Michaela Kaufmanova, Autor SnowMirror

If you’re one of those people who can easily identify new opportunities, it’s always frustrating to have your ideas falling on deaf ears. When it comes to technological innovation, the stakes are even higher, simply because it has the power to make or break a business. Choosing the wrong solutions can result in the company ending up in a worse position than when it started. On the other hand, the ability to innovate in a world of constant change is crucial for survival.

The fact is, even the most adaptable among us are still stuck in our habits, especially regarding the technology we use. After all, not many iPhone users would ever consider using an Android-powered phone, just like most Windows users aren’t willing to make the dramatic shift to Linux. For business leaders, some of the biggest decisions are whether to digitise and automate their core processes and whether they should migrate their systems to the cloud.

If you have an innovation project in mind, you’re going to have to convince your stakeholders that doing nothing is the bigger risk.

No other industry sector is more inundated with hype than business technology, and many leaders have heard it all before. By now, most have heard all about emerging trends and how things like augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and workflow automation are changing the world. The thing is, business leaders often aren’t technologists, and they’re not likely to give in to the hype. Similarly, excessive use of jargon is likely to turn them off too. Any shrewd business leader is interested in adding value to their organization; not in adopting new technologies for the sole reasons being that they’re new and that’s the ‘done thing’.

Rather than hearing about how artificial intelligence is driving workflow automation and how cloud computing is enabling workforce mobility, they want to hear about real business benefits. They want demonstrable proof that a workflow automation platform can increase productivity or how workforce mobility can open up new avenues for hiring the best talent.

It’s not always easy to convey these things in the right language. Even the greatest visionaries often find themselves unable to relate to others, so it’s a good idea to work towards achieving buy-in from elsewhere in the organisation too. Even if a small group of colleagues all come together to realise the benefits of innovation, senior management will be more likely to listen, much like the 3.5% rule of revolutions, in which it only takes a small minority to drive change.

Before you try to convince your stakeholders that it’s time to innovate with a particular solution, you need to identify the need. It’s not about chasing after the latest shiny new objects just because that’s what everyone else is doing. Necessity is the mother of invention, and all changes start with a need.

Innovation can be a rocky ride. Business leaders know this, and many also know that a large amount of digital transformation projects end up running far over budget and/or failing to meet their goals. If you don’t have a tangible business goal in mind, then you won’t get anywhere trying to get support for your projects. But identifying a need and having a goal isn’t enough. You also need a proven path to get there, lest the fraught with difficulties. You need the support and expertise necessary to ensure a successful implementation and support thereafter. Business leaders want a clear path for navigating the potential pitfalls, and that demands a structured approach to innovation.

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There’s never a dull moment in the world of business as technological development continues to transform not just our personal lives, but also the way we work. Recent years have seen an upsurge in the adoption of cloud-computing and service-based delivery models. These, in turn, have given rise to a new era of workforce mobility and firmly established the foundations of a gig-based economy. The days of the 9 to 5 stuck in front of an office desk are fading away.

2019 was all about software-as-a-service (SaaS). By delivering web applications and compute power on demand, rather than relying on on-premises systems, people are now able to take their work with them no matter where they go. But now the service-based economy is stepping up its game to deliver everything from remote desktop experiences to disaster recovery, along with emerging platforms like marketing- and healthcare-as-a-service. With the ongoing rollout of 5G mobile technologies, we can expect an even wider range of web-based services to arise.

For too long, employees have been spending a considerable portion of their time trying to work around otherwise trivial technology problems or waiting for support from their IT departments. Nothing gets in the way of productivity faster than staring at loading screens and error dialogs, hence the need for more efficient and proactive support mechanisms. Being managed by third parties rather than overworked in-house teams, cloud services have simplified maintenance and support, and they continue to empower employees to focus on their core competencies.

In the old days, information siloes were the product of paper documents and physical media exchanged manually between relevant parties. It’s a process that becomes almost impossible to achieve at scale, at least if boosting efficiency is your primary goal. The coming years will continue to see the shift away from things like spreadsheets, documents, and emails to more centralised solutions which make all important resources readily available to those who need them. With employee experience entering the spotlight, that’s only getting more important.

The traditional model where office employees spend eight hours per day in front of an office desk is rapidly dying away. Today, work is all about flexibility, whether it’s getting a head start on the day’s work during the morning commute or even working exclusively from home. This development has allowed businesses to tap into talent all over the world without geographical boundaries getting in the way. In 2020, more companies will embrace flexible work models by creating cloud digital workspaces that deliver everything employees need to be at their best.

