Introduction
This article is part of a series of posts that describe how IT4IT and the ServiceNow platform bring additional benefits to the enterprise. You’ll find below the other articles related to IT4IT:
- IT4IT introduction and how to get started
- IT4IT and ServiceNow: Strategy to Portfolio
- IT4IT and ServiceNow: Requirement to Deploy (wip)
- IT4IT and ServiceNow: Detect to Correct (wip)
Co-writers: Dale James, Dave Armes & Lionel Berger, Executive Architects as part of the ServiceNow Inspire team.
Request to Fulfill Defined
The Request to Fulfill (R2F) value stream presents a single consumer like catalog of internal and external IT services and products to requesters in an integrated and seamless way. One will not only make sure the services and products are delivered as per the defined SLAs, but also ensure the CMDB gets updated, licensing remains compliant, deployment is automated, outsourcers are integrated and governed, costs vs. usage are continuously monitored & controlled and user satisfaction is measured. This is often transacted across multiple service providers; hence the R2F Value Stream provides important measures for evaluating vendor performance.
Figure 1: Elements of the Request to Fulfill Value Stream
Fundamentally the Request to Fulfill Value Stream is responsible for taking a solution and turning it into a service.
Current challenges
The typical challenges that IT4IT and ServiceNow can help address are a common reality across large organizations.
People, Process & Organization
While ITIL (and other process standards) provides a comprehensive framework that helps standardize and streamline the processes required to deliver and operate IT Services, it provides less guidance on how to integrate the processes with each other to drive an end-to-end experience. Furthermore, one often sees IT processes that operate standalone and do not leverage transactional and master data from each other.
The silos of the organizations and processes are often reflected in the way people and organizations work. The lack of a clearly defined end-to-end value chain across the IT processes usually leads to work being executed in a silo, without understanding the each other’s role within the whole picture.
Example:
- The Request Fulfilment process ensures users can request installation of applications and software to support their day to day work.
- The Software Asset Management process reactively looks at the non-compliant apps & software Installations and chases users and support teams to either un-install or justify the purchase of additional licenses.
- The IT Finance team reactively looks at the planned vs. consumed budget and tries to stay within the yearly budget without being part of the end-to-end “Request to Fulfil” value chain, hence suffer from surprises coming from the service operations world.
This lack of cohesiveness also leads to significant user dissatisfaction with the way they engage with IT – leading many to look for ways to bypass IT.
Data & Analytics
The typical challenges encountered around data and analytics is the lack of a single source of truth that all processes can rely on. As a consequence, the various processes will have their own data that will have consistency and integrity issues, no clear connection to each data set and will be very difficult to report on and gain insights into the operating environment.
Example:
- Request Fulfilment will have the number of Requests for installing Applications or Software on a machine
- Software Asset Management will have the number of Installations, License Entitlements and Contracts
- Content Management System/CMDB may have similar discovered data that may not be mapped to the same authoritative source
- IT Finance Management may have their own data repositories to manage budget plans and actual figures
- The Business Intelligence/Service Analytics team may have to build complex processes to reconcile data from those numerous sources in order to provide information that is complete, accurate, reliable, and connected.
- Tracking user subscriptions and consumption metrics may be challenging due to the number of systems that would need to be integrated to provide the required insight
- Vendor Governance and Risk may not be based on facts due to the lack of integration of an E2E value chain
Technology
One often sees a complex technology landscape that encompasses multiple tools to support an end-to-end value chain. They are usually not (well) integrated with each other, have their own source of truth, and may be difficult to upgrade due to the dependencies with other tools and the total TCO may be higher than it should be.
Example:
- Service Request Catalog and Request Fulfilment are hosted on tool A
- Automated Deployment is delivered by tool B
- IT Asset Management may be hosted on a different tool
- Landscape/Software Discovery may be supported by another tool
- IT Finance Management is often managed in Excel, or on a specific tool that runs on its own
For the users, they are transitioning from a modern digital consumer world outside of the workplace to a confusing, complex, inconsistent experience within it. Sometimes using multiple systems to obtain service – they are required to understand the underlying processes to get anything done.
