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A 6-step approach for ITSM and ITOM working better togetherStep 6

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IntroductionIn the previous two eBooks in this three-part series, the theme of “ITSM and ITOM – Better Together” was covered in terms of:

• Leveraging a single system of record

• Adopting intelligent working practices

This final eBook completes the explanation of the “ServiceNow 6-Step Approach” to improvement and getting service management and operations management working better together–by looking at the need to have a single view of business performance across these IT management domains.

But first a quick refresher as to why this six-step approach is needed.

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Modern IT organizations need to better support their businesses in both:

• "Keeping the lights on” by maintaining the IT service delivery status quo, effectively managing outages, enacting change swiftly and safely, and leveraging insight into services and system performance.

• Helping to take the business forward—whether this is underpinning the corporate digital transformation or better using technology to improve corporate strategy and operational delivery.

And in supporting both needs, organizations need a better way of managing IT services. One that breaks down organizational silos to focus on better business outcomes through the optimal application of technology and data–starting with bringing IT service management (ITSM) and IT operations management (ITOM) together.

Creating the platform for both strategic and operational improvement

To help its customers, ServiceNow created a six-step approach to improvement that:

• Removes siloed operations (between ITSM and ITOM)

• Manages outages better–both minor and major incidents

• Minimizes service availability issues

• Enacts change swiftly and safely

• Provides cross-domain analytics to understand and improve performance

• Enhances the end-user experience

Or, to be more precise, to deliver better business outcomes through a single system of record, the application of automation and intelligent working, and having greater insight into end-to-end operations and service performance.

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Creating the right environment to succeedTo successfully drive their IT service delivery and support improvement strategies, organizations need to be able to:

• Access and use quality data across the spectrum of IT activities

• Escape the traditional IT firefighting mode to instead spend more time on improvement and innovation

• Automate processes to realize benefits across quality, speed, and cost (that will, in turn, facilitate improvement and innovation)

• Make real-time decisions to drive further optimization and improvement

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The previous two eBooks cover steps 1-5 in detail. This eBook focuses solely on Step 6: A single view across IT services and operations.

The 6-Step approach to ITOM and ITSM working better together Establish centeralized CMDB Proactively identify service issues Automated remediation

Discover infrastructure &business services

Informed incidentresponse

Single view across ITservices and operations

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With a single system of record and in-platform analytics, ServiceNow customers can get real-time visibility into ITSM and ITOM activities at the strategic, operational, and individual level. Plus, importantly, visibility into the end-to-end activities that span across both service management and operations management.

Whether this is related to:

• Incidents, major incidents, events, or problems

• Discovered asset and service data

• Changes

• The maintenance of the configuration management database (CMDB)

Not only does this provide insight into what’s happening–in terms of the effectiveness of operational activities and service performance–it also provides a gauge of organizational efficiency such that executives, managers, and staff are able to better align operations to business goals, improve both operations and services, and identify trends that enable an organization to prevent issues before they turn into business-affecting problems.

Step 6 – A single view across IT services and operations

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Through the power of a single system of record and in-platform, real-time analytics, ServiceNow customers can:

• Achieve a significant reduction in average incident resolution time

• Achieve a substantial reduction in incident service level agreement (SLA) breaches

• Save thousands of hours per year through real-time reports and dashboards

• Save hundreds of thousands of dollars per annum by automating data collection and reporting

Example customer successes include:

• St. Luke’s University Health Network saved over $4 million on a single enterprise rollout project

The benefits of a single system of record and in-platform analytics

• Global law firm Latham & Watkins saw a 90% reduction in average open incident age and an 80% decrease in the number of open incidents

• KAR Auction Services reduced metric maintenance efforts by 94% providing team collaboration instead of department silos

• WorldPay achieved a 111% ROI moving from traditional to in-platform analytics–benefitting from increased analyst productivity, increased data accessibility, improved decision making, and reduced customer churn

In addition to exploiting the power of in-platform analytics, the approach taken to align performance objectives across the organization is also critical to business transformation and managing through change.

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Access to real-time insight into operational and service performance is a powerful management tool. It can make the difference between success and failure on several fronts. However, there are a number of metrics-related tips to consider when deciding how best to exploit this power. These include:

1. Aligning metrics with business and IT needs (rather than blindly following IT industry best practice on metrics). Ask: “Why do we want or need metrics?” before assessing whether the existing or new metrics deliver against these needs.

2. That metrics reporting should allow people to see “the bigger picture” and drive improvement. If all the metrics are used for is to show that targets have been consistently hit, then is there really a point in measuring against and reporting on them? And, in a similar vein, don’t just measure things because you can. For instance, what does decrease in incident volumes actually mean? It might appear a good thing but it could also be a bad thing. And then, are incident volumes really an important metric?

