Cost and Value Detractors in Customization of your ServiceNow investment

ServiceNow upgrades its platform with the latest features, functionality, process improvements, every 6 months. Companies that are using standard ServiceNow Processes and Out of Box functionality model, tend to be more agile, and more capable to keep pace. For those with heavy customization, the challenge of upgrade, pace and agillity can be more challenging. I hear it over and over. “We customized because we could.” Many are trying to solve an immediate problems, without awareness of the downstream impacts and costs. While our customization solved the immediate demand, over time, performance was impacted, updates were harder, and we had to check them every 6 months. Customization is not a problem, but over-customization is a problem when the customization becomes a “cliff” that costs too much to maintain, does not play well with other ServiceNow features, requires maintaining complex test procedures to keep pace with upgrades, or performance over time takes a hit.. I love the way Tanner Kibbler describes the Customization Cliff, where the impact obscures the initial value for that quick fix with a few unexpected results.

HOW MANY OF US INITIALLY APPROACHED SERVICENOW:

The Platform is easy. ServiceNow understands business workflows and helps us to go live faster. Its easy to change ServiceNow to fit our unique business needs using our existing Development Team, without having to hire a ServiceNow Development Team. And so “we” began to customize to meet our needs. CODE CUSTOMIZATION: We had developers, we modified the code, we tweaked process, we added tables, we customized workflows, because we could. Because we thought we should. CODE CONSULTANCY: We did not have the in house expertise, we hired talent to customize our solution according to our demands, because we should, and we thought with consultancy help, we could. It worked for the time. All was well, until a short time later.

OVER CUSTOMIZATION CHALLENGES, OVER TIME

A common theme of issues can tend to crop up over time. The developers or the consultancy delivered as required, but the customizations were experiencing new challenges:
  • New Internal Requests for More customization of the old customization for new needs
  • Customization Sprawl makes it difficult to track impact when deviating too much from out of box standard
  • The process development from initial implementation was not well documented, and is now outdated
  • There is a lack of existing expertise to keep pace with organizational change and technological advance
  • Resistance to change or upgrade to latest advances and bug fixes, for fear of impact to initial customization
  • The complicated workflows that inspired the initial customizations had changed, but the code did not
  • Customization Internal conflicts start to arise where one group’s customization is another groups defect

WHAT IS SERVICENOW OOB AND WHY IS IT PREFERRED?

ServiceNow OOB stands for Out of the Box configuration. It is a preferred implementation path over heavy customization because it allows enterprises to benefit by catering implementations to favor out of the box capabilities, standard processes and minimal deviations to table or functionality customization because of the following advantages:
  • Getting Immediate and better and supported path for integration with other ServiceNow modules, and plugins
  • More supportive of Service’Now’s Instance best practice upgrades, to keep pace with current features
  • Leverages ServiceNow’s development and process expertise with power of existing documentation and community
  • Reduced friction to upgrade path to keep pace with platform improvements
  • Ability to advance to leverage best practice artificial intelligence and other technology advances.

3 COMPANIES THAT WENT BACK TO SERVICENOW OOB

  1. General Electric went from 80% Heavy Customization to 80% Out of Box, Saving $7M in Customization Maintenance
  2. Shell improved process speed by 10-20% with reduced upgrade from 3 months to 4 weeks.
  3. KA2 recognized improved rapid adoption of ServiceNow’s news Technology and Agile Capabilities.

WHAT COMES AFTER OOB FOR AMAZING SERVICENOW?

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