Now on Now: How ServiceNow Uses Performance Analytics to Drive Business Outcomes
- July 18, 2017
The journey to work at lightspeed is about leveraging automation and actionable intelligence to steadily improve business velocity, insight, and the user experience. Because everyone at ServiceNow depends on IT platforms to help them to do their jobs, IT needs to take the lead in driving improvements in operations. Let me share an example of how we’re using ServiceNow Performance Analytics to improve our IT service delivery.
In our personal lives, fitness trackers and other measurement devices and apps display real-time metrics that show us where we are and how we’re performing against our goals. Performance Analytics brings the same capability to our workplace by enabling us to set, track and analyze progress against objectives that match the function they support. It connects our people with better data in less time, helping us to focus on the things that really matter and make better decisions to affect outcomes.
Initially, like in many IT organizations, measuring IT key performance indicators (KPIs) at ServiceNow was virtually all manual. We’d compile data into spreadsheets and send it to the service owner, who would scrub and analyze the data and paste it into PowerPoint for review. In management review meetings, if the data were challenged or unclear, we’d leave with as many questions as decisions. We knew there had to be a better way.
At first, we simply leveraged the native reporting capabilities of our IT Service Management solution. But now Performance Analytics enables us to go much further by providing us actionable data and a real-time view of our KPIs. For example, when a new ticket comes in, an IT manager can use the service management platform to see who is available to resolve the issue and estimate likely days to completion. Since Performance Analytics is embedded within our IT Cloud Service, we can also generate dashboards and reports on the fly, revealing patterns and correlations in our service metrics, and giving us the additional context to make better decisions with confidence. Leading indicators also allow us to get a handle on a problem before it surfaces, and improve areas that were once blind spots.
The following metrics demonstrate the value that Performance Analytics has brought to our IT service delivery processes:
With Performance Analytics, we’ve seen solid improvement in three top-priority areas for IT:
Although this example was about IT, Performance Analytics is delivering benefits across many departments at ServiceNow. We are empowering people throughout our value chain to make better decisions and track against goals – at the strategic, operational and individual level. To learn more check out our YouTube video.
I look forward to sharing more Now on Now examples of how ServiceNow is delivering work at lightspeed across every corner of our company.