ServiceNow New York is Here
ServiceNow version New York has entered General Availability. These features should delight high-maturity IT departments.
New features that were highlighted in their announcement include:
- Now Mobile: Improved mobile features for end users, including a virtual agent and an onboarding app
- Finance Operations Management: This new finance department offering has a Finance Close Automation application
- IT workflows: Added workflows and functionality for vendor management, service owner workspace, operator workspace, and SaaS license management
- Codeless custom workflows: The New York release contains an application called Guided App Creator that allows users to create their own workflows with a wizard
Source: ServiceNow Service Management, Report Published July 2019
Our Take
Low-maturity IT departments will find it hard to get value from these new features. In the July 2019 SoftwareReviews report for ServiceNow Service Management, the product did not score highly in many categories despite ranking first in plan to renew (100%). For instance, it scored:
- Twelfth (12th) out of 15 products in the Quality of Features
- Ninth (9th) out of 15 in Usability and Intuitiveness
- Eleventh (11th) out of 15 for Business Value Created
These scores can partly be attributed to the level of maturity required to realize benefits from ServiceNow’s features. Before you can use a virtual agent, deploy an onboarding app, or have cross-functional applications, IT must have:
- Defined, documented, and adhered-to IT processes
- A high-quality user-facing knowledgebase
- Cross-functional workflows for cross-functional requests such as onboarding
- High-quality data within ServiceNow
- A well-functioning CMDB
Too many of our clients simply do not have the process maturity for taking advantage of these new features. The ones that do have high process maturity, though, will be able to innovate with these new ServiceNow capabilities.