Topic 2 – Most Organizations Lack Maturity

When reading Gartner’s ITScore for Application Organizations: Management of Architecture, it made me realize how many of my organization’s clients come to us with Level 1: Ad Hoc application architecture. Most of our clients don’t have well documented processes and don’t really know who does which tasks in a process. The surprising factor is IT leadership doesn’t want to spend the time and money to document the processes.

When we implement the ServiceNow platform with a client, we create repeatable processes without the client knowing. We assist with defining processes for various services and in ServiceNow’s workflow engine, we develop in a way that the workflows can be reused. Then when we have future conversations with the client, we use those workflows as suggested processes. For our long term contracted clients, it helps my organization stay efficient and increase our profit margins because the repeatable processes are more well accepted. When we implement a process for clients, we leave them with a Level 3: Defined application architecture. Typically, ServiceNow becomes the single source of record for most processes so documenting the processes and integration points often define the application architecture.

For our long-term clients, accepting ServiceNow as their single source of record helps with optimizing and automating the processes and application architecture. Our long-term clients often move towards Level 4: Optimized mature level within two years. ServiceNow’s ability to integrate with email, CSV/XML, databases, active directory, SOAP/REST web services, and be able to run PowerShell/SSH commands helps with automation and optimizing processes. The platform’s build in SLA engine helps with measuring how efficient the processes and services are which helps with continuous improvement.

For the smaller short-term clients, they spend more money reinventing the wheel sort of speak. They constantly are redefining their processes and rediscovering what they implemented in ServiceNow. Even though they have an individual who takes ownership of ServiceNow, they rarely have owners of the various applications on the platform. Internally, I’ve been pushing my organization to offer business analysts and business system analysts to help clients identify application architecture however the sales team has much difficulty having those conversations with clients.

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