ServiceNow Now Platform: Revolutionizing Workflow Automation Across Industries

Do you know? A Forrester Total Economic Impact study reveals the massive cost savings of $2.1 million that businesses have realized in three years! This financial benefit is the result of operational enhancements that ServiceNow Now platform has bought. Business users leveraging it are 50% to 75% more efficient in performing workflow tasks. Therefore, improving productivity and streamlining operations.

Want to achieve similar efficiency and productivity in your business? Read this blog to discover the versatile offering by ServiceNow—the ServiceNow Now platform!

Let’s get started! 

What is ServiceNow Now Platform?

The Now platform is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that offers you a variety of low-code tools by which you can create applications or customized workflows based on your business requirements. 

It is the technology stack that supports all ServiceNow products, including ITSM, ITAM, ITOM, FSM, and more.

Simply think of it as an AI-powered digital workspace where you get every resource to develop an application or a workflow that simplifies your business processes.

The platform follows the ‘one platform, one data model, and one architecture’ approach. This means that, along with a unified platform, you get a unified data model (CMDB) and a unified architecture for all your solutions.

Key Tools Offered By ServiceNow Now Platform

Here are some of the low-code tools that the Now platform offers for developing an application that aligns the best with your business needs: 

1. App Engine Studio 

A low-code application development environment enables developers with limited technical expertise to create applications that meet their business requirements. The focus is on solving business needs rather than on technicalities. 

You get pre-defined templates for common functionalities and features you can include in your app, eliminating the need to build them from scratch. Additionally, this unified interface provides you with a help center and resource tabs to gain assistance during the development process. 

2. Flow Designer 

It enables you to create automated workflows such as approvals, notifications, tasks, and more in natural language without writing code.  

You can specify conditions for the flows that, when met, result in a specific event or action that streamlines your operations. Also, it offers flexibility to perform modifications in flow logic whenever required.   

3. UI Builder

It helps you design the user interface of your application or web portal by dragging and dropping components such as forms, lists, dashboards, and more. Also, you can customize the appearance and behavior of these components as per your specific business needs. Further, you can preview how the outcome looks, test, and debug the same, ensuring it functions correctly. As a result, you get an attractive and consistent interface across your app or web portal that enhances user engagement.  

4. Integration Hub 

It is a package that, when enabled on your platform, allows you to integrate multiple applications and solutions into your workflows. In this package, you get pre-built connectors called ‘Spokes’ that allow data transfers and task execution between applications built on the Now platform and other systems. This way, you can leverage the extended functionalities offered by third-party systems and scale the capabilities of your application.

5. Predictive Intelligence 

It offers AI and ML models that can be used in your application or workflows to work smarter and faster. This frees up your team’s time to focus on tasks of greater importance. 

You can train these models as per your business requirements, improve them by adding the latest data, and leverage them to make smarter predictions and recommendations. 

For instance, leveraging ITSM, powered with predictive intelligence, can greatly help your service agents close incident tickets and boost their productivity. 

6. Virtual Agent 

It is an AI-powered personal assistant that allows your business teams to get help and complete tasks while dealing with issues and scaling your company’s operations. 

Your employees can interact with this chatbot in natural language and ask technical questions, queries, or problems that they are facing. As a result, the chatbot will respond with automated answers to common queries or service requests. 

It is best utilized in Customer Service Management to provide your teams with answers related to cases they created, their status, service outage issues, asset issues, and more. Therefore, reducing your request resolution time and streamlining operations. 

7. Performance Analytics 

It is a powerful tool that enables you to gain insights into your platform’s, applications, and workflows’ performance. With over 600 predefined KPIs, you can measure the performance and review them through interactive dashboards and powerful analytics. 

These dashboards offer you a visualized form of data interpretation in the form of graphs and charts. Therefore, it helps you gain real-time insights, review the progress of a task, study incidents, anticipate trends, and take action for improvements.  

Using performance analytics in ITAM helps you measure the performance of assets. You can proactively identify the need for its maintenance or replacement. 

