Poll Results: Unveiling the Top Pain Points in ServiceNow Operations

During one of our speaking sessions at last week's ServiceNow Knowledge 2024, we polled attendees to understand better the common challenges ServiceNow professionals face. The results clearly show the primary hurdles in optimizing ServiceNow operations. A significant 50% of the participants identified "Chronic delays to deliver on time" as their most significant pain point. The remaining attendees were evenly split, with 25% each citing "Governing ServiceNow instances" and "Quality and Security" issues as their biggest pain points. These insights are invaluable as they highlight the critical areas where organizations seek improvement. 

Addressing the Pain Points with xtype

xtype is explicitly designed to address these pain points by enhancing efficiency, governance, and security within ServiceNow environments. Here's how xtype provides solutions to each of these challenges:

Chronic Delays to Deliver on Time

Half the respondents indicated that their primary challenge was chronic project delivery delays. These delays can be attributed to various factors, including inefficient deployment practices, slow approval processes, lengthy manual testing, cloning downtime, etc.

xtype products tackle these delays head-on through multi-environment visibility, controlled synchronization, zero-touch deployments, and release packaging. These features streamline the entire deployment process, enabling faster and more efficient delivery cycles. By automating, improving, and expediting routine tasks, xtype minimizes manual intervention, thereby reducing the likelihood of errors and speeding up the time to market. xtype ensures that all ServiceNow environments are updated consistently against your processes and policies and that all instances are synchronized to look as production-like as possible without needing to clone to achieve the same end. xtype helps maintain a steady flow of operations without the disruptions and delays commonly caused by instance discrepancies, manual processes, and development downtime.

Governing ServiceNow Instances

A quarter of the attendees reported struggles with effectively governing their ServiceNow instances. Effective governance is crucial for maintaining system integrity, ensuring compliance, and managing changes across multiple environments.

xtype provides robust features for monitoring and enforcing policies across ServiceNow instances. xtype ensures that all changes are logged and every deployment complies with set policies, thereby maintaining high governance standards and enabling the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP). This comprehensive oversight and the reduced need for elevated privileges across ServiceNow instances help organizations adhere to internal standards and comply with external regulations.

Quality and Security

Quality assurance and security remain top concerns for the remaining 25% of respondents. Since breaches are costly and damaging, ensuring the security of your instances and releases is paramount. Similarly, maintaining high quality in the development and deployment phases is essential for the smooth operation of ServiceNow instances.

xtype Enterprise addresses these concerns by allowing you to include ATF and code scan executions as part of your Deployment Flows. Integrating ATF and code scans directly into deployment pipelines ensures that every release meets the highest quality standards before going live. xtype's approach not only helps in identifying potential vulnerabilities early but also ensures that deployments meet rigorous quality standards before they reach production.

Additionally, since xtype Deployment Flows are the migration mechanism for deployments and releases, ServiceNow developers no longer need elevated privileges across all your instances. Practicing PoLP for ServiceNow deployments and releases improves your security footprint.

Conclusion: xtype as a Strategic Solution

The poll results from ServiceNow Knowledge 2024 underline the pressing challenges faced by ServiceNow professionals today. xtype's comprehensive suite of products is tailored to meet these challenges, offering features that enhance productivity, strengthen governance, and ensure high standards of quality and security. By addressing these critical pain points, xtype products improve the operational efficiency of ServiceNow environments and support organizations in their broader objectives of digital transformation and excellence.

For ServiceNow professionals looking to overcome these common hurdles, xtype presents a powerful ally. As the ServiceNow platform continues to evolve, xtype remains committed to innovating and adapting its solutions to meet the community's changing needs. To learn more about how xtype can transform your ServiceNow operations, visit our website or contact us directly for a detailed walkthrough of our capabilities.

‍