The journey toward the As-a-Service Economy, the transition from systems of record to systems of engagement, is as complex as it is cumbersome to complete. The tendency of analysts and pundits to celebrate digital disruptors such as Uber and AirBnB does little to ease that pain and instead inflicts as sense of urgency to find the answers to leave legacy systems and environments behind. For many organizations, this transformation brings nothing short of excruciating pain and cost. Therefore, procrastination is a somewhat understandable institutional and human response. So while we may know the desired direction of the journey, most enterprises have had very little practical guidance on the new methodologies, skill sets and adaptive change management and cultural guidance to get there.
To address these issues, in 2015, HfS began publishing a set of groundbreaking Blueprints, including Workday and Salesforce service to assess a new set of ecosystems that will play pivotal roles in the new paradigm of the As-a-Service Economy. To extend this set, we are pleased to announce that we are launching a ServiceNow Services Blueprint. The Blueprint continues our theme of looking at services sets around the planning, implementation, management and operations of leading Software-as-a-Service platforms.
Exhibit 1 details the services along the ServiceNow value chain that we plan to cover:
Exhibit 1: ServiceNow Services Value Chain
Source: HfS Research, 2016
In the context of ServiceNow, our interest is not confined to IT Service Management, but extends to trying to assess how new ecosystems are evolving toward broader notions of Enterprise Service Management. These notions imply a service governance that encompasses both IT and operations in a holistic sense that is critical to overcome the organizational stovepipes that can disrupt the journey toward the As-a-Service Economy.
By facilitating the transfer of unstructured data to structured workflows, ServiceNow’s offerings target critical intersections of the Ideals of the As-a-Service Economy. As a platform play, ServiceNow seeks to enhance the interplay of Intelligent Automation with Collaborative Engagements as well as Plug & Play Digital Services. ServiceNow’s vision is to support organizations transforming from a siloed approach toward a value chain orientation. Or, put in more simple terms, ServiceNow is aiming to be a change agent to leaving behind legacy setups and mindsets.
However, the Blueprint is not an assessment of ServiceNow’s roadmap. Rather, it focuses on how service providers are executing the implementations, managing change and most importantly providing innovation around the platform. The Blueprint will evaluate the key presence of the key skill sets required to build out these new platforms and ecosystems within established service providers. At the same time, we hope to show the capabilities of innovative startups in the mold of Workday service partners such as OneSourceVirtual or Meteorix that are instead scaling up with a pronounced ServiceNow focus.
Beyond the notion of enterprises’s journey into the As-a-Service Economy, the broader context for the ServiceNow Blueprint is the impact for sourcing organizations. For example, the discussions on multi-sourcing as well as on MSI/SIAM (multi supplier integration/service integration and management). What are the management approaches that take sourcing and outsourcing to the next level? Put in simple words, many enterprises are stuck with legacy management approaches for technology innovations that are actually meant to disrupt legacy environments. The common theme in these approaches (and challenges) is that we cannot simply prolong legacy sourcing models while evangelizing on digital technologies and assume that this alone will eventually lead us to the As-a-Service Economy.
If you are interested to discuss your ServiceNow capabilities with HfS, just drop me a line at: tom.reuner@hfsresearch.com.