When Service Mapping is explained, it is often described by how it works. For example, one might hear this: “Service Mapping builds upon your Discovery and CMDB… uses no-code patterns, tag-based mapping, traffic-based discovery, and data ingestion from existing tools to automatically generate initial maps and then uses machine- learning to refine results.” That sounds amazing to the people who already understand the technology and want to improve their infrastructure management. The technology is actually amazing, but how does one explain the value of Service Mapping to a business executive who needs to make investment decisions? That business case needs to describe the problems resolved by the solution and the value it will bring to your organization. This is the “Why do I need Service Mapping” pitch.
The value of Service Mapping can be realized in these key business objective areas:
- Service definition: IT organizations often don’t have a complete understanding of how their business services are delivered. They may not know how to structure their services.
- Operations Management: Complex environments can’t be managed with tribal knowledge or spreadsheets; knowledge of the relationships of infrastructure and inventory is critical to meeting SLA’s, reducing outages, or improving MTTR. Hybrid environments that contain on-premise infrastructure and cloud data centers require a more robust means of managing those services. Client satisfaction can improve because services are more reliable, and the IT department can deliver innovation more frequently.
- Risk Management: Manual processes for managing assets create risks for audit and compliance failures. There may also be security risks exposed if infrastructure goes undetected or tracked.
- Optimization of investments: Once the infrastructure and applications become visible, it is easier to identify underperforming assets. It can also help to shift human resources who were once tasked with monitoring the environments to something more value-add like enhancing new services.
Cask provides a unique approach based on your primary business objective requirements. We understand that implementing new technology capabilities alone does not always achieve those business benefits expected. We also help you technically achieve Service Mapping success by identifying critical services, discovering their components, and mapping those components into services. We work in an iterative methodology aimed at prioritizing your greatest needs first. For existing ServiceNow customers, we can also leverage other capabilities such as Event Management and Cloud Insights; automating the detection and resolution of a potential incident before the customer is impacted is critical to customer experience and employee efficiency. Below is a summary of our solutions anchored around the problems listed above. As you can see, Service Mapping alone can be incredibly beneficial; bundling the Service Mapping capabilities with other ServiceNow features can significantly enhance the expected value. For more information, please contact us.
