7/23/2024

Streamlining Operations and Releases in ServiceNow

Scott Willson

Deploying updates and new features quickly and reliably is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge. ServiceNow, a leading platform for managing IT services, operations, and business processes, provides a strong foundation for organizations to build against and deliver solutions for business initiatives. However, many organizations need help streamlining operations and release processes due to manual efforts, lack of standardization, and the complexity of coordinating across multiple instances.

The Challenge: Inefficient Deployments and Releases

Deploying updates and releasing new features in ServiceNow can be lengthy and error-prone. Several common challenges contribute to inefficiencies:

  1. Manual Effort: Many organizations use manual processes to manage deployments and releases. This approach is time-consuming, prone to errors, and often leads to inconsistencies across environments.
  2. Lack of Standardization: Without standardized access and change processes, teams may use different deployment methods and ubiquitous admin access, resulting in instance inconsistencies and increased risk of errors and unauthorized access.
  3. Coordination Across Instances: ServiceNow environments often span multiple instances, including development, testing, and production. Accounting for deployments across these instances can be challenging, especially ensuring that changes are consistently applied.
  4. Compliance and Quality Assurance: Ensuring deployments meet compliance and quality standards is critical but can add significant overhead to the process. Manual quality checks and approvals can slow down deployments and introduce bottlenecks.

The Impact of Inefficient Deployments

Inefficient deployment and release processes can have far-reaching impacts on an organization:

  • Increased Time to Market: Delays in deployments and releases can slow down the delivery of new features and updates, impacting the organization's ability to respond to market demands and stay competitive.
  • Higher Error Rates: Manual processes and lack of standardization increase the risk of errors during deployments, leading to more frequent troubleshooting efforts.
  • Resource Drain: The additional time and effort required for manual releases can drain resources that could be better spent on strategic initiatives like AI.
  • Compliance Risks: Inconsistent processes and lack of proper governance can result in non-compliance with regulatory standards, exposing the organization to potential fines and reputational damage.

The Solution: xtype's Instance Management Platform

xtype's Instance Management Platform addresses the challenges of deployment and release management by providing a comprehensive product that provides visibility, governance, and automation. Here's how xtype transforms ServiceNow releases:

Automated Release Plans and Release Execution

xtype automates release processes, significantly reducing the reliance on manual effort to itemize, catalog, and order release payloads in spreadsheets. With xtype, ServiceNow pros simply click-n-pick the assets to be deployed and drag-n-drop them into the appropriate order. Automation ensures that release payloads are deployed consistently, reliably, and timely, minimizing the risk of human error. Unlike spreadsheets, xtype Release Packages are immutable records of what, where, when, and who for every release.

Standardized Deployment Policy

xtype provides a framework for deployment policy flows, ensuring that best practices are followed consistently across all instances. This standardization reduces variability in the deployment process, enhancing reliability and reducing the risk of errors. By following predefined workflows, teams can ensure that every deployment meets the organization's quality, process, and compliance policies.

Enhanced Coordination Across Instances

xtype's multi-environment visibility feature allows teams to coordinate deployments across multiple ServiceNow instances seamlessly. Teams can monitor the differences between instances in real-time, ensuring that changes are consistently applied and potential issues are detected early. This visibility enables proactive management of deployments and releases, reducing downtime and improving overall efficiency.

Built-In Quality and Compliance Gates

xtype integrates automated quality checks, approval gates, and instance scans into the deployment process. These built-in gates ensure that every update is vetted for quality and compliance before deployment.

Conclusion

Streamlining deployments and releases is essential for maintaining a competitive edge and the only way to keep pace with business stakeholders' demands. ServiceNow teams struggle with inefficiencies due to manual processes, prolonging many organizations' adoption of AI initiatives.

xtype's Instance Management Platform addresses these challenges by providing visibility, governance, and automation. By transforming deployment and release processes, xtype enables organizations to reduce errors, speed up time to market, and ensure compliance with quality standards.

For ServiceNow teams looking to adopt AI more quickly or onboard additional ServiceNow moduals, xtype offers a powerful product that drives efficiency, reliability, and velocity.

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