It has been a great year for ServiceNow and its users. It is one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies on the market and has been partnering with other technology companies to further this reputation. At the 2017 Cloud Excellence Awards, ServiceNow won the award for best Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) in Hong Kong. This past year has brought companies innovative solutions for automation across their entire enterprise; from HR onboarding to guided application tours, ServiceNow is expanding to become the technology backbone for many industry leaders. In this article, we take you through some of the highlights of 2017 for ServiceNow, including important acquisitions and trends that point to even more innovative features going forward.
Innovations to HR, IT, and CSM with ServiceNow Jakarta Release
The ServiceNow Jakarta release offered new features for security, customer service, HR, and business applications that further improved information sharing and automation. Its improved performance has lists and forms loading much faster than before, and new HR features help employees gain control over basic tasks and information.
Security Improvements
This version improved a company’s ability to assess threats to security and take proactive approaches to threat mitigation. Security teams now have access to trusted security circles, which lets professionals share information with peers about known and unknown vulnerabilities and threats. External data about threats helps security teams resolve issues quickly and document the process for others. Vendor risk management helps reduce risks with sensitive data access, vendor issue reporting, and constant assessment. By automating those assessment processes, IT staff has a reduced burden while improving the overall security of the company.
Customer Portals and CSM
As customer demands grow, many companies are scrambling to find scalable CSM solutions while maintaining a high level of service. New customer service communities helped teams resolve customer issues much faster. These communities allow customers to search for and find answers to questions and resolve issues quickly. This independent access improves customer outcomes and satisfaction.
HR Automation and Service Center
Human Resources departments benefited greatly from the Jakarta update, particularly with the onboarding process. Automated onboarding for HR professionals helps set up new employees for success. By automating tasks between departments, employees and managers can set up security clearance, technology requests, and complete HR tasks. The Employee Service Center offers all employees a portal to find information about benefits and more without waiting for a direct response from HR staff.
Custom Application Guided Tour
More and more companies are investing in custom application development to meet specific industry needs. Some companies partner with certified tech companies while others build applications themselves. The guided tour designer offered an easy and intuitive walkthrough to navigate custom applications through the ServiceNow platform. Training employees on new applications and systems got a whole lot easier with this version.
Bringing New Experiences, Design, and Technology to ServiceNow
For ServiceNow, 2017 was a year filled with exciting new acquisitions and partnerships. Adding new machine learning capabilities and technology integrations promise to further improve the platform and make it an invaluable business tool for successful companies:
At the beginning of the year, ServiceNow acquired DxContinuum, a machine-learning company based in Silicon Valley, with the intention of adding its predictive modeling to improve automation and request categorization. The added capability will allow companies to leverage their platform to resolve service issues, predict outcomes, and automate actions.
Following this announcement, in February ServiceNow and IBM agreed to a multi-year partnership that will allow the platform to incorporate cognitive tech into its automation services. Combined with an added push to bring machine learning into service automation, this promises to increase the accuracy and response time of the ServiceNow engine while reducing manual work and enhancing workflow efficiency.
In October, ServiceNow announced integration with Slack, one of its most requested service integrations. This partnership promises, as explained by the Slack Team, to “bring together ServiceNow’s System of Action with Slack’s messaging platform for transparent communication and faster resolution.” With this integration, teams can more effectively communicate, delegate tasks, discuss projects, and track progress.
An upcoming acquisition will bring the work of Telepathy, a firm specializing in UI/UX design, to ServiceNow’s platform to improve its user interface. Its current design for IT services is intuitive and user-friendly, this acquisition will bring similar innovation to user experiences in other business areas, like HR and customer services. This acquisition aims to improve a company’s ability to understand users, use insights to prioritize strategic plans, implement plans through design, and gain user feedback to test design solutions.
In 2017, ServiceNow furthered its initiative to automate processes beyond IT and into all areas of an enterprise. Its latest version shows their dedication to this through automated employee onboarding, self-service customer portals to access information, and automated vendor assessment to reduce security risks. Its new partnerships show a promising future of AI integration, machine learning, and further improvements to the user experience.
As a ServiceNow Technology Partner, Infocenter can help. Contact us today to learn more.