How to Democratize ServiceNow Data and Enable Self-Service Access

Integrating ServiceNow with an external data repository can help democratize ServiceNow data, enabling self-service access.

What is Data Democratization?

Data democratization describes the process of making data accessible and available to a wide range of users within an organization or society.

What is the Goal of Democratizing Data?

The goal of data democratization is to empower individuals through self-service access to the data and information they need to enable better decision-making.

Data democratization helps organizations using ServiceNow make ServiceNow data more readily available for the stakeholders that require it. 

A good data democratization strategy should be systematic – supported by integrations that automate data transfer, allowing the right data to move freely and securely across systems.

This reduces organizations’ reliance on manual processes that can expose them to a greater risk of security breaches and poor data quality.

Organizations with democratized access to ServiceNow are better able to support projects and teams that regularly consume large amounts of ServiceNow data, including: 

• Artificial Intelligence
• Business Intelligence
• Machine Learning
• Reporting and Analysis
• Predictive Analytics

Data democratization is the most reliable way to extract valuable real-time insights from business data. It ensures that organizations can unlock the true value of their accumulated data for various use cases rather than it becoming dark data leading to technical debt.

• See also: How to Reduce Technical Debt

Why Democratize ServiceNow Data?

Data democratization is crucial for organizations looking to optimize their data’s value. It makes data available to all members of an organization, irrespective of their job description or technical expertise.

It facilitates data sharing and collaboration among teams, ensuring optimal data utilization for driving better business decisions and rich customer experiences. 

Data democratization allows all users to access the necessary data and extract insights using the right analytical tools. Users can collect data from disparate sources and perform real-time analysis to identify new trends and opportunities.

This enables business leaders to gain a competitive edge in the market. By accessing the correct data, teams can create personalized experiences for users, building trust and loyalty for the brand.

Benefits ServiceNow Data Democratization

By democratizing ServiceNow data, organizations can make the data available and accessible to a wider audience rather than limiting access to a few select individuals or teams. There are several reasons why democratizing ServiceNow data can be beneficial:

• Data-driven decision-making – When ServiceNow data is made more accessible, decision-makers throughout the organization can make more informed decisions. They can access real-time data and insights to better understand the business’s current state and identify the most pressing areas for improvement.

• Improve collaboration – Democratizing ServiceNow data can encourage collaboration and cross-functional communication within the organization. Different teams and individuals can collaborate on shared projects more effectively when they have access to the same data. This unified approach helps them work toward common goals and solve real-world challenges faster.

• Increase productivity – Democratizing ServiceNow data inevitably improves productivity. Since teams/individuals can easily access and analyze the relevant data for specific needs, they can spend less time collecting and compiling information and focus more on value-added activities.

• Better accountability – Transparency and visibility into organizational data help identify areas for improvement, allowing managers and employees to track their progress over time. As ServiceNow data visibility improves, team leaders can encourage individuals and teams to become more accountable for their performance.

• Improved employee and customer experiences – Data democratization eliminates redundant manual processes and aligns the data across systems, creating a hassle-free collaborative experience for employees. It enables professionals to enrich their areas of expertise and drive better results. 
  
  Also, as the data is readily available, different teams can promptly use the right data to respond to customer requests, incidents, etc. It reduces the time-to-resolution of open cases significantly, and customers get data-driven service aligned with their requirements.

• Improved data accuracy – Data democratization promotes self-service access. Through integrations, self-service reporting can eliminate the need for manual data entry and analysis, ensuring reliability and consistency in data.

Challenges to Democratizing ServiceNow Data

Democratizing ServiceNow data can help organizations improve their decision-making process, increase employee engagement and productivity, and boost ROI. 

However, democratizing ServiceNow data and creating a unified source of truth is easier said than done. Organizations using ServiceNow generate massive amounts of data daily, but without the correct architecture to support it, they fail to use it effectively and/or efficiently.

Democratizing ServiceNow data requires extracting it from the platform. However, extracting data from ServiceNow presents challenges. Organizations without purpose-built integrations often resort to manual data replication and entry – a process that is both time-consuming and error-prone. 

