You’re having lunch with a colleague and she asks, “What’s the ServiceNow project about?” How do you answer? Well, like most projects, it’s pretty complicated, but here’s a quick overview to help you out.
Implementing ServiceNow is one of UIT’s principle initiatives for the next couple of years. But before jumping right into ServiceNow, let’s place it in its service management context.
Service management is about designing and facilitating how we offer, deliver, support, and improve the services we provide to Stanford. It is simply the discipline behind managing our services well.
A foundational piece of our service management program is putting in place a state-of-the art, best-in-class system for standardizing and automating service-related processes. That system is ServiceNow.
How will UIT use ServiceNow?
After our December release, ServiceNow will be UIT’s tool for:
- Request Management—how our clients gain access to our services,
- Incident Management—how we report and track resolution on service questions and issues reported by an individual client,
- Knowledge Management—how we share service information that helps clients help themselves,
- Problem Management—how we report and track resolution of systemic service issues affecting multiple clients, and
- Change Management—how service owners request, communicate, and track changes to their services.
What does it mean for our clients?
The “backend” benefits that ServiceNow will bring to our processes will undoubtedly be felt by our clients in improved experiences with UIT. Additionally, continually enhanced “frontend” changes will improve the client experience.
In December, a new Services Portal (in ServiceNow) will change the way clients access UIT support and provide new options for getting help, such as the ability to online chat with a Service Desk consultant and easily search for and find self-help information. See for yourself in this sneak peek video tour.
Why does this matter?
For the past decade, we’ve done much of this work using tools such as Remedy (HelpSU), PMG (OrderIT), Drupal (Stanford Answers) and a variety of other systems. This sometimes led to inconsistencies in how we delivered and supported our services—inconsistencies that resulted in a less-than-ideal experience for our clients. We can do better.
ServiceNow will allow us to:
- unify multiple processes and tools into one consistent and integrated system,
- simplify our clients’ experience while expanding support options,
- increase internal efficiency and resolve issues more quickly, and
- drive continuous service improvement with better data and metrics.
These benefits can improve how University IT—and eventually other campus service providers—deliver and support services. Our success will position us as a leading campus service provider and allow many other Stanford service units to leverage our approach.
