Benchmarks FAQ

[Anne Barnes1]

About ServiceNow ®   Benchmarks

What is ServiceNow ® Benchmarks?

ServiceNow Benchmarks is a ServiceNow application that enables customers to compare their service management performance to industry averages. This enables customers to drive meaningful conversations with full context around what is working well and where improvements can be made.

Sounds interesting.   Can I get more details?

Sure.   Here you go:

ServiceNow Benchmarks enable you to analyze and optimize your service performance by comparing it against the industry's largest, unbiased, and up-to-date benchmarks. Built on the Nonstop Cloud^TM, these industry averages and trends are derived from anonymized data from over 3500 customers. Use these benchmarks to not only track progress against your service delivery goals but see how your organization's performance stacks up against your industry peers. Actionable recommendations in the application provide specific, personalized guidance on improving service delivery based on the customer instance and configuration.

Licensing ServiceNow ® Benchmarks

Do customers need to pay for ServiceNow ® Benchmarks?

No.   ServiceNow ® Benchmarks is included with ITSM or ITOM license.  

Do customers need license for Performance Analytics to take advantage of the integration ServiceNow ® Benchmarks has with PA?

ServiceNow ® Benchmarks uses the basic version of PA that is shipped with our products.   So, no, customers will not need license for PA.

ServiceNow ® Benchmarks DataSet and Participation

How can customers participate in ServiceNow ® Benchmarks?

All ServiceNow ® customers on Jakarta and beyond are allowed to participate in the ServiceNow ® Benchmarks program by opting-in from their ServiceNow ® "Production" Instance. Non-Production Instances are not allowed to opt-in to Benchmarks.

What about customers not on Jakarta?

Customers not on Jakarta: Simply log in to HI and view your Benchmarks.   These customers will have access to the 6 KPIs on HI. However, customers cannot configure the KPIs on HI.   These KPIs will continue to be updated, but additional KPIs will not be added.

How often is the data refreshed?

The data is refreshed every month.   More frequent refreshes do not make sense since data is unlikely to change that frequently.

Do all customers have access to ServiceNow ® Benchmarks?

All customers on the ServiceNow cloud, except Federal customers have access to ServiceNow ® Benchmarks. The regulations around Federal agencies preclude them from participation in ServiceNow ® Benchmarks.

MSPs are included in ServiceNow ® Benchmarks starting with the Kingston release. Benchmark comparisons are based upon the entire instance and not the domain.

How are the Industry and # of Users categories determined?
Industry is determined based on the company's standard industry code in their account record.   # of Users is determined by the company's number of ServiceNow ® active users so that you can compare yourself to similar-size ServiceNow ® implementations.   Industry and Company Size categories are combined when necessary to ensure that the number of customers in each category is large enough to protect each company's anonymity.

How are statistical outliers removed from the global ServiceNow ® Benchmark data set?
The interquartile and other statistical method are used to remove extreme outliers from the global data set. Due to customer's customizations and the varied nature of ServiceNow ® implementations, some KPIs may still display large ranges of results.

Data Security

Is my ServiceNow ® Benchmarks data secure?   Who else can see my Benchmarks?

Only designated roles within the organization have access to the organization's Benchmarks data. A customer cannot see another customer's ServiceNow ® Benchmarks data. ServiceNow ® Benchmarks is governed by the same security requirements as are customer instances.  

Is there any other security risk opting in to ServiceNow ® Benchmarks?

ServiceNow ® Benchmarks KPIs are based on usage data. We take high-level usage data such as Number of Incidents or Number of Requests, anonymize it, aggregate and normalize it. With the Istanbul and later releases, ServiceNow ® Benchmarks reports lives in your instance     And only users with specific roles are able to see the data specific to their instance

Why can't I filter on Industry as well as Size and Region at the same time?

Customers can filter on industry or on size, but not both at the same time.   We did this in order to protect customer privacy. We do not want customers to filter to small enough data sets to be able to identify or make assumptions on who the customers are in that filtered data set.  