For some years now, the cloud has been hailed as a silver bullet to a whole raft of operational challenges. And, ever since its inception, debate has raged over which is better – the private or public cloud. The fact is that some workloads, especially those which involve very sensitive information, aren’t a great fit for the public cloud. Some are even still better off being handled in-house. As such, for most organisations, a hybrid approach works best, and more companies will start to benefit from that as we navigate the fourth industrial revolution.

One of the most pervasive trends in modern business is finding ways to make work easier. As employee turnover rates continue to increase, employers are coming under greater pressure to offer more rewarding work and deliver a better work/life balance. Yet people are still working more hours and facing more work-related stress than ever. At the same time, the rise of mobile workforces and the gig economy isn’t a silver bullet.

The fact remains that employees are overwhelmed. They’re spending more time answering emails or checking their phones than ever. Others spend a large portion of their days on menial and repetitive tasks which can easily be automated. Employee experiences are getting worse, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. That’s why employee experience platforms have become a critical enabler of greater productivity and morale.

Despite billions of euros being poured into technological development, things aren’t improving as quickly as they should be. Most digital transformation initiatives don’t meet their goals, and many businesses are either still lagging behind or making the wrong investments at the wrong stage of the technology hype cycle.

Technology can either be a costly liability or an invaluable asset. Without a clear strategy that aligns technology with business goals, it’s only going to be the former. Rather than just chasing after the latest new techs, employee experience needs to be the overarching consideration. Technology should reduce complexity for the end user, thus helping employees do more with less.

We live in an age of technology bloat, where many of us are using so many different apps and systems to perform a handful of tasks that it only ends up being a displacement activity. Rather than actually getting work done and enjoying the sense of fulfillment that comes with it, people are now spending more time on ancillary tasks they’re not best-equipped to deal with, while juggling notifications from a hundred different sources.

Employee experience platforms are all about providing the tools people need to stay focussed on their jobs without unnecessary distractions. Instead of wasting time trying to work around otherwise trivial technology problems and other issues, employees should be able to focus on their core competencies.

It’s time for businesses to start thinking about employee experience in the same way they think about customer experience. This means information must be available as needed and people are guided through the right systems and departments using an automated approach. Instead of thinking of employees as employees, brands should think of them as internal customers.

This new service delivery model automates the employee journey, placing their experiences in the company at centre stage. With a unified approach to HR that’s consistent across every branch and department, businesses will be better equipped to address potential issues at all touchpoints and use data-driven insights to move the employee experience forward.

Most HR systems are woefully outdated, requiring multiple instances of manual data entry and learning curves of varying degrees. All too often do candidates decide against submitting an application just because the process is too laborious. Just as they do with customers, potential employees act on first impressions, and unnecessary red tape is hardly an encouraging sign.

Employee experience platforms can help simplify administrative work while providing faster and more relevant feedback across every employee interaction point. Onboarding becomes a lot quicker and simpler because it’s automated, and employees will often be able to step right into their new roles without unnecessary friction.

How automated onboarding helps your newest employees get started on the right track

Did you know it typically takes between one and two years for a new hire to reach maximum productivity? In today’s fast-paced world, that’s far too long. At the same time, people tend to be more motivated and enthusiastic when they’re new to a company. That’s why the first few months is the most important of all. The actions you take during this time, whether it includes orientation, training, or research, will make an enormous difference.

Onboarding new employees has long been a tedious process involving a lot of people, time, and other resources. Often, there’s a host of small tasks to take care of, such as scheduling meetings, familiarising new hires with company policies, distributing forms and surveys, and manually keying in employee data. That’s why more and more companies are implementing automated onboarding processes.

Onboarding new hires costs thousands of euros, which covers factors such as the number of hours managers need to spend training them, the tools and software provided, and the amount of paper, printing, and other office supplies involved. A lot of these costs are easily avoidable. Automating onboarding can save enormous amounts of administrative resources while also offering a more consistent process that directly benefits your newest team members.

It hardly gives new hires a great first impression when they have to fill in numerous different forms, many of which will probably end up sitting in a folder for days or even weeks. No one likes corporate bureaucracy, which is why the number of steps it takes to enroll new hires must be reduced to as few as possible. An automated solution lets you reduce the number of forms necessary and route them efficiently between departments, resulting in faster onboarding.

Multiple data entry is a common characteristic of any inefficient business process. It takes time and increases the risk of error. With automated onboarding, you can manage all employee forms and data in one place. This gives employers and employees alike complete visibility into the status of each new onboarding programme. With a centralised data repository, HR teams can also gain insights into the onboarding progress of new hires and make informed decisions when selecting new prospects.

