With the general availability of the Quebec release of ServiceNow on the horizon, I've taken a moment to pick through ServiceNow's own long list of highlights to select a few key features that I think could make a big difference to many businesses.

Process Optimization

By now, many of you will have collected vast amounts of data across various business processes and are likely monitoring your SLAs and KPIs to keep these processes on track, but are you using that wealth of 'real world' (not 'gut feel' or 'model generated') data to your best advantage?

Process Optimization allows you to automatically create visualizations of your process flows from your data that might help to highlight inefficiencies or bottlenecks in your processes.

For example, does it take longer to resolve Incidents depending on the initial contact type and, if so, where in the process is any extra delay - perhaps the initial information collected makes it harder to route the Incident to the correct assignee, or perhaps additional follow-up questions are needed when working the Incident?

Process Optimization allows you to define the Nodes for the visualization (eg. 'State') and any Breakdown that might be useful (eg. 'Contact type') and can be applied to any audited Table (leveraging existing historical logs to provide immediate insight). Variations of the model can be compared side-by-side (eg. does the process perform differently) and notes can be added for commentary and future reference.

Finally, there is the ability to create and track improvement initiatives based on any deficiencies identified in the process.

Workforce Optimization

Now that you have your processes under control, what about your most important asset: your people?

Workforce Optimization (for both ITSM and CSM) provides a 'single pane of glass' view that allows Managers to quickly monitor and assist with the current work-in-hand, effectively plan and schedule resources for the future, plus review and guide the performance and growth of their team.

Operationally, Managers can review real-time performance indicators to help encourage focus on critical tasks, route work based on agent skills and provide 'in call' assistance to agents (without the user being made aware). Agent schedules, including breaks and time-off, can be created based on analysis of in-tool 'agent demand' data, and agents can be enabled to self-manage time-off and shift-swap requests.

Managers can use KPIs to compare and contrast team and individual performance, plus leverage Predictive Intelligence to discover any newly acquired skills based on previously completed tasks. Assessments can be completed to recognize improvement opportunities leading to recommendations for individual growth through coaching, mentorship, or training.

Safe Workplace Suite

Alongside looking after your people, and given the on-going pandemic crisis, I'd like to include a shoutout for the Safe Workplace Suite as ServiceNow continues to deliver and refine tools to help your organization return safely to the workplace.

Included in this suite are tools to help assess the readiness of both your Workplace and, importantly, your Employees for that return, perform Health Screening, and track Vaccination Status - plus, once we are able to, to help ensure that any business travel is undertaken safely as well.

For those tasked with administration and oversight of this effort, there is Workplace Safety Management to assist with defining and maintaining workspaces and a Workplace PPE Inventory Management application to keep track of any necessary protective equipment.

Integrations

With the Quebec release, ServiceNow continues its focus to be a 'one tool fits all' consolidation platform for all of your disparate applications with many new and improved out-of-the-box integrations.

In the DevOps world, we can now consolidate tools such as Azure DevOps, GitLab, and Jenkins into a single, consistent view - plus go 'broader and deeper' with test tools such as Smartbear, Tricentis Tosca, and Zephyr.

For SecOps, integrations with CrowdStrike Falcon Sandbox, Secureworks, and Tenable have been added or improved to ease and automate the creation of the relevant ServiceNow artifacts.

For HR, pre-built integrations for Cornerstone, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Workday, and Workplace from Facebook enable 'consistent data' and 'synchronized task progression' across multiple applications from a single location, which all helps to provide a seamless customer experience.

It's getting easier to get data into and out of ServiceNow, reducing the burden of learning and maintaining disparate systems and tools for many and increasing the opportunity for cross-process integration and alignment.

Summary

This is just a small selection of some of the new features in the Quebec release of ServiceNow.

Keep an eye on our blog posts as we continue to spotlight other Quebec functionality and deep dive into some of the new capabilities.