3. Ensuring key performance indicators (KPIs) focus on what IT achieves rather than what it does. There can be a big difference between the two, especially in the eyes of the business. For instance, mean time to repair/restore (MTTR) might be a good IT metric whereas the business might prefer to know how business operations and outcomes have been affected.

8 tips for better exploiting a single system of record and in-platform analytics by being “metric savvy”

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4. Using end-to-end performance measures whenever possible. After all, part of a service working means little if there’s an issue overall.

5. Taking multi-dimensional views of metrics, i.e. use trending. Look at the month-on-month, quarter-on-quarter, or even year-on-year trends. Because, while the IT organization might hit its monthly targets, there might be a failure just around the corner as performance degrades over time. For example, a service’s availability level might be exceeding the related target but an analysis over time would show that availability is dropping month on month and–if all things stay the same–the target won’t be met the following quarter.

6. Regularly reviewing the ongoing suitability of KPIs. What might have been important last year might no longer be so.

7. Understanding the relationship between metrics. For instance, how a positive change in one metric will cause another to negatively change. For example, as average call-handling time drops–which is usually considered a good thing–there might be a corresponding and unwanted drop in customer satisfaction scores. Getting the right balance between metrics is therefore essential.

8. Not overlooking the behavioral aspects of metrics. At both a team and individual level, ensure that your organization’s metrics don’t drive the wrong behaviors–i.e. making people act for personal rather than corporate success. Metrics can also conflict and pull IT staff in different directions.

8 tips for better exploiting a single system of record and in-platform analytics by being “metric savvy” (continued)

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Understanding the complete “better together” storyPulling together all six elements of the ServiceNow 6-Step Approach delivers not only a new, better way of working but also a superior level of business outcomes.

The table on the next page describes a simple major-incident example, showing how a single system of record, automation and intelligent working, and in-platform analytics help organizations to:

1. Speed up resolutions

2. Decrease, and sometimes prevent, the adverse impact of IT issues on the business

3. Let IT teams work optimally, including in reducing operational costs and identifying improvements

4. Deliver a better end-user experience

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A simple “better together” example

• ServiceNow has automatically identified an issue in your monitoring data, created an incident record, and automatically routed it to the person or group accountable for this type of issue

• ServiceNow has likely identified this issue before the business–in terms of employees and/or customers–even feels any impact

• ServiceNow has automatically assessed the service and business impact – thanks to the CMDB – and set the appropriate priority and escalation to a “major incident” state for appropriate remediation

• Thanks to the technology–the AI–it has taken just a matter of seconds to get to this stage

• ServiceNow automates the major incident process for your business, organizing and moving work between different people and teams as necessary. Allowing people to only focus on productive activities

• Unnecessary delays, duplication of effort, and errors are reduced. And everyone has access to a single source of truth as to the current impact, the work already undertaken, and planned next steps (including those responsible for those next steps)

• ServiceNow issues a change request and initiates an orchestration workflow after approval to resolve the issue.

• ServiceNow has delivered a better ITOM and ITSM experience and controlled the costs of remediating the issue leveraging automation at multiple stages of the process

• A single system of record and in-platform analytics offers real-time insight into issues, issue-based trends, how the remediation effort performed, and opportunities for improvement across both operations and services

• Decisions are actionable because people are working “in-platform”–they can thus drill down into a record to do something about it

• Your organization delivers better outcomes through better decisions forged through better insight

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One of the keys to better business outcomes is access to better data, information, and knowledge, greater visibility into real-time performance, and the better decision-making capabilities that these inform.

With a single system of record and in-platform analytics, ServiceNow customers get such real-time visibility into the spectrum of operations management and service management activities and data. Plus, importantly, visibility into the end-to-end activities that span across both ITSM and ITOM–whether related to:

• Incidents, events, problems, or major incidents

• Discovered asset and service data/information

• Changes

• The maintenance of the CMDB

Next steps

Links to related topicsA 6-step approach for ITSM and ITOM to work better together (Steps 1 and 2)

A 6-step approach for ITSM and ITOM to work better together (Steps 3, 4, and 5)

SN-EB-NOW-ON-NOW-ITOM-072018

SN-EB-SixStepApproach-082018

© Copyright 2018 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and /or registered trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

A 6-step approach for ITSM and ITOM to work better together

About ServiceNow ServiceNow was started in 2004 with the belief that getting simple stuff done at work can be easy, and getting complex multi-step tasks completed can be painless. From the beginning, ServiceNow envisioned a world where anyone could create powerful workflows to get enterprise work done. Today, ServiceNow is the cloud-based platform that simplifies the way we work. ServiceNow software automates, predicts, digitizes, and optimizes business processes and tasks, across IT, customer service, security, human resources, and more, to create a better experience for your employees and customers while transforming your enterprise. ServiceNow is how work gets done.

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