New employees often feel like they’re filling out the same information over and over until the repetition reaches a point where they end up being bored and demotivated before they even start. Similarly, training programmes are often fragmented and lacking relevance. Sometimes, new hires end up in training sessions being taught things they already know. By automating onboarding, you’ll be better placed to accommodate their unique needs and characteristics right from the outset.

Every onboarding process starts out with some kind of application form which, still takes the form of several pages of paperwork in many organisations. Applications and other forms then end up being transferred to the necessary department, while important data gets keyed in manually. Sometimes, this needs to be done multiple times. The repetition and frequent back and forth often result in costly human errors that delay the whole process while leaving new hires in the lurch. Instead, they should be able to complete forms electronically, and the data uploaded directly to your employee management system.

For some years now, the cloud has been hailed as a silver bullet to a whole raft of operational challenges. And, ever since its inception, a debate has raged over which is better – the private or public cloud. The fact is that some workloads, especially those which involve very sensitive information, aren’t a great fit for the public cloud. Some are even still better off being handled in-house. As such, for most organisations, a hybrid approach works best, and more companies will start to benefit from that as we navigate the fourth industrial revolution.

As enterprise technology becomes increasingly defined by its software-based infrastructure, the need for a robust software asset management (SAM) solution is greater than ever. Many smaller organisations still rely on manual processes, such as spreadsheets, for managing their software portfolios and licenses. Some don’t even have a clearly defined process at all. This can lead to wasted licenses, increased risk of compliance failures, and greater security risks due to poor software lifecycle management.

An internal software audit gathers key information about a company’s software environment to address the aforementioned challenges. It’s a documented process that must be deployed at scale to manage software installations and licenses across constantly expanding and ever-more complex infrastructures spanning today’s decentralised IT environments. In other words, it’s about bringing information together across branches, facilities, and departments, including ones around the country and beyond.

Internal software audits broadly address two key goals – to reduce the number of inactive or expired licenses and to enforce your corporate software policies. But these goals are virtually impossible to achieve at scale if you’re relying on manual processes. An automated software asset management solution provides a single, centralised interface for monitoring application usage and license deployment and maintaining complete visibility over the environment.

Before you can understand your software licensing status and take steps to optimise the wider IT environment, you need to have a clear picture of what you have and where it’s installed. A complete software inventory provides the foundation you need to simplify maintenance and uphold compliance, as well as strategically patch holes in your infrastructure and optimise your budget. Given the complexities of today’s enterprise software environments, and the fact they typically incorporate a wide range of desktop applications, cloud-based services, and mobile apps, it’s rarely possible to do this manually. To reduce the risk of human error and optimise efficiency, you’ll need a software asset management platform which automates the collection of licensing and installation data across your entire environment. Your SAM solution should also be able to import purchase data and compare it alongside installed software.

Collecting software usage data will provide a baseline for how you define normal software use throughout the enterprise. It’s a good idea to start collecting and monitoring application usage as soon as you’ve populated your software inventory. Many enterprises have unused licenses which can be freed up to reduce costs. One study by CSO Insights even found that 60% of businesses have unused licenses, meaning they’re wasting money on so-called ‘shelfware’ which they never use. With integrated tracking and metering tools, you can easily expose such licenses and reallocate or terminate them as necessary.

Before you can optimise license deployment, you’ll need a complete overview of the licenses your company currently owns. This is often the most difficult step after building your software inventory, so having an automated solution will help immeasurably. The best place to start is by looking at your purchase records – something an automated internal software audit should be able to do. By centralising this documentation, you can import it into your software asset management platform for reconciliation against installed licenses and usage volume. Then, you can adjust license counts as necessary. For example, if you have 200 licenses for your CRM software, but you’re only using 150, you may be able to renegotiate a better deal with your CRM vendor. Similarly, if you’re using 200 copies of your software, but you’re licensed to use only 100, then half of your copies won’t be legal, in which case you’ll need to address the problem as soon as possible to prevent potential sanctions.

To uphold information security and ensure compliance with licensing regulations, you need a policy that thoroughly documents the process for requesting, deploying, and managing every software asset in your organisation. But a policy by itself is nothing more than a piece of paper. You need a way to communicate and enforce them across every business operation. These policies govern the procedures for installing and using software throughout its lifecycle. They should also make clear the standards which software has to meet before it can be deployed. This includes creating a list of approved vendors, determining who’s responsible for acquiring and maintaining new software and negotiating pricing, and deciding which powers individual branches, departments, and employees have concerning the process. An automated solution aligns with these policies to proactively identify any potential breaches, as well as establish and enforce an enterprise-wide deployment and onboarding process. It also lets you manage ongoing license compliance by automating renewals and running periodic inventories.

