Orlando hosted the Knowledge17 yearly ServiceNow gathering from May 9 to May 11. Given the importance of this event, it goes without saying that ASP sent 2 consultants. It was the perfect place to meet other partners, customers and to acquire new insights about ServiceNow.
Keynote speakers, break-out sessions and labs were just a few of the many activities happening. Along with the conference itself, it offered CreatorCon* which is 3 days of learning, playing and even competing against other teams to create the best applications for ServiceNow.
* For more information on CreatorCon visit the official Knowledge website
Automated intelligence for IT Service Management
During his keynote, John Donahoe, the new CEO of ServiceNow talked about a new era of intelligence and how to bring machine learning to your everyday work. Old methods and undefined processes prevent companies to maximize output. With more data streaming in and less time to solve the issues the problem is not getting any better.
With improvements in automated intelligence, time-to-resolution accelerates, thereby cutting down the costs greatly. Historic data is being used to track performance, benchmark your services and predict what will happen. This can help indicate where the problems are and prevent future issues.
Exciting new ServiceNow features
1. ServiceNow Platform Changes
Forms will load up to 37% faster and lists up to 20%. The big improvement for Service Level Management is the Visual Timeline Dashboard. It shows a comprehensive view of all the SLAs running in the background. Automated Testing Framework can be used to perform tests on service catalog items to make sure there are no flaws in the workflow. An extension of Guided Setup is Proven Practices, where ServiceNow helps you configure your processes following their experience in successful implementations. It also contains communication guidelines to help you with your stakeholder management. Guided Tour Designer allows you to create helping annotations that will pop up when a user visits a form for the first time. Much like when you first install an app on your phone, your users can be taken on a tour of the most important features. This can also be repeated when you add new functionality to a page, allowing you to cut down on training and increase transparency towards your users.
2. IT Business Management
A new service portal for Project Portfolio Management (PPM) has been made to define dependencies for projects and individual formulas for PPM ranking systems. To allow for easier recording of time worked and better visibility on all current assignment, a designated worker portal will be available on the platform. Software Asset Management now includes modern licenses management and detection. Performance analytics added a couple of new Key Performance Indicators.
3. HR Service Management
With the HR application, it becomes easier to automate and streamline employee onboarding and other lifecycle event activities across departments. You also have the option to put an electronic signature.
Key takeaways
The breakout sessions were an opportunity to learn new things and hear from leaders within the industry. Many of these sessions were led by ServiceNow customers helping you to gain insight on what they are looking for from a ServiceNow provider. You also get some stories about how ServiceNow helped companies achieve their goal.
For example, how Toyota managed to build their Service Catalog with a single workflow driving approvals, routing and tasks for any catalog item to simplify creation, maintenance, and flexibility. Or how GE Capital managed to put their 91 systems they were using on 1 single system of records.
What can be drawn from these success stories including all these different businesses is that ServiceNow can help companies grow by making them more structured and by defining their processes. This makes the whole enterprise more efficient and increases productivity while bringing the company to the next level.
ServiceNow limitless possibilities
It is amazing to see how much work they put in to improve every aspect of the platform. Furthermore, you can also add additional functionalities to the platform by yourself. For example, there was a cocktail stand for people that just wanted to have a drink during cocktail hour.
Funny though that the cocktails were mixed with the help of a LiquorBot on a ServiceNow instance. A Raspberry Pi ran a mid-server, Rest API and handled Wi-Fi connectivity while the Arduino Uno handled relays and pump operations. The instance called out via RESTMessageV2 from a 10.000 recipe database. Mixable recipes were calculated as ingredients were added to the bot. LiquorBot’s pumps were accurate enough to dispense 1 gram.
While this kind of experience might be more useful for one company than the other it just shows the endless possibilities of the ServiceNow platform.
How can you benefit from Knowledge17?
There were 120 hands on labs covering a large range of different applications and how to use them well.
For example, one of these labs taught us how to build the Service Catalog in an optimal way and how to make efficient workflows and streamline the process a catalog item goes through. This is just one of many examples where we had the possibility of improving our expertise in ServiceNow
While joining many of these labs we have gained a huge amount of knowledge and realized that there are infinite possibilities for improvements. And the best part is: We can apply and implement to our customers everything we learned there. Starting NOW!