Solutions for ServiceNow Data Analysis

There are a number of solutions available for ServiceNow data analysis.

Many organizations opt for ServiceNow’s own analytics solution, Performance Analytics. However, some organizations may wish to use their own, purpose-built analytics solutions to analyze multiple data sources, or extend analytics capabilities.

While ServiceNow Performance Analytics works natively within the ServiceNow platform, organizations will need to implement integrations to use dedicated analytics solutions.

What is ServiceNow Performance Analytics?

ServiceNow Performance Analytics is an in-platform solution for creating reports and dashboards to track and evaluate KPIs and metrics, to improve operational performance.

As with other analytics solutions, organizations use ServiceNow Performance Analytics to help increase productivity and reduce the costs of service delivery.

The Benefits of ServiceNow Performance Analytics

For organizations to capitalize on the massive amounts of data they generate and store, it needs to be analyzed. As such performance analytics is fundamental to the success of data-driven organizations.

ServiceNow Performance Analytics offers real-time reports on KPIs via interactive dashboards to help answer pivotal business questions, improve service delivery quality and cut costs. Dashboards help make insight from ServiceNow data more easily accessible to those that need it – so team members and stakeholders responsible for service delivery can collaborate on informed data-driven decisions.

Performance Analytics continuously captures snapshots to deliver accurate historical trends. It also performs a host of other functions: 

• Monitors performance against targets
• Predicts future performance
• Notifies when tables/groups reach the threshold limit
• Compares and analyzes performance in different periods 

Extending ServiceNow Data Analysis Capabilities through Integrations

Though Performance Analytics is designed to cater to your fundamental performance analytics needs, some organizations need more extensive capabilities.

In particular, ServiceNow Performance Analytics is focussed on improving operational performance. Some organizations may wish to expand their analysis of ServiceNow data into other use cases.

Additionally, Performance Analytics may not suffice for enterprises with large data volumes and multi-tiered IT ecosystems.

Such organizations may wish to evaluate integrations with best-in-class solutions for analytics, including Microsoft Power BI, SAP and Tableau.

Comparison sites such as G2 can help organizations evaluate the capabilities of each solution, and choose the one that is right for them.

Why Integrate ServiceNow with Third-Party Analytics Tools?

By integrating ServiceNow with an external database, organizations can analyze and leverage ServiceNow data using best-in-class tools, including analytics solutions such as Power BI, SAP, Tableau and more.

Below, we list some of the most common reasons an organization may want to integrate ServiceNow data with a purpose built analytics solution.

1. Combine data sources for contextualized analysis

ServiceNow Performance Analytics allows organizations to analyze ServiceNow data, but if that data is siloed from the wider enterprise, the analysis cannot be comprehensive.

For comprehensive analysis that is in context with other data sources within the enterprise, organizations need a purpose built analytics solution.

This is particularly useful when performing data analysis on business critical solutions that can impact the enterprise as a whole.

2. Allow departments to collaborate on analysis

Purpose built, third-party analytics tools give organizations greater flexibility in how they produce and distribute reports. Using an in-platform solution for analyzing ServiceNow data means that analysis is limited to users that understand the platform.

By integrating ServiceNow data with third-party, purpose-built analytics solutions, organizations have far more options in terms of who analyzes data and how, and how reports and dashboards are distributed.

3. Avoid performance degradation in ServiceNow

Running extensive reports using ServiceNow’s in-platform app for analytics can degrade ServiceNow’s performance, leading to dated reports and system crashes. 

By integrating ServiceNow data with third-party analytics solutions, organizations can avoid this impact.

However, key here is “can”, as avoiding performance degradation is contingent on using the right type of integration for your needs. For example, integrations that rely on API calls cause performance degradation at large data volumes.

Organizations that want to avoid performance degradation and improve their reporting capabilities should prioritize performance impact-free integrations.

How to Connect ServiceNow to Third-Party Performance Analytics Tools

Integrating ServiceNow with a third-party solution for analytics requires the extraction and replication of large amounts of data. The traditional approaches to integrating ServiceNow (via ETL, API calls, or even manual data entry) have significant limitations ranging from security flaws to performance degradation.

Fortunately, there is a ServiceNow-native integration application and service that avoids such limitations.

Perspectium DataSync creates an automated integration between ServiceNow and an external data repository, that doesn’t require manual intervention or rely on API/ETL.

Perspectium allows for ServiceNow data to be replicated to an external database in bulk or dynamically. Organizations have extensive control over bulk shares, with granular management over what data is shared and when.

From extracting ServiceNow data for analysis, to replicating data for backups and disaster recovery, Perspectium integrations are a reliable and do not degrade ServiceNow performance. End-to-end encryption ensures your data is secure.

By integrating with widely adopted, best-in-class external databases, organizations have greater control over how they analyze and use their data.

Multiple data sources can be combined, and the external data repository can connect ServiceNow to a range of other systems – not limited to analytics solutions.

Perspectium are an official partner of ServiceNow, and we have a history of working with the organization and platform. Perspectium was created by David Loo, the founding developer at ServiceNow.

Now, ServiceNow themselves are also customers of Perspectium. ServiceNow uses Perspectium’s integration services to replicate 10 production instances of ServiceNow into 4 SAP/HANA databases for analysis by Sales, Marketing, Finance, and other departments. 

ServiceNow uses Perspectium to replicate 10 production instances of ServiceNow into 4 SAP/HANA databases for analysis by Sales, Marketing, Finance, and other departments.