Today’s Enterprise uses a heavy web of systems and applications to run it. The average enterprise uses a lot of solutions, from ERP and CRM to specialized tools for HR, IT, customer service and more. This fragmented environment has its own challenges, and each one serves a purpose.
This can be a difficult, time-consuming, and expensive process when integrating differing systems. This siloes the data breaks processes across the different departments, and causes an end user to struggle to get a unified view.
This is where ServiceNow comes in. ServiceNow is a leading cloud-based platform for digital workflows. With capabilities in IT service management, IT operations management, HR service delivery, customer service, and more, enterprise ServiceNow services help unite departments on a single platform. And with its open architecture and vast ecosystem of integrations, it serves as an ideal middleware to bring together all the systems across an enterprise.
Integrating ServiceNow with other core business systems provides a wealth of benefits, including:
- A Unified View Across Departments
- Streamlined Processes and Workflows
- Enhanced Visibility and Intelligence
- Improved Productivity and Collaboration
- Increased Agility and Innovation
- Better Customer and Employee Experiences
- Reduced Costs and Higher ROI
This article explores the key advantages of ServiceNow integrations and how they empower enterprises to unlock the full potential of digital transformation.
Unified View across Departments
A unified view is one of the biggest motivators for enterprises to invest in ServiceNow. When data and workflows remain confined within other departmental systems, employees lack context and visibility outside their immediate domain.
Managers struggle to track status and metrics across the organization. Customers fall through the cracks when issues span multiple teams.
By serving as a central nervous system, ServiceNow integrates siloed systems so everyone can get a single source of truth. With a unified data model and consistent processes, ServiceNow delivers transparency across IT, HR, customer service, security and other groups. Some specific benefits include:
- IT gains better visibility into business processes so that they can align technology initiatives with business goals
- HR has visibility into the employee lifecycle from onboarding to offboarding across departments
- Customer service agents get integrated profiles of customer issues across billing, tech support, and other areas
- Executives and managers gain real-time analytics and dashboards spanning all departments and workflows
The unified visibility makes it easier to connect the dots, track progress, and collaborate across functional boundaries. This serves both operational and strategic objectives for harnessing technology investments across the enterprise.
Streamlined Processes and Workflows
In addition to a unified view, ServiceNow also streamlines how work gets done across the enterprise. The Now Platform provides pre-built connectors that make it easy to integrate with virtually any legacy system or modern SaaS application. This allows enterprises to quickly bridge ServiceNow workflows with data and processes from other tools.
Some common examples include:
- Creating tasks in ServiceNow from alerts and events in monitoring tools like Splunk or Nagios
- Syncing user/profile data from ActiveDirectory or LDAP into ServiceNow
- Updating ticket status in ServiceNow when issues are resolved in systems like BMC Remedy or Cherwell
- Creating customer service cases automatically from Salesforce based on support entitlements
- Fetching asset and configuration details from CMDBs into ServiceNow for richer service catalogs and self-service
- Passing service requests from ServiceNow to fulfillment systems like ServiceChannel, Ariba or Remedyforce for processing
This bi-directional integration eliminates redundant data entry and manual hand-offs between teams. Work flows smoothly across departments with well-defined processes, automatic triggers, and closed-loop communication between ServiceNow and surrounding systems.
Enhanced Visibility and Intelligence
Also, Integrating ServiceNow with other systems to provide a full view of the entire business will improve overall data visibility and intelligence for data-driven decisions. Native capabilities within the Now Platform, such as automated discovery, monitoring, and event management, can be amplified further via integrations.
For instance, using IT Operations Management (ITOM) petroleum, IT teams can better see the health, configuration and performance of core business services if they are connected with ServiceNow infrastructure monitoring tools.
Issues are available to operations managers so that they are able to look at the root cause, whereas before, you didn’t even know where the problem occurred. More context is added to analytics that supports better remediation and more knowledge for encountering similar problems in the future.
Similarly, HR teams can tap into rich analytics from workforce management platforms like Workday, SAP SuccessFactors or Cornerstone integrated with ServiceNow HR Service Delivery. Customer service teams get a more comprehensive view of customer journeys by bridging data from marketing, sales and support systems into an integrated ServiceNow platform.
Across functions, ServiceNow leverages machine learning capabilities to contextualize data from various sources, power virtual agents, and provide predictive intelligence. So beyond just process integrations, connecting ServiceNow with complementary enterprise systems augments intelligence enterprise-wide.
Improved Productivity and Collaboration
The process efficiencies and unified visibility described above ultimately translate into tangible productivity gains. When data flows smoothly across systems, manual efforts are reduced significantly – from duplicate data entry to lookups, hand-offs, and communications from one team to another.
