform with many upgrades queued up in upcoming releases. ServiceNow is investing heavily based on best practices learnt from different customer service domains and this is definitely a great time to leverage benefits from this out-of-box utility.

Category: Resource

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

Why then companies customise?

One of the big software houses are sending their auditors, are you ready??

Having a good software asset management strategy along with the right tool can help you.

How driving awareness will ensure the ongoing success of your ServiceNow program.

Methods of delivering a positive message about change

Prepare the New Service

Next steps

Madrid Features for Store Developers

How does ServiceNow work with a core HR solution?

“The ServiceNow HR Service Delivery application improves the employee service experience by automating HR interactions and providing a single platform for all HR services.”

Presenter – Vishal Vernekar

Senior Consultant – ServiceNow