What a conference!  

The ServiceNow Knowledge 2021 digital experience did not disappoint. 

We ordered takeout, went on walks, made a point to connect with our teams and found a cozy spot – away from our desks – to sit and watch all the great content at Knowledge 21.  

ServiceNow and industry leaders inspired us with stories of digital transformation and how they leveraged technology to stay safe, keep employees connected, and grow their business during a pandemic. 

The extraordinary growth achieved by these organizations – during extraordinary times – catapulted us all into a new era, moving digital transformation from buzzword to business imperative. Here’s a look back at what inspired us most. 

Opening Keynote 

Beginning with Knowledge 21’s opening keynote, highlighted ServiceNow’s embrace of the COVID-19 pandemic. CEO Bill McDermott shared how ServiceNow created workflows around the world – to keep businesses in business and most of all, keep employees safe. In a time of great uncertainty, perhaps the greatest uncertainty any one of us has ever known, ServiceNow doubled its features and functionalities. And their biggest workflow was turning vaccines into vaccinations. 

IT Workflow Innovations 

With the Quebec ITBM release, ServiceNow’s digital enterprise fabric uses roadmap capabilities to accelerate critical product launches. DevOps teams collaborate on the issues at hand with Microsoft Teams integration. While AIOps from ITOM Health Analytics proactively prevents issues before they impact your organization. 

On May 10, just one day before Knowledge 2021’s kick-off, ServiceNow announced their acquisition of Lightstep. This cutting-edge DevOps observability platform empowers teams to evaluate configurations as they go into production. Integration with ITOM means developers and SREs can observe and resolve issues before customers know they exist. You’ll see this capability in action beginning with the ServiceNow Rome release. 

Let’s take a deep dive into how ServiceNow is making work better. 

Business Management Innovations 

ServiceNow’s ITBM solutions help businesses manage large-scale projects, support agility, manage applications, costs and automate processes.   

In one such story, a large-scale company leveraged ServiceNow’s workbench to create a roadmap for a simplified user experience. The ITBM solution drove a new way of reporting and helped grow a user base in Agile Workspace. The Project Management Office saved 6-8 hours a month – a 25% overall time savings. 

SecOps and DevOps Innovations 

ServiceNow featured two experts from Crossfuze at the Knowledge ’21 digital experience. Andrea Castillo, Practice Director, Security and Risk spoke on building a culture of cyber resilience by being “brilliant at the basics.” You can read more about her thoughts and how ServiceNow’s SecOps innovations are helping enterprises do just that in this blog. 

Our other featured speaker, Greg Wheeler, Practice Director, Advisory focused on the differences between Waterfall Development and Agile Development. What would happen if organizations combined the two methodologies to create hybrid DevOps? You can read more about his insights here. 

Customer Workflow Innovations 

ServiceNow developed customer workflows to provide a streamlined end-to-end experience connecting customer-facing workers on the front line with back-office operations – and get the job done quickly. COVID-19 provided the perfect opportunity to see these amazing workflows in action. 

When roll-out began, ServiceNow’s Vaccine Administration Management solution allowed one hospital to decrease vaccine wait times from 3 hours to ten minutes. And gave providers an intuitive tool for taking vaccine inventory, scheduling appointments and recording administered doses.  

Creator Workflows – the Biggest Innovation of All  

If all of that wasn’t enough, ServiceNow went ahead and built the App Engine and Integration Hub. A spot where citizen developers can create their own workflows. Creator Workflows on the App Engine make it possible for anyone in your organization to create a workflow – without messing the whole system up. 

ServiceNow makes this possible by setting up guardrails, training and ongoing support of any organization building workflows on the App Engine. Some of these apps include Employee workflows for time off, work assignments and interview feedback; Partner workflows for promotion participation, routine maintenance, and inspections; and Customer workflows like appointment booking, service delivery and work orders.  

Citizen developers create apps for the web, mobile, chatbots and the Internet of things. By expanding your developer pool, you have more workflows faster – ultimately accelerating your digital transformation and crossing into business transformation. 

Industry Innovations 

Further platform expansion is taking an industry-specific focus. ServiceNow and the Now Platform helped key industries pivot and minimize the pandemic’s impact on the world. We checked out how platform innovations impacted three key industries, Fintech, Telco and Healthcare.  

FinTech 

While the world quarantined to avoid exposure to the virus, Financial Service organizations kept everyone afloat – thanks to ServiceNow workflows. ServiceNow helped banks and FinTech companies streamline activities to boost productivity, delight customers and create compliance operations. In FinTech, efficiency is everything – and here, during a pandemic - banks fully automated processes and reduced wait times from hours to mere seconds. 

Telco 

ServiceNow partnered with Cloud Service Providers to transform existing operations and launch new services. And they are helping some of the largest companies in the world improve the customer experience in a highly competitive industry.  

Telecommunications is an industry all about technology – it’s fast-moving and ever-changing. Customer service is the key differentiator. ServiceNow and industry leaders shared examples where workflows elevate the customer experience within a large ecosystem while simplifying processes to keep margins low. 

One such digital transformation delivered millions of dollars in value, removed swivel across more than 20 systems and effectively changed the culture within the company.

Healthcare  

Meanwhile, at the epicenter of the pandemic, healthcare couldn’t slow down for a second. ServiceNow delivered workflow solutions to keep pace with where and when drugs were delivered. Challenges have accelerated innovation in healthcare and life sciences. We’re witnessing one of the largest transformations in healthcare.  

Historically, 1 in 8 drugs makes it to market in a year – in 2020 multiple COVID-19 vaccines made it to market in less than 12 months. Why? Workflows created on the ServiceNow platform. Millions have been vaccinated against COVID-19 thanks to ServiceNow’s Vaccine Administration Management Solution. This acceleration impacts governments, providers, educational institutions and large employers. 

Any workflow that can be digitized will be. The simplified healthcare experience means patients and caregivers engage from anywhere. Providers can deliver a more personalized patient experience. And systems and processes work seamlessly together. Connected workflows provide Care Agents with 360- degree views of the organization. 

ServiceNow didn’t hold back on creating a digital experience worth taking time out for. Each informative, engaging session piqued our curiosity and inspired us to dig deeper and learn more. Every customer story showed us where innovations are happening today – and gave us an idea of where innovation might happen in the future. 

If you’d like to learn more, the Knowledge ’21 digital experience is available here. And if you’d like to talk to someone about workflowing your world, reach out at Letstalk@crossfuze.com.