ServiceNow is a powerful platform designed to streamline and automate business processes. While out-of-the-box solutions provide a great starting point, they may not always align with your specific business requirements. In such cases, building a custom application using App Engine can be the best approach, offering flexibility, scalability, and tailored functionality to meet your organization's unique needs.
In this article, we will review custom application development on the ServiceNow platform. This article series will explore three powerful app ideas built in just one week!
Why build a custom app?
- Leverage existing workflows first. Use out-of-the-box product workflows whenever they align with your business needs, ensuring efficiency without unnecessary development effort.
- Enhance operational flexibility. When standard workflows do not meet business need, custom applications allow for tailored solutions that meet unique departmental and business requirements.
- Empower departments. Develop specialized applications for various teams, optimizing workflows, improving productivity, and addressing department-specific challenges.
Benefits of a custom app
- Maintain a clean core. Avoid bloating your primary system with excessive modifications, keeping it streamlined and easier to manage.
- Minimize technical debt. Reduce reliance on heavy customizations that can lead to long-term maintenance issues, version conflicts, and upgrade challenges.
- Streamline workflow automation. Simplify processes such as task routing, assignment management, and data flow across departments to improve operational efficiency.
- Purpose-built data and insights. Develop applications tailored to capture, analyze, and present relevant data, ensuring better decision-making and enhanced user experiences.
- Enhance security and compliance: Implement security measures specific to your organization’s needs, ensuring compliance with industry regulations and best practices.
When to build a custom app?
Ideal use cases for custom apps
What else to consider?
OOTB considered first
- Are you sure the requirements cannot be met with an existing workflow product?
- Can you articulate why a custom application is required?
Technical expertise
- Do you have the technical expertise to build and support a custom application?
Business process knowledge
- Do you possess the required business knowledge to build a custom application that is fit for purpose?
Build/maintenance capacity
- Do have the capacity to build a custom application?
- Can you assume the on-going liability to maintain and support the application once it is released to production?
