Process inefficiency highlights

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated September 3, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Process inefficiency highlights

    The Process inefficiency highlights feature helps ServiceNow customers identify and understand the exact issues causing inefficiencies within their business processes. Instead of manually analyzing data—which is time-consuming—this feature compares records exhibiting inefficiencies against those without to pinpoint specific problem areas.

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    For example, if a project contains 100 records and 20 match a particular inefficiency pattern, these 20 records’ metrics are analyzed and compared to the remaining 80 records. This comparison reveals detailed insights into where and why inefficiencies occur.

    Key Features

    • Process Variability: Detects unusual numbers of different resolution paths in inefficient processes by comparing with efficient ones.
    • Mean Time to Completion (MTTC): Identifies extreme outliers in resolution times for inefficient records versus efficient records.
    • Time To Completion (TTC) Standard Deviation: Measures variability in completion time between inefficient and efficient process groups.
    • Mean Step Duration: Highlights steps within the process that take excessively long, exceeding predetermined thresholds.
    • Mean Responsibility Resolution: Compares the time responsibility is held by providers, requesters, or external parties in inefficient versus efficient processes.
    • Mean Idle Time: Determines excessive idle periods, such as unassigned times within assignment groups, that differ significantly in inefficient processes.
    • Touch Points: Measures the number of manual tasks or involved parties, which when high, may contribute to delays and inefficiency.
    • Over-represented Activities: Identifies process steps that occur more frequently in inefficient patterns compared to efficient ones.
    • Under-represented Activities: Detects skipped or missed steps in inefficient processes, for example, frequently omitted approval steps.
    • Reassignments: Flags multiple reassignments within inefficient process patterns versus efficient ones.
    • Over-represented Breakdowns: Highlights breakdowns or interruptions that slow down the process.
    • Service-Level Agreement (SLA) Breach Rate: Indicates higher likelihood of SLA breaches in inefficient process patterns compared to efficient records.

    Key Outcomes

    By leveraging process inefficiency highlights, ServiceNow customers can swiftly identify the specific causes of process inefficiencies. This enables targeted improvements and optimized workflows, reducing delays, minimizing SLA breaches, and improving overall operational efficiency. The detailed metric comparisons help prioritize actions based on concrete data and patterns, facilitating faster resolution of bottlenecks and enhanced process performance.

    After identifying the areas that cause the inefficiency, you need to know what exactly the issue is and how to fix it. To do this manually is very time-consuming. The process inefficiency highlights provide the insight into the exact issues for the identified improvement opportunities.

    The highlights are displayed after identifying the records that show the inefficiency and comparing it with the records that do not show the inefficiency.

    For example, if a project has 100 records, the records matching the improvement opportunity are identified. For this example, let us consider that 20 records match the improvement opportunity. Now, each of the 12 metrics is compared for these 20 records with that of the remaining 80 records.

    Table 1. Process inefficiency highlights metrics
    Metrics Description
    Process variability Determines whether there are any exceptional number of different resolution paths in the process. The group of records that include the inefficient process pattern is compared with one of the group of records that doesn’t include the inefficient process pattern.
    Mean Time to Completion (MTTC) Determines whether the process has any extreme outliers in resolution times. The duration of the resolution time is compared with the threshold resolution time. The group of records that include the inefficient process pattern is compared with one of the group of records that doesn’t include the inefficient process pattern.
    Time To Completion (TTC) standard deviation Determines the TTC standard deviation of the group of records that include the inefficient process pattern and compares it with one of the group of records that doesn’t include the inefficient process pattern.
    Mean step duration Determines whether there are any steps in the process that take extremely long time (for example, if a step has taken longer than a predetermined time threshold).
    Mean responsibility resolution Determines the difference in responsibility time between provider, requester, and an external process.

    For example, when the state is “New,” it means that the process is on the provider, who has the assignment responsibility. If the state is “Awaiting user information,” the responsibility is on the requester. If the laptop at issue is sourced by an external vendor, then it’s an external process responsibility.

    The responsibility time that has been taken by each of the provider, requester, and an external process is compared with the group of records that does not include the inefficient process pattern.
    Mean idle time Determines whether the process includes a high level of idle time. For example, when a record stays with an assignment group without being assigned to an agent. It’s highlighted when the idle time differs largely for the group of records that include the inefficient process pattern compared to the group of records that doesn’t include the inefficient process pattern.
    Touch points Determines whether the process had a very large number of manual tasks causing the delay. If a lot of people or groups were involved, this may have caused the delay and inefficiency. The number of touch points for the group of records that have an inefficient process pattern is compared with the number of touch points for the group of records that don’t include the inefficient process pattern.
    Over-represented activities Determines whether there are any steps that are frequently occurring compared to the process without this inefficiency.
    Under-represented activities Determines if a step has been skipped or missed compared to the regular process. For example, if the process includes an inefficient process pattern and the “approval” step is under-represented (that is, the “approval” step is skipped frequently), then the under-represented step that has caused the inefficient process pattern is identified.
    Reassignments Determines whether there are two or more than two reassignments in the inefficient process pattern compared to the records that don’t have this pattern.
    Over-represented breakdowns Determines if there’s any breakdowns slowing down the process.
    Service-level agreement (SLA) breach rate Determines if there’s a high probability for SLA breach to occur in the inefficient process pattern compared to the records that don’t have this pattern.