Why Organizations Should Choose ServiceNow-Native Integrations

For organizations that want the whole enterprise to benefit from their ServiceNow investment, ServiceNow-native integrations are a gamechanger.

Efficient data integration is critical for modern enterprises aiming to eliminate silos and streamline operations.

ServiceNow, a widely-used IT Service Management (ITSM) platform, is often integrated with third-party solutions. ServiceNow integrations allow organizations to better utilize the data and insight that would otherwise be siloed within the platform, and enhance operational efficiency.

When integrating ServiceNow with third-party applications and repositories like Power BI, Tableau, or Snowflake, choosing the right integration approach can significantly impact performance and scalability.

This guide explores why ServiceNow-native applications are the optimal choice for large organizations.

Benefits of ServiceNow Integrations

Integrating ServiceNow with other systems ensures seamless workflows, improves decision-making, and boosts productivity. Common use cases for ServiceNow integrations include:

ServiceNow-to-reporting, analytics and business intelligence integrations to improve the quality of insight and data sources that contribute to it.
ServiceNow-to-data repository integrations – such as data lakes and data warehouses to replicate ServiceNow data within a centralized repository and improve its availability around the enterprise.
ServiceNow eBonding integrations to bi-directionally synchronize multiple ServiceNow instances, or sync ServiceNow with third-party solutions supporting functions such as ITSM and DevOps.

While the benefits of integration are clear, how you integrate matters.

Comparing Integration Options

Organizations typically choose between custom-built integrations, third-party API integrations and ServiceNow-native integrations.

Custom-Built Integrations

Custom integrations use custom code, often leveraging APIs, to connect ServiceNow with other systems. This approach may seem cost-effective initially but comes with challenges:

Performance Impacts: API-based integrations compete for bandwidth within your ServiceNow instance, leading to slow data replication and platform performance degradation, especially with large data volumes.
Resource-Intensive: Building and maintaining custom integrations requires significant internal resources and ongoing maintenance.

Third-party API Integrations

Third-party API integrations are vendor-provided connectors that facilitate data exchange between ServiceNow and other systems. While they limit the need for custom code, they have limitations:

Limited Functionality: Pre-built APIs may not align with specific organizational needs or workflows, requiring expert development to customize and undermining the advantages of being pre-built.
Performance Impact: As with API-based custom integrations, these pre-built solutions rely on API calls that impact ServiceNow performance when handling high data volumes.
Maintenance Challenges: While pre-built solutions benefit development resources initially, the integrations require monitoring and maintenance and such requirements escalate over time.

API-Free ServiceNow-Native Integrations

ServiceNow-native applications can avoid relying on API to initiate the transfer of data out of the platform. As they are natively installed within ServiceNow, they can leverage more efficient processes such as push technology to transfer large volumes of data without impacting performance.

Typically, such integrations are delivered and maintained by an expert vendor as implementation and maintenance requires expertise with both integrations and the ServiceNow platform. While they are vendor-implemented and maintained, the end-user is free to configure integrations via the ServiceNow interface, as per their needs.

Key advantages include:

No API-related Performance Issues: API-free, ServiceNow-native integrations avoid bandwidth competition, ensuring optimal ServiceNow performance.
Ease of Use: Managed directly within ServiceNow, native integrations eliminate the need for external tools or complex coding, and are configured within ServiceNow’s familiar user interface, benefiting the learning curve.
Reliability: When delivered and maintained by the vendor, organizations benefit from expertise in building, testing, and maintaining the integration, reducing risks and maintenance overhead.

What you should keep in mind

While data integration is vital for modern organizations to stay competitive, poorly implemented integrations can be costly.

Poorly integrated systems increase the risk of failures during data exchanges, leading to down-time and data loss.

If the integration affects the performance of your ServiceNow instance, data availability is impacted also. The effects of this can be felt across the enterprise in the form of incomplete, inaccurate, or delayed reports, slower time-to-resolution of open cases, and more.

So as you embark on your ServiceNow integration project, it is important to understand the scope of the project. ServiceNow is presumably a critical solution to your enterprise, and any downtime or reduced data quality can result in a significant impact on your customers and employees.

Why API-free ServiceNow-Native Integrations Are Better

For organizations managing large data volumes, ServiceNow-native applications offer unmatched reliability and scalability:

Performance Optimization: API-free, ServiceNow-native solutions bypass common bottlenecks, ensuring smooth data replication and transfer.
Cost Efficiency: While upfront costs may seem higher, native integrations lower total ownership costs by minimizing maintenance and reducing the risk of failures.
Scalability: Handle increasing data volumes without performance degradation.

Ensure your data integration works with ServiceNow, not against it

A healthy integration ensures your team is well integrated and working closely with ServiceNow, with access to data they need, when and where they need it. A native application for facilitating ServiceNow integrations can help achieve this.

This is because API-free, ServiceNow-native integrations do not suffer the performance impacts associated with third-party and custom-built API integrations.

For the sake of your company’s scalability, the performance of your ServiceNow instance is crucial. A rapidly growing company cannot afford the bottleneck of a faltering ITSM instance. If it crawls, so does your work.

And that’s why organizations should consider an automated integration solution that uses push technology to export ServiceNow data changes in real-time, like Perspectium.

Perspectium DataSync runs natively in ServiceNow. Instead of relying on API calls to initiate point-to-point data transfer, it uses push technology to efficiently transfer data out of ServiceNow and into a message broker.

The message broker can then feed multiple targets without impacting ServiceNow at all, letting the entire organization enjoy the full power of their ServiceNow investment.

This process benefits integration performance and ServiceNow performance while also preventing data loss. This is because the message broker temporarily stores (and encrypts) data until the transfer is complete.

If there is an outage in ServiceNow or the target system, the transfer does not fail. It simply waits until it can resume.

Case Study: Fujitsu’s Success with ServiceNow-Native Integration

Fujitsu faced challenges extracting ServiceNow data due to high volumes and the need for 24-hour global service delivery. By adopting Perspectium’s API-free, native integration solution, they significantly reduced downtime and improved data accessibility without impacting ServiceNow performance.

Why Choose Perspectium for ServiceNow Integrations

Perspectium offers industry-leading solutions for ServiceNow-native integrations. With tools like DataSync, you can securely replicate large data volumes in real time without compromising performance.

Key Features:

Push Technology: Dynamic, real-time data replication.
Minimal Impact on Performance: Offloads data transfer tasks to a message-bus architecture and preserve ServiceNow performance, even when replicating to multiple targets simultaneously.
Scalable Solutions: Handles growing data needs effortlessly.
Secure Data Transfers: End-to-end encryption ensures privacy and compliance.

Final Thoughts

For enterprises relying on ServiceNow, native applications are the best choice for reliable, scalable, and efficient integrations. They reduce performance risks, simplify management, and ensure seamless data sharing.

Investing in a solution like Perspectium DataSync allows organizations to unlock the full potential of their ServiceNow instance while maintaining high performance and scalability.

Ready to optimize your ServiceNow integration? Contact Perspectium today or explore our comprehensive solutions to streamline your workflows.