Democratizing Innovation through Data Access

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As I mentioned at the beginning of this series of articles, innovation enables organizations to survive in today's changing world, where success depends not on size but on the ability to adapt quickly and evolve towards new revenue sources.

One key to innovation lies in eliminating bureaucracy and existing silos within the organization: democratizing access to data is the most effective way to break down these silos.

By democratizing access to data, it becomes available to anyone who needs it. Even with decentralized teams, they can tap into the extensive knowledge of the entire company. This dynamic of learning and shared resource usage significantly enhances the effectiveness of strategic efforts.

We can only succeed by innovating and understanding our customers, and this can only be achieved by mastering data. Therefore, the shared data model of the ServiceNow platform is a crucial part of democratizing access to data. Instead of focusing efforts on integrating applications or exporting data to lakes, we implement data management policies. There will be a designated person responsible for keeping the data up-to-date, and anyone who needs it can use it with the appropriate permissions. This allows ServiceNow to concentrate on maximizing the use of technology and its contribution to business.

For example, democratizing the data within an organization's ERP allows it to better understand its relationship with customers. If we grant this access to any department in the organization, it enables the creation of new relationships and revenue streams. In this regard, ServiceNow, through ERP Canvas, provides real-time access to data and offers nearly twenty pre-configured data models that can be extended as needed to access SAP data.

ServiceNow enables us to easily and quickly bring in data about the departments in our company, cost centers, production, orders, and more. Beyond generating reports and dashboards to visually understand existing relationships and dependencies, it allows disparate areas to access data as part of their daily work, eliminating bottlenecks affecting cross-departmental processes. Integration and automation capabilities protect nearly everyone in the organization, as there is no need to change backend systems.

It serves as a space where developers, both business and professional, can securely access company data needed to solve their business problems. This data is secured with authentication and usage policies, complying with all regulations for PII anonymization and encryption.

In addition to these capabilities, we can leverage Low Code and Generative AI to rapidly create applications, addressing the business challenges organizations face.

This approach allows making the necessary changes to the ERP for a competitive advantage without being slow or costly. Innovation happens at the pace business demands, outside the ERP, in separate but interconnected applications. Access to needed data is granted with simple permissions, reducing ERP complexity and resulting in a clean core, lowering maintenance costs and risks, and facilitating easy updates.

The future is built on our ability to understand customers and provide what they need. Enabling business areas to access necessary information through tools like ServiceNow will be crucial to their innovation capacity.