Data and databases have evolved tremendously in recent years, in many cases moving from on-premises solutions to the cloud, or to a combination of both. This is especially important when it comes to cloud-based solutions such as ServiceNow. Because the concepts and terminology have changed so much, we at SnowMirror thought it would be good to spend some time reviewing the concepts and terminology behind modern data storage and retrieval.

One of the most important concepts in data is that of ETL (extract, transform and load), where data handling is divided into individual steps. ETL has been a key concept in databases since the 1970s, but what is relatively recent is how the cloud has been brought into play. In ETL, data is copied from one or more sources into a destination system which represents the data differently from the source, or in a different context than the source.

ETL is often used in data warehousing, which is where SnowMirror comes in. SnowMirror is a tool for replicating data from cloud services like ServiceNow or Salesforce, so you can consider it more on the extract part of ETL. SnowMirror enables you to extract your data, and then you can do various things with it.

One of the most common use cases for SnowMirror is to create better reports based on the data from ServiceNow or Salesforce, using business intelligence (BI) tools such as PowerBI, Tableau, Qlik or SAP Business Objects. In this ETL scenario, the data is extracted from ServiceNow, and placed in a “staging area”, an intermediate step where data is stored in a data warehouse before being transformed to prepare it for further analysis..

The transformation steps in ETL involve applying rules or functions to data to prepare it for loading into the end target. This might include things like cleaning the data, selecting only certain columns to load, joining data or de-duplicating data.

Finally, we have the load step, in which in our use case the transformed data is prepared for final presentation. This might include creating tables, charts and graphs based on the transformed data.

Combined with advances in cloud storage and other technologies, ETL has also evolved over time. Services like Snowflake – which is also supported by SnowMirror – enable users to replicate raw data into their data warehouses, where it can be transformed as needed using SQL. This lets them skip preload transformations.

We’ll look more at modern methods of data warehousing, staging and ELT in the second part of this post.

Wherever your business has its replication needs – whether it’s for advanced reporting, disaster recovery or integration with other applications – SnowMirror is a vital tool in your toolchain.

If you’d like to talk with us about how SnowMirror can help your business get the most out of ServiceNow or Salesforce, get in touch.

A regular backup of your ServiceNow data is critical. In a previous post, we described why it is necessary to perform independent backups of individual tables using tools such as SnowMirror. Once you know that you have regular snapshots of your ServiceNow data, the real challenge can be to restore data and relationships in the event of a data loss. Now let’s take a look at the options that we have to restore tables from backups.

If you want to restore a table from backups, you should start with the latest (or target) full backup and then restore the latest differential backup. If the incremental backups are being used, then you have to restore all increments since the last full backup.

SnowMirror is able to back up ServiceNow tables into two formats: CSV and native ServiceNow XML. These formats are the same or very similar to those created in ServiceNow’s export features. Depending on the backup format, the restore strategies are different.

Example Data Model

In this example we have a very simple data model consisting of two tables, Employee and Department. They both have the Name field and each employee has a reference to a department.

Native ServiceNow XML

Using ServiceNow’s native XML format for backups and then the restore process is the most straightforward solution, and it has many benefits. On the other hand, it is a low level ServiceNow feature which does not allow for any mistakes. If you’re not careful when uploading the data, you might cause even more damage to your ServiceNow data.

Here’s what the table looked like before the restoration started. Please note the record Radek which was not in the backup file, missing record Jana and an updated record Pavel:

After executing the Import XML command, the table is restored including all references. Please note that Radek stayed in the table, Pavel was updated and Jana was restored:

CSV

Restoring data from a CSV file is a bit more complicated, but on the other hand, the whole process is under your full control and it’s easier to adjust the data to your needs. The ServiceNow Import Sets have several features and they are well described in the documentation.

Updating existing records during the recovery is vital. If you don’t, the import set will instead create new records. Using a unique field to coalesce the records is not always possible or it is not the best way. If you want to use sys_id for this purpose then it is necessary to add this mapping to the field map manually by mapping the source u_sys_id to the target sys_id and making them into coalescing values.

This technique ensures that updates will be executed correctly, but the inserts will be created with generated sys_ids and not with the sys_ids from the backup file, which might break relationships with other tables. To ensure the inserted records get a sys_id from the file create an onBefore transform script like this:

Restoring relationships (references to other records) with CSV is much more complicated than with the XML format. In an ideal world, the right restore procedure would be to start from the tables that are being referenced and then continue with the rest. But not all data models are trees.

