Managing our ServiceNow Environment

[kathymorris]

Hi All,

We have a situation here at our company. Many years ago, the company hired a Servicenow partner to set up ServiceNow. Being new, the company had ZERO knowledge of Servicenow and years later still have very little knowledge for administration of ServiceNow.

The Company gave the keys to administer Servicenow to the partner. No one from the company has access to the code in our instance to verify quality nor to learn how to administer Servicenow. That said, every time a field needs to be added there is a high cost. Because of the absorbent costs, at least 70% of the ServiceNow features are NOT being utilized. Thousands of daily code changes over the years up until today are NOT being documented. The partner's communications with our team for the most part is limited to whatever the partner can potentially charge us for. In a nutshell, we (the Customer) are kept in the dark about most things. If we do hire contracted certified ServiceNow SME's, the partner will not allow them to touch our ServiceNow instances (even the lower environment) from any type of delegated developer or admin perspective.  

I would like to know from other folks how do you manage the Customer-partner relationship, and how you were able to get to the point where you can manage your ServiceNow system? What are your thoughts and recommendations regarding our situation here?

Kathy

[James Chun]

Hi @kathymorris,

I have always worked as a partner so my feedback may be a bit biased but here's what I think/experienced.

I am sure you agree that the best outcome is produced when two parties (customer and partner) collaborate. 

Collaboration comes in different shapes, where you can have different sets or share responsibilities between the two parties. For example, if you have a good team of developers, you may have partners to work in the strategic/governance area only, so that the responsibilities do not overlap between the two parties.

From my experience, I think it's better to have shared/overlapping responsibilities.

Not only does it help to build your own team, but better outcomes are produced when there is more than one party who makes the call. There will be times when both parties will make a less informed decision because they don't understand the business or the technical aspect of the platform. By liaising together and sharing responsibilities, both parties can challenge each other and come up with the most optimal solution.

Having said this, it sounds like the relationship between your partner is not so ideal.

You need to understand that this is your organization's instance after all, you should get a voice in the key decisions.

If things go bad, it's your organization that will be most impacted by it.

If what you say is all true (i.e. nothing documented, heavy customization), things will only get worse and it's better to act now. I think the first step is to understand why they are so persistent in not allowing your team to touch the instances. Maybe there were incidents in the past where your team made some mistakes and the partner had to clean up? If you can find out the reasons, you should be able to come up with a solution and start building better relationships.

Another option is to get ServiceNow involved as well. They are always out there for both customers and partners and they may provide some good advice.

That was a lot to read, but I hope it gives you some directions.

Cheers

[kathymorris]

Thanks for sharing the info. No, there was never any issue in the past where the team made mistakes. They have never been granted access from Day 1.