In my time here at ServiceNow there has always been a cultural focus on Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. Recently, we’ve added Chief Talent Officer, Pat Wadors, whose amplified that message to the Nth degree.
Diversity = everything that makes an individual unique
Inclusion = the act of inviting someone fairly and respectfully
Belonging = ensuring that everyone feels like they can contribute to the conversation
It occurs to me that our last few releases have applied the theme of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging to the ServiceNow platform from a Data and Analytics perspective as well. Let me show you what I mean:
The Now Platform has expanded the diversity of data that can be leveraged as part of a solution, the mechanisms in which data can be included or integrated with the platform, and most importantly the ways analytics can belong or contribute to the achievement of specific business outcomes.
In this blog post I’ll highlight of few of these enhancements.
MetricBase, new in the Jakarta release, allows us to address analytics use cases that require high volumes of time series data. Today these use cases are often associated with, and driven by, the Internet of Things (IoT) and the tremendous volume of data connected devices create on a nonstop basis. Whether it’s data generated by monitoring software like virtual machines and containers, physical systems like the machines in our factories, that new connected refrigerator you just bought, tracking the pickup and dropoff location and time of a fleet of taxis or Ubers, or your heartrate when you’re connected to an EKG – all of these inputs generate data that has significantly more value if we are able to capture each unique point in time (context) rather than continually updating a single record with the latest information. MetricBase is designed to accommodate the scale, performance, and high availability requirements for storing, aggregating and analyzing these type of data points. How’s that for Diversity?
What’s worth noting here is that although time series data may be different from the traditional data you are used to working with in ServiceNow, with the Kingston release you can use the same Report Designer that you have been authoring your standard ServiceNow reports with to query the time series data in MetricBase. How’s that for Inclusion?
In the Kingston release the diversification from a data perspective continues with two specific enhancements that start to leverage all of the valuable textual data that is stored on the platform.
The first is Predictive Intelligence(renamed from Agent Intelligence as of the Madrid release). Predictive Intelligence is an embedded artificial intelligence solution that uses machine learning to assist in getting everyday work done faster and smarter. The initial use cases are targeted at the automatic categorization and routing of incidents and cases which significantly reduce resolution times and improve productivity for everyone involved - resulting in increased customer satisfaction levels.
You may be saying to yourself – “That’s fantastic Dan, but what does that have to do with textual data?”. Well, the machine-learning algorithms that make the prediction learn from historical text, understanding the patterns in the data and then making predictions based on new data that is being input. This data can simply be the text-based short description of an incident or case which can be used to predict the category or assignment group - ultimately simplifying the front-end experience for the customer and reducing the work time from the fulfiller side.
This type of advanced analytics has typically been difficult for many organizations due to a shortage of skills in data science. As an embedded part of the ServiceNow platform we remove that barrier of entry and allow you to create machine-learning algorithms using the same form-based interface you are already familiar with. How’s that for Inclusion?
The second enhancement that will allow us to get additional value out of the textual data on the platform is the ability to apply word frequency analysis on any of the string-based fields in the platform - and then visualize the trends and patterns of terms used in combination as part of a Performance Analytics text analytics widget.
Applying this type of analysis to short descriptions of incidents and cases can act as an early warning sign of pain points that may not be revealed through the structured input options we have supplied our customers.
Another use case might be to apply this analysis to search string data to understand what common terms are not producing results. This can be frustrating to customers and impact our adoption and deflection percentages. Visibility into trends and patterns in these searches will give us direction on where we can improve and expand the content we offer our customers.
This unstructured and qualitative data sometimes goes unused because it requires a different approach. But as an embedded part of the platform these insights can be surfaced easily by simply choosing a different type of widget from a list of available widgets. How’s that for Inclusion?
So, we’ve looked at how we’ve increased the diversity of data available for analytics, as well as how we’ve lowered the technical barriers that would exclude someone from being able to get value out of those new types of data, but how do we know that this increased diversity and inclusion is contributing to the outcomes that we are trying to achieve?
This is where Performance Analytics comes into play. Performance Analytics is designed to help communicate to each stakeholder where they stand in relati... they are being measured against, the momentum (trend) towards their business outcomes, and where their opportunities to improve lie. Prior to Kingston, all the data needed to drive Performance Analytics KPIs was required to live on the platform. That is no longer the case. You can now configure indicators to reach out to data that is external to the ServiceNow platform, run a query, and return a score to the Performance Analytics scores table.
This is a significant enhancement and reflective of the growing impact that ServiceNow is having on organizations. As the use cases we support have become more diverse, and the ability to contribute to more conversations has expanded, we’ve expanded our ability to measure and communicate those contributions.
How’s that for Belonging?
Other Performance Analytics Blogs you might find interesting:
The ABC's of Performance Analytics
Opportunity is What Happens when you are Busy Preparing Data
Go Beyond the Executive Dashboard with In-Platform Analytics
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