Servicenow has gained a lot of popularity among CXO’s, managers, developers, and end-users as well. Other than the OOB functionality it provides, the only reason for its well-deserved fame is its flexible and robust application development platform with lots of inbuilt utility.
Considering the empowerment that a developer receives from the platform it’s natural that people prefer to build everything on Servicenow. It is easy to get carried away in emotions. Developers do, they really do get carried away. Understanding which suits the best based on the requirement is the difference between a Consultant and a developer. This article scrutinizes for which type of applications ServiceNow is a good fit and for whom it’s a straight NO!!
First, let’s understand why to develop custom applications?
- To replace outdated, inadequate, custom business applications and processes
- To extend service delivery and management to all enterprise departments
- To extend the value of ServiceNow
- To bring greater levels of automation and consolidation to enterprise services and their management
Now let’s see parameters to judge whether Servicenow will be a good or bad fit for the application that the enterprise is planning to build.
Good Fit:
- Data can be modeled in a relational database.
- Extensive use of forms to interact with data
- Require reporting quality
- Need workflow /flow to manage processes
- Can extend existing functionality through javascript
Bad Fit:
- Data is unstructured, such as audio or video
- Requires to access proprietary libraries that do not have an API
- Multi-Player games or applications requiring graphics engines
- No process flow through the application
Another approach could be to identify or target the right applications for ServiceNow. Applications that could be considered just right to be rebuilt on ServiceNow are:
- Process managed in spreadsheets and macros.
- Departmental apps built on aging incumbent platforms like IBM Lotus, clarify, etc
- Applications with a “request-fulfill” pattern like reservations, shift turnover, etc.
Let me end the first article in this app development basics by giving some examples of applications that could be built on ServiceNow
Time-Card management, PO reconciliation, Customer Feedback Management, Accounts Payable, Document Workflow, IP address management, Lab Mouse Reports, Postal equipment management, gift card management, contract management, invoice management, truck maintenance, game/venue issue management, Field Safety incident response, insurance claim tracking, etc.
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Happy Learning Guys!!!
----->Dhruv Gupta
