"How come we are not aware of this? Are these our own data?"
I am in a meeting with one of the executives of a global Finance and Insurance enterprise. I just showed him — and his team — the out-of-the-box ServiceNow Performance Analytics (PA) dashboard based on his organization's actual data. The Incident Management KPI's and trending data show a clear peak of new incidents in the second week of each month. The room is growing awfully quiet.
Then, the response of one of the exec's subordinates is confrontational: "Look, this is what I have been trying to explain to you the whole time, but you just wouldn't listen!"
Just one of the customer examples Frank Slootman will address during his keynote speech at Knowledge14 in two weeks.
From features to insight
When doing a presentation on ServiceNow Performance Analytics, it is considered a compliment when the conversation switches from functions and features to insight and business value. In this case, however, that switch was a bit dramatic and turned into a 'Who is to blame?' type of conversation.
The case at hand is a typical situation where executives are relying on monthly BI generated reports, whereas operational management is driving their organization based on real-time information. However, none of these reports will tell you what to do in order to meet your performance criteria, like your goals, OLAs, SLA objectives, et cetera.
And this is exactly where PA comes in.
Think of it as follows. You are taking your kid to his Aunt Sally, who lives in the neighboring village. The dashboard presents an operational report on real-time data: your current speed, how many miles you drove, when to shift gears. In IT service management, you can compare this data to things like "time to resolve issues", "number of open incidents", or "current workload" and "who to assign the next incident to".
Then in this example, what is BI telling you? Well, what about your kid sitting in the back seat yelling: "This is not where aunty Sally lives!" just when you realize you took the wrong exit. Or what about the police officer who pulls you over to tell you "You exceeded the city speed limit six blocks back", only to give you a speeding ticket. Nothing you can do about it anymore, can you? BI is the monthly report showing you that you missed your objectives. As if you didn't know already…
PA is your organization's Sat Nav!
So what is Performance Analytics? Think of it as your Sat Nav. It tells you to turn left and it tells you in advance. It advises you to take a detour, as it knows there is a traffic jam ahead. In IT: it tells you that 'The percentage of incidents not worked on' increased over the passed few days, as an indication that you should focus on this in order to meet your SLA objectives. It allows you to anticipate on a peak of new incidents in the second week of each month, based on the daily trend of that indicator, so you can adjust your work assignment for that week.
It's not about more (or even big) data, it's not about who creates the best charts or the biggest reports. It's all about timing: providing you with the right insight at the right point in time, so you can take action.
