Many satisfied ServiceNow customers are considering reimplementing ServiceNow to take advantage of new capabilities, or to eliminate old inefficient manual processes. If this sounds like you, we want to help you avoid some of the more typical mistakes others have made in the past.
To ensure continued success on the platform, heed the voice of reimplementation experience and follow these tips from Cask artisan engineers.
10 Things to Do When Reimplementing ServiceNow
- Remove “Quick Start” update sets — Getting rid of these nasty suckers may hurt a bit at first, but in the long run you’ll save time, money and sanity every time you upgrade.
- Create a Change Management Process your teams will follow — Use reimplementation as an opportunity to look at your Change data and mine some candidates for pre-approved (Standard) changes.
- Establish a ServiceNow Platform Governance team — For solid representation, include every stakeholder group in the platform. For help, see the joint Cask-ServiceNow eBook on Platform Governance.
- Examine your CMDB — Look closely at the supporting Configuration Management Process and integrations that keep your CMDB current. Are you using Change Management (see tip #2) consistently to control and audit changes to CIs? As the capabilities of IT Operations and IT Security Operations continue to mature, CMDB importance will increase. Data in the CMDB helps your security operation understand what it needs to secure.
- Convert to Service Portal — Remove any last vestiges of CMS if you haven’t already, it is time to make the switch. Look for potential widgets you can create.
- Clean up unnecessary custom tables — After extending and creating new tables, you might now be wondering why. Are they’re still needed? What does ServiceNow currently offer? All good questions you should be asking yourself.
- Reduce your custom code — ServiceNow has introduced modules for which Cask built custom solutions years ago, now it’s time to move to the ServiceNow product.
- Revisit your reporting — Look at metrics, continual service improvement and SLAs. Are you taking advantage of everything Analytics can do for you? Are you measuring factors on which management will need to base or make decisions? See our webinar on Metrics that Matter for more information.
- Service Request cleanup! — Look closely at your Service Request population: are there any high-volume requests you can now automate? ServiceNow orchestration and automation has grown increasingly sophisticated and can save you tons of effort. On the low-volume side, meet with owners to understand why the volume is low. Is the issue awareness, training, poor performance, or just plain low usage?
- Clean up unused Knowledge Articles — If you have a lot of articles that no one ever looks at, you may need to re-examine your knowledge management process. Knowledge management is integral to any Shift Left strategy.
Getting Reimplementation Right
We’re not saying everyone needs to reimplement ServiceNow. The point is that reimplementation needs to be done right in order to be effective.
Is the platform doing what you need it to do? Learn from the past experience of others. Look at recent best practice improvements. Leverage the ServiceNow community to find out how to take your ServiceNow implementation to the next level.
Cask ensures you have synergy between ServiceNow and your other systems, as well as work processes and people, to get the best possible results for your organization.
Download ServiceNow’s Governance Best Practices
ServiceNow and Cask bring you the latest eBook on best practices for Governance with the ServiceNow tool. The purpose of this e-book is to provide you with the tools to create a governance foundation that is scalable and easy to manage. In this eBook you will learn:
- Required baseline processes for success
- Technical best practices and tips
- Links to related documents and articles
Fill out the form below to receive access to this eBook. If you are having trouble submitting this form, please contact us at info@caskllc.com.