• See also: How to Extract ServiceNow Data

As a platform supporting critical business functions, consistent delays and issues getting ServiceNow data to the right people at the right time lead to a substantial technical debt over time, impacting the organization’s overall performance. 

How to Democratize ServiceNow Data?

To democratize ServiceNow data and benefit from self-service access, ServiceNow data needs to be moved to a more suitable environment, such as an external database or other data repository.

This can be achieved via ServiceNow integrations. 

Integrating ServiceNow with best-in-class data repositories allow for more controlled access to ServiceNow data, with less friction. Data repositories are purpose-built to support democratized access in a way the ServiceNow platform is not.

Via integrations with external data repositories, organizations can more easily govern access to ServiceNow data, from multiple departments with different requirements, while reserving access to sensitive data only to approved stakeholders. 

Additionally, best-in-class data repositories are often well-supported by other solutions that use and/or manipulate data. This means ServiceNow data replicated to an external repository can be easily extracted from the repository by solutions for business intelligence, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc.

In this case, the external database facilitates end-to-end integrations between ServiceNow and complementary solutions that help unlock the true potential of ServiceNow data.

Organizations seeking to democratize their ServiceNow data through integrations must also consider the following:

1. A data governance policy is a must – By implementing a data governance policy, business leaders can define who can access the data, how they can use it, and the measures for data protection. This ensures that the data remains consistent, accurate, and up-to-date.

2. Set up role-based access control – Access to data on the external database should be controlled. This is crucial to ensure that users can only access the ServiceNow data they need for their tasks. Role-based access control prevents unauthorized access, upholding data security.

3. Extend training and support – By offering the necessary training and support to users accessing ServiceNow data, organizations can teach them how to access the data securely and how to interpret the data correctly for their use cases. 

4. Employ self-service analytics tools

Users can leverage self-service analytics tools to create reports and analyze data independently. This empowers users to gain more control of their data while also reducing the strain on IT teams.

5. Cultivate a data-driven culture

Data-backed decisions have a higher success rate than those not supported by reliable data. Promoting the value of data-driven decision-making through real-world success stories can help encourage users to make use of self-service to support them in their roles.

ServiceNow Integrations for Democratizing ServiceNow Data

To benefit from democratized, self-service access to ServiceNow data, organizations need to implement integrations.

However, it should be noted that not all types of integration are fit for purpose. Depending on the type of technology used to facilitate the integrations, integrations can have a significant impact on ServiceNow’s performance.

For example, many third-party integration platforms and solutions are web-services and API-based and share ServiceNow’s operational bandwidth to operate. Such third-party applications are not specifically optimized for ServiceNow and data transfers can be inefficient.

At large data volumes, the ServiceNow platform experiences performance degradation. Query speeds to the platform are slowed and organizations are prevented from enjoying real-time data. This undermines data availability – one of the key aims of democratizing data.

Organizations that want to maximise throughput without compromising ServiceNow’s performance should consider web-services/API-free ServiceNow-native integrations, such as Perspectium.

Perspectium is a ServiceNow-native, integration as-a-service provider and a trusted ServiceNow partner.

Unlike other ServiceNow integration providers on the market, Perspectium’s integration applications are made for ServiceNow, functioning natively within the platform.

The native-nature of the applications allows them to be optimized for extracting and replicating ServiceNow data, without needing performance degrading API or web-services.

Thanks to this, Perspectium users enjoy massive throughput, making the integration approach perfect for connecting ServiceNow to data-intensive platforms such as AI, BI, ML and predictive analytics solutions.

In fact, ServiceNow actually uses Perspectium to support such use cases. As well as being a trusted partner of ServiceNow, we provide ServiceNow with integration services that help democratize data within the enterprise, enabling self-service access.

The integrations connect ServiceNow data to 4 SAP/HANA databases for analysis by Sales, Marketing, Finance, and other departments.

Throughput is massive, with transactional data transfers feeding 200+ dashboards and five predictive solutions in the big data environment. Production data alone accounts for about 20 million transfers per day.

Want to learn more about Perspectium’s ServiceNow-native integrations? Talk to us.