Optimize business workflows with ServiceNow! Dive into the essential guide to hiring the best developers, simplifying services, and increasing productivity.
Workflow has become one of the most important areas that companies are focusing on. This became even more pronounced when the workflow of so many industries was profoundly altered by a global pandemic. For companies to remain competitive, they had to do everything they could to fine-tune and streamline their processes to adjust to the changing landscape. Not only were supply chains changing, but more and more employees and collaborators were working remotely.
What is workflow? Simply put, workflow is the series of activities required to complete a given task. The workflow can be applied to virtually any business segment, from development, production, distribution, marketing and everything in between. Each step of the workflow process must be carefully orchestrated so that the entire process is as efficient and well-planned as possible. With a well-improved workflow, a business runs smoothly and can reach levels of profitability never experienced before. A poorly planned (or unplanned) workflow has the opposite effect.
Let's take a look at a very simple workflow example. Take, for example, the employee onboarding process. This workflow could consist of the following tasks:
- Prepare the paperwork.
- Approve employee paperwork.
- Discuss roles, goals and projects with immediate supervisor.
- Prepare employee workstations.
- Give employees access to the software and hardware they need.
- Create accounts for employees.
- Prepare the employee benefits package.
- Provide a job description (including responsibilities) for the employee.
All of this happens before the employee even has their first day of work. Once they arrive on day one, there is another stream of work to be done.
Now, imagine that you are a company that needs to go through this process hundreds of times a day or week. If you don't have a perfectly planned workflow, it will be a challenge to onboard all these new employees.
Businesses, apps and services to aid corporate workflows have popped up everywhere, each promising to improve your company's processes. One such company is ServiceNow which leverages a cloud-based platform to help companies manage their digital workflows for business operations.
By using ServiceNow, your company can better streamline your workflows to ensure each process is as efficient and reliable as possible. And because ServiceNow offers different types of products, you can be sure to find the one that suits your business perfectly. You'll find ServiceNow products for:
- Information technology service management – enable services for your end users.
- Information technology business management – optimally deliver and manage IT-focused business services.
- Customer service management – designed to help you oversee and track customer interactions.
- Information technology asset management – better lifecycle management of IT assets.
- Software asset management – manages the acquisition, use, and maintenance of the software lifecycle.
- Human resources service delivery – automate and standardize your HR processes.
Why your company should use ServiceNow
There are several reasons why your company should adopt ServiceNow, such as:
- Helps reduce ITSM (IT Service Management) costs.
- All workflows are managed on the same platform.
- Employees will perform better.
- Service levels will increase.
- It makes it possible to replace unstructured and inefficient workflows.
- Allows for much improved help systems.
- Web services and email actions handle most events.
- You won't have to worry about hardware or software maintenance for your workflow management tools.
- Easy-to-use customer service portal (complete with company branding)
But don't think that ServiceNow is limited to HR and management. Various teams can benefit from this cloud-based service, such as employees, IT support, administrators, operational and implementers, and developers.
It's this combination of ServiceNow and developers that should be especially intriguing for your company. By employing ServiceNow with a DevOps twist, your company can quickly build, test, and deploy applications. And anyone can build on the Now platform. The ServiceNow development process goes like this:
- Define business requirements.
- Define the data model.
- Create the application.
- Test the application.
- Share the application.
Hiring Guide
One thing you should know about ServiceNow is that those you hire will not work on the platform. Instead, they will be working with it. In other words, you are not hiring software engineers to develop applications that extend the feature set of the ServiceNow service. However, you will hire developers who can work within the confines of a predefined workflow.
This is key to your hiring process. You don’t want to hire a developer who prefers to work as a “lone wolf” and who tends to work in an unstructured way.
Your company uses ServiceNow to ensure every workflow is as efficient as possible. If you employ developers who cannot comply with these restrictions, you will be doing your business a disservice.
To do this, you'll need to hire developers who work in teams and fully understand that collaboration is at the heart of a successful workflow so that your company can make the most of ServiceNow. You could have paid for ServiceNow and implemented it flawlessly in your company, but if your developers cannot function within this cloud-based tool, all your hard work on the system has been for nothing.
And it doesn't matter what programming languages your new hires use, because ServiceNow is language-agnostic. Thus, these developers could work with Java, JavaScript, .NET, Python, PHP, C, C++ or Ruby and still follow the workflows determined by ServiceNow.
Interview Questions
What is ServiceNow?
ServiceNow is a cloud-based IT service management tool that provides tools to improve IT, business, and business management workflows.
What is a ServiceNow application?
A ServiceNow application is a packaged solution for delivering and managing business processes.
What does CMDB mean?
Configuration management database.
What is LDAP integration?
LDAP is the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and is used for filling and authenticating user data. ServiceNow integrates with LDAP to streamline the user login process.
What does data searching and record matching?
Data lookup and field matching make it possible to set a field value based on a specific condition, so you don't have to worry about writing scripts for the process.
How do you enable or disable an application in ServiceNow?
- Navigate to the app's Menus module.
- Open the application to be activated or deactivated.
- To enable the application, set the asset value to “true”.
- To disable the app, set the active value to “false”.
What does ACL mean?
Access control list (which defines what data users can access).
What can UI policies be used for?
UI policies can be used to define which form fields are required or visible, or even to dynamically change the content of a form (based on the user).
What is a business rule?
A business rule is a server-side script that runs every time a record is inserted, updated, viewed, or queried.
Job description
We are looking for a talented software engineer, with a high-level command of their languages/frameworks, who can not only build efficient and effective applications and services, but also within a ServiceNow workflow. The ideal candidate will also have experience with ServiceNow (or a similar cloud-based product) and be able to manage your processes from the interface. You will be responsible for working with the technologies and teams required to build these applications and must be able to follow a well-defined workflow.
Responsibilities
- Design, build and maintain efficient and reusable software in different languages.
- Integrate data storage solutions.
- Implement performance and quality modes.
- Identify bottlenecks and bugs and resolve any issues discovered.
- Carefully monitor the performance of deployed software and constantly find ways to improve it.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define and design new features.
- Stay up to date with new technology trends, applications and protocols.
- Help maintain code quality, organization, and automation
- Analyze user requirements to help inform app design.
- Define the application's objectives and functionalities.
- Align app design with business goals and customer needs.
- Produce detailed documentation.
- Recommend changes to existing applications and the infrastructure used to build them.
- Ensure continuous professional self-development.
- Integrate user-facing elements developed by front-end developers with server-side logic.
- Write reusable, testable, and efficient code.
- Design and deploy low-latency, high-availability, and performance applications.
- Implement security and data protection.
- Integrate data storage solutions.
- Work on the ServiceNow cloud-based platform and follow defined workflows.
Skills and qualifications
- Degree in Computer Science or related field.
- Experience with cloud native computing and ServiceNow is a bonus.
- Excellent language skills you were hired to develop.
- Understanding the principles behind scalable applications.
- Fundamental understanding of version control systems (such as Git).
- Solid problem-solving skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communication.
- Good organizational skills.
- Ability to work as part of a team.
- Attention to the details.
- Understand the nature of asynchronous programming and its peculiarities and workarounds
- A positive attitude.
Conclusion
If your company is serious about digital transformation, it's up to you to research ServiceNow and employ it to create optimal workflows for your business processes. Not only will your employees be empowered to work more efficiently, but your bottom line will also improve.
Source: BairesDev
