How Streamlining Business Processes Supports a ServiceNow Implementation

Business process consulting (BPC) is a critical component of ServiceNow implementations. It involves analyzing and optimizing business processes to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer satisfaction. BPC can unlock business efficiency in ServiceNow implementations by providing a structured approach to analyzing and optimizing business processes. Business Process Consultants (also BPCs) can identify inefficiencies in existing processes and develop solutions that streamline workflows, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. In this article, I will discuss this from four different points of view:

• Introduction to the significance of streamlined business processes.
• Role of business process consulting in ServiceNow implementations.
• Key benefits of aligning processes with ServiceNow capabilities.
• Real-life success stories showcasing efficiency improvements.

Introduction to the Significance of Streamlined Business Processes

Deciding to bite the bullet and implement ServiceNow can mean some drastic changes for your organization. This is not a task to be entered into without enterprise-wide planning. To put this in terms of a home remodeling project: if you are already replacing the plumbing, now would be the perfect time to maximize value and re-do the whole kitchen.

This is the time to take advantage of the disruption to do even greater things for your enterprise. Now is your chance to significantly improve your business efficiency, even for your non-technical staff, by leveraging the power of BPC to go along with your ServiceNow implementation. Overall, streamlining business processes can help organizations increase efficiency, productivity, agility, and profits. It can also help improve communication and reduce errors and holdups. Think of your implementation partner as a general contractor for your project, managing everything from the technical implementation to improving your business processes and organizational change management (OCM). My role at Beyond20, as a senior advisor, is to concentrate on business-process-consulting and the OCM components; while the other members of our implementation team execute the technical- work.

Streamlining business processes can dramatically help to optimize them for a  ServiceNow implementation. These include:

• Increased efficiency: Streamlining processes can help employees better understand their roles, leading to improved efficiency. Streamlined processes help eliminate bottlenecks and unnecessary steps, allowing employees to complete tasks more quickly and with fewer errors. This leads to increased overall efficiency and productivity. Eliminating redundancy and wasted efforts will yield more effective use of resources and improved time-to-completion metrics.
• Faster Service Delivery: ServiceNow users can automate and optimize their service delivery processes, reducing response and resolution times. This is crucial for providing excellent customer service and meeting SLAs (Service Level Agreements). It is not uncommon for BPCs to re-evaluate customers’ SLAs during and after an implementation. BPCs often find they need to re-baseline because of how a particular process worked in the previous tool changes substantially enough to require a new baseline before the organization starts enforcing the SLAs.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Streamlined processes often involve clear communication and well-defined roles and responsibilities. This encourages better collaboration among team members, departments, and even external stakeholders, leading to smoother interactions and improved outcomes. ITIL 4’s Guiding Principles emphasizes the need to Collaborate and Promote Visibility as a way for different teams, departments or silos to work together better for enterprise goals and objectives.
• Improved communication: Streamlining processes can improve communication within the organization.
• Reduced errors and holdups: Streamlining processes can help reduce errors, holdups, silos, missed deadlines, and redundant work. Again, these benefits are specially called out in ITIL 4’s Guiding Principles.
• Greater visibility into processes: Streamlining processes can provide greater visibility into how work is being done within the organization. This benefit corresponds nicely to ITIL 4’s Guiding Principle of Think and Work Holistically. The idea here is to not get caught in the weeds with the moment-by-moment distractions but rather take the higher-level, end-to-end perspective. This helps us to avoid localized optimization.
• Reporting and Analytics: ServiceNow offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities. Streamlined processes provide accurate and real-time data, which can be used to generate insightful reports and dashboards. This data-driven approach enables informed decision-making and helps organizations identify areas for further improvement. ServiceNow’s Performance Analytics, and the out-of-the-box KPIs it comes with, use indicators to keep processes in check.
• Better Resource Allocation: With streamlined processes, organizations can allocate their resources more effectively. This means that the right people and assets are allocated to the right tasks at the right time, preventing resource wastage and ensuring optimal resource utilization.
• Standardization and Compliance: Streamlining processes often involves standardizing workflows and procedures. This ensures that tasks are performed consistently and in line with regulatory requirements and industry best practices, reducing the risk of non-compliance.
• Scalability: As organizations grow, their processes can become more complex. Streamlined processes are inherently more scalable because they are designed to be efficient from the start. This means that as the workload increases, the organization can handle it without a proportional increase in effort or resources.
• Improved Customer Experience: Whether it’s internal or external customers, streamlined processes contribute to a better customer experience. Requests are handled promptly, information is accurate, and issues are resolved efficiently, leading to higher levels of satisfaction.
• Innovation: When employees spend less time on repetitive tasks and manual processes, they have more time to focus on innovative and value-added activities. This can lead to the development of new ideas, products, and services that drive business growth.
• Organizational Change Management: Of course, none of this occurs without friction in your environment. While not specially part of the BPC suite of activities, I have always seen OCM as critical to overall project success. My favorite quote along these lines is, “While Project Management prepares the solution for the organization, OCM prepares the organization for the solution.”

