What is our primary use case?
I digitize things within an organization, and ServiceNow today has a lot of products for the enterprise with ready-to-use modules that you can install. The out-of-box capability provides a lot of features without requiring customization or extensive work. ServiceNow provides solutions across HR, customer service, and security, which is what I use it for.
Incident response and resolution workflows are handled with ServiceNow. There are out-of-the-box flows for IT incidents that only require configuring a few assignment tools. It is primarily configuration, but they do it fairly well.
Typically, the main steps I take when implementing ServiceNow are engaging with clients and gathering all requirements. I thoroughly ensure that the instance has been acquired and there are enough licenses. We maintain a minimum of three environments: dev, test, and prod. Then we ensure we are on the latest version of ServiceNow that the client wants. For example, if the requirement is to achieve something as a business imperative, we check if the ServiceNow solution meets that requirement. Those are the kinds of things we discuss.
What is most valuable?
Over the years, ServiceNow has streamlined my IT service management processes to a very standard level. I do not use ServiceNow extensively; we implement ServiceNow, so we are consultants implementing ServiceNow for clients. From what I have seen over the years, the ITSM processes are now very streamlined and very aligned to what I recommend.
What I appreciate about ServiceNow is that it is open. It does not restrict me from doing many things. ServiceNow is very open and gives me a lot of flexibility to integrate and build legacy applications with many functionalities.
The feature that has had the biggest impact on my productivity is the productivity feature itself. I think when used correctly, the Agent Workspace and all the AI products that ServiceNow is coming up with, such as Agent Assist and the virtual chatbot, promote self-service and allow help desk agents to leverage many features rather than reinventing features each time.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see an improvement in their licensing cost.
Feature-wise, I do not have any features that I would like to see included or enhanced. If I had been asked this question five or six years back, I would have probably mentioned a few, but ServiceNow is doing pretty well now.
For how long have I used the solution?
I recently experienced ServiceNow and am currently working on a couple of projects.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not experienced any issues or hiccups with the stability of ServiceNow.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I find ServiceNow to be scalable. There are old implementations where customers tend to struggle with storage, but I think ServiceNow is generally pretty scalable.
How are customer service and support?
I would evaluate the solution's technical support as responsive and very good. Their support is now what used to be called high support earlier.
How was the initial setup?
For the modules that have been on ServiceNow for more than four or five years, I find the initial setup process pretty straightforward. Organizations that have implemented ServiceNow have shared a lot of case studies and their investments in terms of time and effort. For the newer modules, it sometimes gets a little complex, but I think it is still fairly easy.
What about the implementation team?
I need at least a team of five to six people for ServiceNow, including developers, testers, business process consultants, and project managers, covering all the necessary roles and teams.
What was our ROI?
The advice I would give to others looking into implementing ServiceNow is to invest in it only if you are considering a long-term strategy and you have your requirements very clear. Otherwise, organizations tend to invest in ServiceNow and then lose interest over time, which leads to not observing the right ROI on ServiceNow.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I find the pricing of ServiceNow to be high and somewhat reasonable. It does not always bring value for my customer's side. For example, when I compared the ServiceNow PPM product to a competitive product like Jira, which is an Atlassian product, they were offering better functionalities at one-tenth of the price. ServiceNow has that platform strategy, and there are definitely point solutions that are sometimes better than the services offered by ServiceNow, but as a platform, ServiceNow is much better.
From the benefits perspective, the first thing ServiceNow brings to my customer's side is the total cost of ownership. Being a SaaS, you can scale up or scale down. Scaling down is not that easy, but you can scale up whatever you want. You could start small and then expand. From an investment perspective, it is more often opex than capex, which organizations like a lot.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Implementer