All in all, you get everything on a single page that helps you study the current situation of your business and accelerate overall business performance. 

8. AI Search 

Similar to a search engine, ServiceNow AI Search helps you find relevant information and answers to your questions. It is connected to your portal, Now mobile app, and virtual agent to help you find resources that can assist you well with your business queries. 

It uses ML models to learn your search behavior and provides you with the best and most relevant search results promptly. 

With AI Search integrated into HR Service Delivery, your employees will have easy access to HR-related policies, procedures, and other relevant information to quickly resolve their inquiries. 

Top 7 Feature Offerings By The Now Platform

ServiceNow Now Platform not only offers you tools but also some of the versatile features that help you in the development process of your application and workflows. Let’s explore them: 

1. Configuration Management Database (CMDB) 

CMDB is a data repository where you get all your IT environment data, including hardware and software assets, on a single page. 

It discovers your assets through automation, scans your network, and updates the latest inventory in the database, eliminating manual efforts and errors. This way, you have access to up-to-date information throughout. 

CMDB maps out all the relationships and dependencies between these assets and visualizes them so you get a simplified view. Also, using uptime and downtime metrics, you can measure the health and performance of your IT infrastructure and make improvements where required. Supporting proactive management, it alerts you when assets need upgrades that reduce downtime. 

2. Common Service Data Model (CSDM) 

CSDM is a framework that helps in structuring your environment data in the Configuration Management Database. It guides you on how and where the data will be stored in the database for easy retrieval. That means you can find your data exactly where it should be, and applications can retrieve it from the right place. 

It structures the data in the form of tables and maps out their relationships with each other, ensuring consistency. Moreover, you can easily map which technology asset is related to which of the outcomes, helping you gain deeper insights. 

This structuring capability eliminates data duplication and silos, allowing for more efficient use of database space. 

3. Knowledge Management 

Think of it as a library where you get answers to all your questions and technical queries. It is a collection of all knowledge bases, self-help articles, technical guides, troubleshooting tips, etc. of an organization. 

You begin by gathering information from your employees, organizing it, and sharing it with others across your organization, allowing them to seek assistance whenever they encounter difficulties. 

It uses AI and ML capabilities to eliminate duplicate and false content. Moreover, it improves operational efficiency by reducing delays in seeking redressal of a problem, enhances collaboration, and fastens decision-making. 

4. Service Catalog 

Think of an e-commerce website where you get all products listed and you can choose among them. Similarly, the service catalog on the ServiceNow Now platform allows you to list all your IT services and products that your employees can request when needed. 

You can list IT assets and resources, such as laptops, PCs, and more, or services, such as password resets, custom reports, etc. Also, you can categorize them under department-related services or products such as marketing, sales, IT, security, and more. 

It boosts your employee’s self-service capabilities and increases operational efficiency. 

5. Security Features 

The Now platform is a highly secured platform with three main layers of security—data encryption, regulatory compliance, and privacy and access control. 

Data Encryption

It uses AES256 encryption that encrypts all your data stored over the platform using a three-level key hierarchy: 

• First Level Key: An instance-specific key that encrypts database records and logs the data.
• Second Level Key: Protects the first-level key.
• Third Level Key: It protects the second-level key and is stored in a secure, validated key management appliance. 

Note: These keys can only be accessed by the security operations team of your organization. 

This way, the Now platform guarantees a high level of data encryption at rest and in transit, eliminating any kind of unauthorized access. 

Regulatory Compliances 

It enables businesses to meet the regulatory requirements and industry standards that are crucial for avoiding any legal issues. Here is a list of regulatory compliances as follows:  

• ISO 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701 
• SOC-1, SOC-2, SOC-2 + HITRUST
• FedRAMP High 
• Health Data Hosting (HDS) 
• C5
• DoD IL-4 
• AGID 
• UK Cyber Essentials Plus 
• IRAP OFFICIAL, IRAP PROTECTED 
• MTCS-Level 3

Privacy and Access Controls 

These controls ensure that only the relevant users can access applications, instances, data, and functionalities of the platform. 