In essence, streamlined business processes for ServiceNow users lead to increased efficiency, cost savings, improved collaboration, and better overall organizational performance. The platform’s capabilities, coupled with well-designed processes, can significantly enhance an organization’s operations and competitiveness. Streamlined business processes offer several advantages for ServiceNow users, as well as for organizations as a whole.

What is the role of business process consulting in ServiceNow implementations?

A Business Process Consultant contributes to the design and deployment of best practice process solutions that help achieve the strategic goals of customers. In my role as a BPC, I have worked with a vast range of organizations to help them work more efficiently and gain greater value using the ServiceNow platform.

Overall, BPC is essential for successful ServiceNow implementations. BPCs help organizations navigate the complexities involved in implementing, configuring, managing, and optimizing the ServiceNow platform for maximum value realization.

Business Process Consulting plays a crucial role in ServiceNow implementations by ensuring that the platform is aligned with an organization’s unique business processes and objectives. This involves analyzing, designing, and optimizing workflows to make the most of ServiceNow’s capabilities while addressing specific business needs. Here’s a breakdown of much of what I do as a BPC as part of ServiceNow implementations team:

• Requirements Gathering: Business process consultants work closely with stakeholders from different departments to understand their requirements and pain points. This involves conducting workshops, interviews, and surveys to gain insights into current processes, challenges, and desired outcomes and approvals.
• Process Analysis: BPCs analyze existing business processes to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement. Then we map out the entire workflow, documenting each step and decision point.
• Alignment with ServiceNow: Based on the gathered requirements and process analysis, BPCs recommend how ServiceNow can be configured and customized to best support the organization’s processes. We identify which ServiceNow modules, features, and functionalities will be most beneficial for each process. Commonly, this is where we will see a good deal of back and forth between the BPC and another role critical to a successful implementation – the TA (Technical Architect). The BPC is there to recommend best practice for processes while the TA may decide to go another direction based on technical debt or customization concerns. Ultimately, the TA has the final say as to the BPC’s suggestions.
• Customization and Configuration: Consultants work with ServiceNow administrators and developers to tailor the platform to the organization’s specific needs. This might involve configuring forms, workflows, automation, integrations, and user interfaces to match the optimized processes.
• Process Redesign: In some cases, it makes sense to reengineer process to follow best practice advice on standardization and repeatability which allows us to take full advantage of ServiceNow’s capabilities. Consultants work with stakeholders to define streamlined and standardized processes that align with industry best practices and the organization’s goals.
• OCM: As mentioned earlier, implementing a new platform like ServiceNow often requires changes in how employees work. Business process consultants assist in developing OCM strategies to ensure a smooth transition. This might include training, communication plans, and addressing concerns from end-users.
• Data Management: BPCs help define data requirements, data flows, and data mapping to ensure that the right information is captured, stored, and accessible within the ServiceNow platform. This supports accurate reporting, analytics, and informed decision-making. While the BPC and TA commonly partner on this, it remains a BPC responsibility.
• Testing and Validation: Business process consultants collaborate with testing teams to ensure that the configured processes and workflows operate as intended. They validate that the platform meets the defined business requirements and that any customizations are functioning correctly.
• Continual Improvement: Business process consulting is not limited to the initial implementation. BPCs work with organizations to continuously monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented processes. They gather feedback, analyze metrics, and identify areas for further enhancement. It is important to foster a culture of Continual Improvement, especially if one does not already exist in your enterprise.
• Advisory Role: Throughout the implementation, BPCs serve as trusted advisors to your organization. They provide expertise, best practices, and recommendations based on their knowledge of both the business processes and the ServiceNow platform.
• Optimization: As the organization evolves, business processes may need to be adjusted. BPCs can play an ongoing role in optimizing existing processes or implementing new ones to accommodate changing needs. As training can be considered as a substantial part of optimization, we task BPCs as responsible and accountable. If the training project is large enough, we may bring in a Business Analyst to assist, but training remains a key objective for the BPC.