By default, CSVs contain display values of referenced records and the transform process finds the references using display values. But what if the referred record is not there (yet)? ServiceNow would either create it or cancel (ignore) the relationship. This is configurable. None of these options are ideal for the recovery process.

SnowMirror allows you to include sys_ids of the references into the CSV backups which is not available in the standard ServiceNow exports. It helps with record identification but not with the missing references. This has to be resolved by custom scripts inserting reference sys_ids even for missing references. In this case, the order of restored tables does not matter.

If you’d like to to talk with us about how SnowMirror can help your business get the most out of ServiceNow.

ServiceNow is a great cloud service. Although it offers some reporting capabilities, many ServiceNow customers have complicated requirements for reporting or business analytics. Either ServiceNow’s reporting is not sufficient for them, or their corporate standard is a different BI or reporting solution.

Many of our customers use Tableau. It is a leading BI tool, powerful and easy to use. Let’s have a look at how to configure Tableau to use ServiceNow data and to perform some analysis. The same approach would apply to PowerBI, QlikView, SAS Advanced Analytics or SAP Business Objects.

It is generally not a good idea to connect Tableau to a ServiceNow instance directly (i.e. live) for several reasons:

The solution is rather simple. Replicate the ServiceNow data into a traditional database and connect Tableau to that dedicated reporting database (e.g. Oracle, SQL Server, etc.). This guide will show you how to configure SnowMirror with a MySQL database and how to create a simple incident report using Tableau and the downloaded data.

1. Create a Database

You need a database where the replicated data will be stored. Use a database you like or which one is your corporate standard. SnowMirror supports all widely known DB vendors. In this guide, I will use MySQL (in fact MariaDB). It is easy to create a database instance, just do not forget to configure UTF-8 encoding because all ServiceNow strings use UTF-8. You can create a DB user for the database too.

2. Install SnowMirror

Download and install the SnowMirror tool. You can use a trial license provided by our website. Follow our Installation Guide or these simple steps for Windows machines:

3. Select Tables To Synchronize

Let’s say your goal is to create several reports in Tableau on the Incident Management process. Imagine some crosstabs on incidents by assignment groups, trends of critical incidents or even a map with incident locations. That would require you to have data from the following tables:

Data synchronization from ServiceNow into MySQL using SnowMirror is really simple:

4. Create Tableau Data Source

So now the data is in your MySQL (or any other) database. It is very straightforward to create a Tableau data source. This is not specific to either ServiceNow or SnowMirror. It’s just a standard Tableau way of connecting to a relational database.

On the next screen, your goal is to build a data source. Again a standard Tableau way of connecting tables. It only requires you to understand the ServiceNow data model.

5. Happy Analyzing

Voila! Now you have all the data you need in your local (or corporate) database, the data is being regularly updated, so you can create reports on live data (not only extracts). I have prepared a simple map showing incidents in the U.S. cities. The size of each city is a number of incidents and the colors in the pie chart show priority distribution.

If you’d like to to talk with us about how SnowMirror can help your business get the most out of ServiceNow, get in touch here.

Our guest blogger is David M. Parsons, ServiceNow’s Senior Vice President of Global Alliances and Channel Ecosystems.

Knowledge 2020 Digital Experience (K20DE) has launched with excellent reviews and engagement from our partners and ServiceNow customers. The Global Partner Ecosystem Summit will be held on May 28th and is a key part of the Knowledge 2020 digital experience as it is exclusively designed for our partners. The event is just two weeks away and I want to ensure that you have blocked time on your schedule to attend.

The Global Partner Ecosystem Summit is our annual launch event for new ServiceNow partner initiatives and programs where we share key announcements and insights on our go-to-market strategy, priorities, and plans.

In addition to my keynote, Bill McDermott will join me for a fireside chat to share key insights on the critical role our Global Partner Ecosystem plays in ServiceNow’s accelerated growth strategy as a true Force Multiplier. You’ll also hear Chris Bedi (NOW’s CIO) and Gina Mastantuono (NOW’s CFO) share their insights and perspectives on our new “Now Value” methodology that will inform every client engagement to drive business value impact. In addition, we will be sharing detailed insights from my global leadership team on key initiatives and programs designed to equip, enable, and empower your accelerated growth journey with ServiceNow. Finally, we have created and produced 25 Partner Ecosystem specific breakout sessions that will double click on specific initiatives and programs I will highlight in my keynote—all geared to help take your ServiceNow practice to the next level.

If you haven’t yet registered for the Knowledge 2020 digital event, sign up today. If you’ve registered for Knowledge 2020 but not the Global Partner Ecosystem Summit, you can easily add the event to your current registration at no charge:).