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ServiceNow, one of IT’s fastest-rising data management companies in the last couple of years, on Sept. 16 unveiled a new version of its Now Platform, called Paris. It wasn’t built specifically with the COVID-19 pandemic in mind, but it turns out to be a possible option for organizations to remain agile and resilient so they can maintain their productivity during the COVID economy.
Using ServiceNow workflows, employees can work smarter and organizations can realize faster time to value from their technology investments, CEO Bill McDermott told a conference of analysts and tech reporters in a press preview last week.
The COVID economy has exposed weak links in old value chains, driving a workflow revolution, McDermott said. Organizations that struggle to digitally transform and create great experiences for customers, employees, and partners in this new work environment are being left behind.
According to IDC, 45 percent of organizations worldwide are now in economic decline or recession, with 64 percent of organizations worldwide planning to be early adopters of emerging tech. Those organizations that are digital laggards are more inclined to seek out emerging tech as a means of catching up.
With nearly 80 percent of the Fortune‑500 using the Now Platform, ServiceNow said it’s committed to delivering solutions that will help companies–whether their workforce is remote or planning an eventual return to the workplace.
Users increasingly deploying dependent workflows
“Users are increasingly considering the business value from integrating separate, but increasingly dependent workflows across teams, and the business and IT organizations,” said Stephen Elliot, program vice president, DevOps and Management Software, IDC. “There is unquestionable customer traction, in part accelerated by COVID‑19 and its pressure to drive more collaboration between IT and business stakeholders to digitize processes, rethink customer engagement models, and make strategic business decisions faster than at any point in the last 10 years.”
ServiceNow said that several leading organizations, including Microsoft, Zoom, Adobe, Uber, Accenture, Deloitte, Acorio, TPx, Veolia, Novant Health, Lone Star College, AEGIS Insurance Services and City of Raleigh are turning to the Now Platform and its Paris release for their digital transformation projects.
With the Paris release, ServiceNow unveiled six new products in addition to new features that enable organizations to use one platform to:
- respond to business change with new workflow apps, boost productivity with embedded analytics;
- drive customer loyalty with connected workflows that allow them to manage location‑based work efficiently and effectively, organize resilient operations for unforeseen circumstances, and expand capacity via automated self‑service; and
- optimize IT productivity, cost and resiliency to modernize and automate with ITSM and AIOps, deliver resilient operations, and help reduce software, hardware,and cloud spend.
Key new products in the Paris release include:
- Business Continuity Management, which unveils modern, automated business impact analysis, business continuity plan development, and crisis management leveraging context within the ServiceNow platform to enable operational resilience. With operational disruptions as a persistent threat, resilient organizations need to anticipate these disruptions and develop actionable plans that will help minimize impact, as well as duration;
- Hardware Asset Management, which automates the IT asset lifecycle by tracking the financial, contractual, and inventory details of hardware and devices to make smarter decisions from purchase to disposal. In order for companies to be resilient in any economic environment, it’s critical to know what IT assets are where, so companies can persist or have the ability to pivot if the time comes; and
- Legal Service Delivery, which provides legal operations the visibility they need to make decisions fast and enhance productivity by eliminating manual emails and phone calls.
ServiceNow’s new industry products enable telecommunications providers and financial services organizations to update business operations within the context of their industry and create value at scale. Together with strategic go‑to‑market partners, Accenture for telecommunications and Deloitte for retail banking, these new offerings include:
- Financial Services Operations, which helps banks connect teams and systems in the front, middle, and back office to more quickly serve customers. It digitizes core workflows, such as payment and credit card operations, resulting in greater efficiencies;
- Telecommunications Service Management, which gives customers a more proactive experience and greater flexibility to manage their services, while providing the care and operations organizations with an enhanced service platform and insights into the customer status and health, resulting in a reduced cost to serve; and
- Telecommunications Network Performance Management, which provides network operations teams with a unified view of the install base and the ability to analyze, correlate, and resolve events and alarms originating across multiple network monitoring platforms, resulting in a precise identification of affected customers and a faster time to resolution.
Partners play a critical role in accelerating customers’ digital transformation journeys. ServiceNow also introduced partner integrations with Microsoft and Twilio, as well as the new ServiceNow Service Graph Connector Program, which helps customers streamline internal processes by connecting new and old tools.