What is most valuable?
It's serving our end-user community, making it simple for them to order products, get service from our incident help desk, and perhaps even helping everyone across the globe because we have to stay connected somehow, and ServiceNow does that for us.
We've just launched the visual task boards in the last year, so we're still learning how to do that effectively. Right now, we're trying to do a comparison of what we do with our internal chat and using the chat inside ServiceNow, so a lot of things that we're still learning, and we're trying to break ground so to speak, so that we can get better.
How has it helped my organization?
I think I want to focus in on our assets. We do many things for studios, and internally, we use a lot of hardware, so we want to be able to find and understand where our assets sit. If there's a breakdown in communication, how do we service that? We've recently launched with one of the certified partners. How we do a better job in tracking those assets once it comes on location, and then it gets into the inventory. That's the key piece. It's how do we manage those assets, manage the cost, manage where they are, and make sure people have access to that equipment.
What needs improvement?
Maybe cost in one sense because when you make that investment from the other side of it, you're looking at the cost, but we've been having that ongoing debate. Empty glass could be your cost, but the full glass or maybe half full, or half empty. If it's half full, that means you're getting great things out of it. If it's half empty, you're so worried about the cost. Where are you going to trim. We're going down the path of, "How do we shape our roadmap so that we understand what that investment is going to do for us?" We're using the Champions Enablement Tool to help us chart that out. We have our own internal tool, and there's a lot of similarities, but I think what we want to do is just channel it the way ServiceNow is intending it to.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been on it since Calgary, so we were early adopters. We're currently on Fuji. We will probably move to Geneva probably in the fall.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Recently, we've been working with the support because they've been notifying us that there are certain things that may be slowing down our system. Right away, they've advised us that they have that ability to transition us seamlessly and to help us with our connectivity. There are some complaints internally still that we're trying to wade through, but overall we've been quite happy with it. Connectivity for the most part has been very good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's tremendous. Just recently, we rolled out the GRC module. It was specific to one of our security teams. At the moment, it was just to help them with their auditing, how they manage their compliance. Now, the part of the business has gotten wind that this is out there. It was demoed. Now, people are coming to us in that sense.
The Service Catalog continues to grow over a hundred service catalog forms, and people want to get rid of the old email in our office, department envelopes, the email, and the shoulder tapping. Now, we're able to centralize them through the portal. In fact, that's another thing, the portal that we have. We had user issues with the community portal on Eureka.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
It was scattered. It was decentralized, so people in their own locations were tracking a certain way or doing things a certain way. Some people had barcoding systems and scanned assets, while other locations were just eyeballing it and logging it onto spreadsheets. We knew there's a problem, and just like the Chief Product Officer is saying, you want to automate where you can, and this is where we want to go.
We went out to go get a certified partner's product and cross-views, and they've helped us really just make it look and feel more friendly than when now you look at Helsinki, it's like right in alignment of where we are today and where we want to continue to go, so those are the other things that we have to weigh out.
How was the initial setup?
I wasn't part of that implementation team. I came in to really get the program together because we had our enterprise architect team implement it. However, I think the guys had fun implementing it because they were looking forward to actually getting it in place, start using it, and start deploying it.
Upgrades through the years have been pretty tough. We didn't get the sandbox right away, so it made hard on our users where we have to do all the testing and make sure we understand the differences between out of the cloud versus what we did with custom development. That took just a little bit longer in analysis and testing implementation.
What other advice do I have?
First question I would ask is, "What are you waiting for? You've described to me all your problems that you're having. You're decentralized. You're disparate. You have all these things that are hanging out there. You don't have a way to communicate essentially through people. Come on board."
I took the governance class. It was a day and a half, and I sat at a table with people that had the same problems. We had a new implementation in the two months prior. We have someone that's on a competitor's application, and they've already made the decision to come in ServiceNow, but it took the management team to say, "Hey, we need to do this. We got to get better at what we're doing." Really, it's all practical in the sense of filling the need, and it's making it simple not only for the end-user, but if you saw the key note today, the backend where the developers and the systems. It's going to be really helpful for everyone.
It's right from our own internal processes, and matching staffing needs, and meeting the customers' needs, and then also ServiceNow coming in where cost has to be helpful to us. We know the platform is there.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.