In essence, business process consulting bridges the gap between an organization’s operational needs and the capabilities of the ServiceNow platform. It ensures that the platform is not just a technology solution, but a tool that empowers the organization to achieve its business goals through efficient, well-designed processes. ServiceNow itself is based on multiple best practices. So, if your organization wants to follow industry-recognized best practices, ITIL for example, ServiceNow is an excellent place to start.

What are the key benefits of aligning processes with ServiceNow capabilities?

This is where guidance from your BPC will really pay dividends. As you, no doubt, already know, ServiceNow is a cloud-based workflow and automation system that can address a myriad of IT and mission needs and capabilities. By aligning processes with ServiceNow capabilities, companies can transform their IT service value chain and drive innovation on a single cloud platform while ensuring better alignment with their business priorities. When done right, ServiceNow helps companies achieve their digital transformation goals by aligning IT and business initiatives with IT Operations Management, Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), IT Business Management, and Software Asset Management (SAM).

As I have already emphasized, ServiceNow promotes transparency, efficiency, and alignment between IT service management and software development workflows. Teams can track and manage incidents, change requests, and other IT processes in ServiceNow while synchronizing them with corresponding development tasks and user stories.

Aligning processes with ServiceNow capabilities can yield a range of significant benefits for organizations. ServiceNow is a powerful platform that offers various modules and functionalities designed to streamline workflows, improve efficiency, and enhance collaboration. Here are some key benefits of aligning processes with ServiceNow capabilities:

• Efficiency and Productivity: Leveraging ServiceNow’s automation and workflow management features can help your enterprise to streamline and standardize processes. This reduces manual interventions, accelerates task completion, and minimizes errors, ultimately boosting overall efficiency and productivity.
• Consistency and Standardization: With guidance from your BPC, ServiceNow allows you to define standardized processes that ensure consistency across the organization. This consistency leads to better outcomes, fewer variations, and a more predictable work environment.
• Improved Visibility: Your BPC can coordinate processes across the enterprise to help you to get a consistent experience throughout the organization. Aligning processes with ServiceNow capabilities provides real-time visibility into the status of tasks, projects, and services. This transparency allows stakeholders to track progress, identify bottlenecks, and make informed decisions based on accurate data.
• Enhanced Collaboration: ServiceNow’s collaboration features facilitate seamless communication and cooperation among team members, departments, and even external partners. This improves cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing.
• Faster Service Delivery: ServiceNow’s service management capabilities enable organizations to respond to service requests and incidents more quickly. This is essential for meeting customer expectations, reducing downtime, and maintaining high service levels.
• Data-Driven Decision-Making: By aligning processes with ServiceNow, organizations can capture and analyze data more effectively. This data can be used to generate insights, track key performance indicators (KPIs), and make data-driven decisions. Your BPC will be instrumental in helping your enterprise coordinate these activities.
• Reduced Costs: Automated and optimized processes often lead to cost savings by minimizing manual effort, reducing errors, and enhancing resource utilization. This can have a direct impact on operational costs.
• Adaptability and Scalability: While out-of-the-box functionality is excellent, ServiceNow is designed to be adaptable and scalable. When your enterprise aligns its processes with ServiceNow’s flexible framework, you can easily modify and scale processes as the business evolves.
• Compliance and Risk Management: ServiceNow’s audit and compliance features can help organizations adhere to regulatory requirements and industry standards. Aligning processes with these capabilities ensures proper documentation, tracking, and reporting.
• Customer Satisfaction: BPCs focus on improving the efficiency of processes enabled by ServiceNow translate to better service delivery and shorter response times. This contributes to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Innovation: With streamlined processes in place, employees have more time and resources to focus on innovation and strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down by manual tasks.
• Employee Satisfaction: A direct output of the BPC process will be well-designed processes to reduce frustration caused by inefficient workflows and redundant tasks. This, of course, leads to higher employee satisfaction and engagement.
• Continuous Improvement: ServiceNow’s capabilities, combined with aligned processes, encourage a culture of continuous improvement. Organizations can use feedback, analytics, and performance metrics to iteratively enhance their processes.
• Time Savings: Automating repetitive tasks and eliminating unnecessary steps through ServiceNow can free up valuable time for employees to focus on higher-value activities.