You can configure the roles of your employees, allowing them to create, modify, and delete records in your database. Also, you can specify which employees can access your applications, products, or services, restricting them to their domain area. 

6. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Think of it as a robot who is working on your behalf. 

With RPA, you can automate repetitive and error-prone tasks that require a high volume of human interference, such as filling out forms or extracting data from spreadsheets. 

You can create different types of robots—unattended and attended. Unattended robots are made based on some rules where human interference is not required. Whereas, attended robots require human intervention, such as at call centers. 

Leveraging it into Workspace Service Delivery, RPA can automate repetitive tasks such as data entry, form filling, and report generation, freeing up your time for value-added activities. 

These robots can be customized to meet your specific needs, lowering your hiring costs and scaling operations. They can be trained further to perform complex tasks, improving accuracy and boosting productivity. 

7. Workspaces 

It’s like a dashboard where you can see all the interactions between your agents and end-users in one place. 

This platform uses AI and ML capabilities to recommend similar incidents, resolutions, and relevant knowledge bases to agents, making it easier for them to resolve queries. 

Workspaces also recommends ways to break down complex problems into smaller parts, simplifying the incident resolution process and boosting both the agent’s and end-user’s productivity. 

ServiceNow Now Platform Architecture

Now Platform follows a multi-instance architecture, i.e., you get your dedicated instance with a separate database and infrastructure. In case of any disruption or update in your instance, it does not impact other users and ensures the security of your data.

Further, the architecture is structured into multiple layers. Let’s explore them:

1. User Interface Layer: It is the topmost layer where the users directly interact with the platform through UI elements such as forms, lists, and other drag-and-drop options. 

2. Application Layer: As the name suggests, this layer contains all the core applications that are built over the platform. 

3. Database Layer: At this layer, all of your data is stored in the database using the CSDM, which allows for structured storage. 

4. Integration Layer: This particular layer connects your platform to other third-party applications using varied integration methods.

5 Workflow Layer: It provides tools for designing and automating complex business processes using visual workflows.

6. Orchestration Layer: This automates tasks across multiple systems, such as setting up virtual machines or running remote scripts.

ServiceNow Now Platform Pricing

ServiceNow does not offer fixed pricing for the Now platform. It is freely available for use; however, the pricing is charged for the instances and roles you create. These prices are not publicly disclosed by ServiceNow. You can contact the ServiceNow representative to seek assistance with it.

You must note: The pricing might vary based on your geographic region, business needs, project requirements, and other major factors.

Companies Using the Now Platform

This platform has helped businesses across the globe to operate efficiently, foster innovation, support employee development, and grow their businesses. The following are some of these businesses: 

1. NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing)

A motorsports company that leveraged the Now platform to streamline all its outdated and inefficient business processes. They were able to develop workflows themselves, which were presented to other employees as well. 

The organization was able to achieve efficiency and streamlined task prioritization, along with 25,000 average monthly page views. 

2. HOOPP (Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan)

Is a financial services firm that provides services to the healthcare industry. They leveraged the Now platform for application development across the company. Their team of 40 developers in different business units was able to develop solutions that helped them scale their operations. 

3. ServiceNow 

Using its own offering, ServiceNow has tremendously transformed its working. They have achieved multiple advantages across different departments. Using a single platform, they optimized 900 business processes. 

Their productivity improved by 96%, resulting in 18% enhanced revenue per employee. They have a 700:1 employee-to-support personnel ratio, which in turn is a great benefit to the organization. 

(Source: https://www.servicenow.com/customers.html) 

Get Started With The Now Platform

Transform your business processes by leveraging the digital benefits of modern times! To begin with the versatile Now platform, connect with ServiceNow Consultants today. Their vast expertise and experience can help you streamline the implementation process, address technical challenges, and ensure that you make the most out of your platform.