Leveraging IT4IT
The value stream thinking of the IT4IT framework can be summarised as shown below in Figure 1. The value stream thinking of the framework aligns much better to business stakeholder value measures than many others.
For the Request to Fulfill value stream, the key areas of value that can be achieved by adopting value stream thinking are:
- Balanced speed and risk; traditional IT management processes have focused on managing risk at the expense of agility. In today’s experience hungry, attention constrained markets, time is a more valuable commodity in getting new experiences live than traditionally.
- Integration; both the technology and service provider integration required to effectively deliver and integrated service
- Outcome focused; the value stream thinking of IT4IT focuses the minds of the IT organization on the outcome that is required – packaging a solution in such a way that it can be effectively delivered as a service.
Figure 2: IT4IT Value Alignment
Value of ServiceNow powering IT4IT
Introduction
The power of ServiceNow for organizations looking to adopt and adapt the IT4IT framework for their IT organization is the integrated nature of the solution. No other technology solution can support all aspects of IT4IT in an integrated way.
- Value Streams; the ServiceNow IT management application portfolio aligns seamlessly with the IT4IT value streams and includes native integrations that span the value chains.
- A Service Backbone; the Now Platform architecture includes Functional Components, Information Models, and the relationships required to create the IT4IT Service Backbone, as part of a single system of Action
- Supporting Functions; ServiceNow has a wide range of supporting activities that run on the platform directly supporting, and natively integrated with the IT4IT Value Chain.
Figure 3: The power of ServiceNow enabling IT4IT
People, Process & Organization
By integrating the end-to-end value streams on a single platform, underpinned by a single data model, the ServiceNow platform enables a seamless experience for both consumers and providers of IT services. For consumers it enables a seamless interaction where all forms of support; incident, service request and request for information, can be accessed through a single system via multiple modalities, providing a single "store front" for IT. For providers, the integrated nature of the platform enables dashboards and insights which can bring together many different aspects of their services into a consumable and actionable "single pain of glass". By being able to integrate service performance, project progress, costs and consumption into a single integrated view enables business stakeholders to more clearly understand the value of IT.
By integrating processes natively in the ServiceNow platform, offering consistent platform capabilities and an integrated data model, ServiceNow is able to significantly increase the levels of automation, realization of value, insight to improvement and user satisfaction. Being able to relate; cost and performance, project delivery and service performance, security and risk, ServiceNow is able to deliver levels of process integration across the IT4IT value streams and supporting functions previously not possible.
Data & Analytics
The integrated data model within ServiceNow not only supports experience and process integration, it is also able to provide insight across the IT function. Machine learning can be applied across previously siloed IT functions. Instantly, insights can be turned into actions driving Continual Service Improvement to new levels through capabilities such as Spotlight, MetricBase and Performance Analytics Forecasting/Thresholds. This drive for improvement and learning can also, as never before, be applied across geographies and industries through the use of the benchmarking capabilities of the platform that enable multiple organizations to learn from one another in terms of which improvements can result in the greatest benefits.
ServiceNow also provides capabilities to bridge the data gap between services being offered and the usage of those services. These subscription and consumption metrics are challenging to track but the task is made much easier when the system of engagement is the same as the Service Asset & Configuration Management system (SACM). An additional benefit is a clearer understand of how vendors are performing.
Technology
The ServiceNow technology was built from the start to be a single integrated platform. ServiceNow applications and capabilities all share this integrated platform making it much easier to integrate separate, diverse, siloed processes (platforms over tools). It also enables organizations to build a consistent, consumer like experiences for users across multiple modalities so they are free to choose how they interact the organization. All while being performant, secure, transparent and flexible.
It’s important to note this DNA extends to the organization as a whole which ensures that any new capability or technology acquisition is deconstructed and re-built from the ground-up as a native platform service. This dedication to the value of integrated technology means that ServiceNow is, and always will be, a single platform, integrated solution.
Call to action
Please react, comment, share your thoughts.
How does the “Current challenges” section resonate with your current environment? How important would it be for you to connect the Value Chain? What initiatives are you taking that are related to this series of IT4IT articles?
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