In summary, aligning processes with ServiceNow capabilities can have a transformative effect on an organization’s operations. It enables organizations to optimize workflows, enhance collaboration, make data-driven decisions, and ultimately achieve better business outcomes. One of the key objectives of your BPC is to align processes with ServiceNow capabilities to help organizations improve efficiency, better align with business priorities, increase transparency, and drive innovation. These examples demonstrate how organizations across various industries have leveraged ServiceNow and business process consulting to achieve tangible efficiency improvements.

Real-life success stories showcasing efficiency improvements?

Overall, Business Process Consulting can help organizations achieve significant efficiency improvements by streamlining processes and leveraging the capabilities of the ServiceNow platform.  The following are a few real-life examples of how BPC has helped clients in implementing and optimizing their ServiceNow investments:

• Pharmaceutical Company: A pharmaceutical company implemented ServiceNow to streamline its IT Service Management (ITSM) processes. By aligning their IT service request and incident management workflows with ServiceNow’s capabilities, they were able to automate ticket routing, approvals, and communication. As a result, they saw reductions of 15% to 20% in response and resolution times, leading to improved employee productivity and satisfaction.
• Financial Services Firm: A financial services firm utilized ServiceNow to enhance its vendor management processes. With the help of business process consulting, they redesigned their vendor onboarding, evaluation, and contract management workflows to be more efficient and standardized. The automated workflows and integrated data management resulted in faster vendor assessments, improved compliance tracking, and reduced risk exposure.
• Healthcare Provider: A healthcare provider implemented ServiceNow to optimize its patient appointment scheduling process. Through business process consulting, they mapped out their current scheduling procedures and identified areas for improvement. By aligning their scheduling process with ServiceNow’s automation and resource allocation capabilities, they were able to reduce scheduling errors, better allocate resources, and provide patients with more accurate appointment slots.
• Manufacturing Company: A manufacturing company adopted ServiceNow to streamline its equipment maintenance processes. With the guidance of business process consultants, they redefined their maintenance request, work order, and asset tracking workflows. The automation of maintenance requests and work orders, along with real-time visibility into equipment status, led to reduced equipment downtime, increased operational efficiency, and improved asset lifecycle management.
• Technology Company: A technology company implemented ServiceNow to improve its software development lifecycle processes. Business process consulting helped them restructure their software release management, change request, and testing workflows. By aligning these processes with ServiceNow’s release orchestration and change management capabilities, they achieved faster and more reliable software releases, reduced deployment errors, and enhanced collaboration between development and operations teams.

Conclusion

ServiceNow is so much more than simply an IT tool and resource. It is a platform for your entire enterprise. As such, it is imperative to take the same degree of care with your business processes as with the technical implementation. Having a great BPC with you for the journey is essential.