ServiceNow provides a consumer-grade experience for enterprise users, with intuitive self-service and automation capabilities. Integrations amplify this further by embedding workflows from ServiceNow into other familiar systems employees use daily. For example, actions within Slack, Microsoft Teams or business productivity tools can trigger creation, updates or approvals for tickets, requests, and cases within ServiceNow.
Common collaboration scenarios enabled by ServiceNow integrations include:
- Chatbots in popular messaging platforms linking conversations to relevant tickets and knowledge for instant answers
- Creating and updating tasks across project management tools and ServiceNow in real-time
- Social collaboration within portals to solve requests faster with peer expertise
- Feedback loops across systems to improve knowledge management powered by machine learning
The result is higher productivity, lower frustration, and easier collaboration across the organization – all critical for employee retention and enabling digital dexterity in today’s business environment.
Increased Agility and Innovation
With the Now Platform, enterprises get speed and agility by using rapid application development capabilities. ServiceNow’s agile approach comes down to quickly being able to build, test and update digital workflows.
This is actually further amplified through integrations that drive ease of development and minimization of the need to engage multiple sets of complex, expensive cycles to bridge ecosystem capabilities.
ServiceNow has pre-built connectors that enable you to integrate easily with popular enterprise systems. With the Now Platform, you have toolkits, APIs, and guidance to help you create your connections. There are low code options for non-developers to create simple data integrations without coding skills.
This fast, flexible approach to unified integration powers business agility and continuous innovation throughout the enterprise:
- New workflows can be conceived and built rapidly without complex software development
- Support for modern architectures (cloud, mobile, conversational UI) fast-tracks engagement
- Insights from analytics shape opportunities to refine processes and improve experiences
- Frequent updates and feature releases enable constant evolution vs long release cycles
- Democratization empowers business teams to innovate on their own vs. IT bottlenecks
The possibilities are endless for enterprises to adapt workflows and scale innovations based on changing business needs – while remaining secure and compliant every step of the way.
Better Customer and Employee Experiences
Ultimately, the overarching benefit of integrating ServiceNow across enterprise systems is elevating experiences for both customers and employees.
Customers benefit through faster resolution, personalized service, and omnichannel engagement powered by connected workflows and data from ServiceNow. Some examples include:
- 360-degree customer context from integrated CRM data helps agents resolve issues faster
- Consistent support across self-service web portals and human-assisted channels
- Proactive communication and case creation based on insights from related workflows
- Personalized recommendations and satisfaction measurement at each touchpoint
Similarly, employees benefit from consumer-like experiences that reduce frustration. The consumerized ServiceNow workspace, amplified by embedded workflows from everyday tools, empowers workforces for higher productivity.
- Intuitive self-service portal to get work done faster
- Familiar interfaces from productivity tools they already use
- AI-assisted interactions powered by contextual data and analytics
- Feedback loops to continuously refine and enhance experiences
From delighting customers to engaging employees, ServiceNow integrations help drive connected, frictionless experiences across critical touchpoints throughout the business.
Reduced Costs and Higher ROI
The multitude of operational, strategic and experiential benefits from ServiceNow integrations ultimately manifest into hard cost savings and strong ROI across the enterprise. Some of the ways organizations quantify value include:
- Consolidating multiple legacy systems onto a single ServiceNow platform
- Lower software licensing/hardware costs from retiring legacy solutions
- Reduced IT expenses for systems management and administration
- Less manual operations and overhead for managing disjointed processes
- Higher productivity across departments due to workflow efficiencies
- Increased revenue from faster response times and improved customer satisfaction
- Lower costs due to deflection and automation of routine service requests
- Higher employee retention by improving digital experiences
According to IDC, ServiceNow customers achieved a 167% ROI, with payback in less than 6 months. These metrics make a compelling case for investing in ServiceNow integrations.
The savings and benefits typically increase over time – as more legacy systems get phased out, data unification improves, workflows stabilize, and metrics start crystallizing into facts. The enterprise integration journey with ServiceNow begins with a few targeted high-value connections and then continues to pave the digital transformation roadmap.
Conclusion
Fragmented systems and siloed data continue to plague enterprises on their path to digital transformation. Integrating ServiceNow with the existing application landscape helps overcome these challenges with tangible benefits:
- A unified view breaks down data silos across departments
- Streamlined processes reduce friction and manual efforts for enterprise workflows
- Enhanced intelligence amplifies insights from multiple data sources
- Improved productivity empowers employees to accomplish more
- Increased agility accelerates the pace of innovation
- Better experiences for customers and employees drive engagement
- Reduced costs and higher ROI provide hard justification
As the connective tissue for the modern enterprise, ServiceNow integration capabilities provide the speed, agility and scale to navigate ongoing technology and business shifts.
The Now Platform is well integrated with other areas of the broader ecosystem as it brings next-generation digital workflow processes that drive value throughout your organization.
The result is a future-ready foundation for cross-functional transparency, system consolidation, and elevated stakeholder experiences – unlocking the full potential of digital transformation.