Customers on Kingston and beyond will have the ability to compare their KPIs against the average KPIs of organizations in their geographic region.  

ServiceNow ® Benchmarks and Performance Analytics

Is ServiceNow ® Benchmarks using Performance Analytics (PA)?
Yes, ServiceNow ® Benchmarks is tightly integrated with Performance Analytics product and PA capabilities are used to collect ServiceNow ® Benchmarks values and allow easy drill down and analysis in to your Instance data.

Where does the data come from?
The ServiceNow ® Performance Analytics engine collects the high-level usage count data from all customer instances. This collection happens on daily basis. This data is then anonymized and aggregated to create monthly global benchmark reports. This does not include any company data.

ServiceNow ® Benchmarks Product Details

How many KPIs do customers get?

Customers get a total of 16 KPIs with ServiceNow ® Benchmarks in Jakarta.

Here are the 6 existing KPIs that were available starting with Helsinki

#	Category	KPI
1	Incident	% of high priority incidents resolved
2	Incident	Average time to resolve a high priority incident
3	Incident	Average time to resolve an incident
4	Incident	% of incidents resolved on first assignment
5	Service Catalog	Average time to fulfill a request
6	Knowledge Base	Number of knowledge base views per user

Here are the 10 new KPIs available in the Jakarta release:

#	KPI	Category
1	Incident	Number of incidents created per user
2	Problem	% of high priority problems
3	Problem	Average time to close a problem
4	Change	% of emergency change types
5	Change	Average time to close a change type
6	Service Catalog	% of requests closed within SLA
7	Service Catalog	Number of requests per user
		CMDB KPIs
8	CMDB	% of duplicate CIs
9	CMDB	% of non-compliant CIs
10	CMDB	% of stale CIs

Here are the 7 new KPIs available in the Kingston release:

#	KPI	Category
1	Incident	% of reopened incidents
2	Incident	% of incidents resolved within SLA
3	Problem	% of incidents resolved by a problem
4	Change	% of failed changes
5	Knowledge	% of incidents resolved by KB articles
6	Other	Number of requests per fulfiller
7	Other	Average overall CSAT score

Is there plan to add more?

Yes, more KPIs will be added in future releases.   We are planning to add CSM and HR related KPIs as well.

Who in my organization can see the ServiceNow ® Benchmark data?
Anyone in your organization who has "Benchmarks Admin" or "Benchmarks Viewer role" can see the ServiceNow ® Benchmarks reports.

How can I see the KPI definition and calculation method?
You can see the KPI definition from two places within the product:

ServiceNow ® Benchmark Setup Page: Select a KPI — Click on Pencil Icon — the "description" field shows the KPI definition and the formula used.

ServiceNow ® Benchmarks Dashboard Page: Click on a KPI to go to Performance Trend page — Expand the "Definition" to see the detailed KPI definition.

Can I change the KPI definition/Condition to fit my customized implementation?
Yes. From ServiceNow ® Benchmarks — Setup, go to a KPI and click on pencil Icon and edit your KPI conditions to match your implementation. Once the change is saved, you can see the updated data from next month data refresh cycle.

Can I opt my Instance out from ServiceNow ® Benchmarks data aggregation?
Yes. You can disable a KPIs from the ServiceNow ® Benchmarks setup page in your Instance or click on "Opt-out of ServiceNow ® Benchmarks" to opt-out from entire program. Benchmarks Admin role is required to perform opt-in and out-out activities.

What can I do if I do not see the ServiceNow ® Benchmarks Dashboard on my Instance?

ServiceNow ® Benchmarks is available in production instances out of the box starting from Jakarta release. The Service Portal plugin is required to see the ServiceNow ® Benchmarks Dashboard. Activate the core Service Portal Plugin and the ServiceNow ® Benchmarks Dashboard app menu will show up automatically.

How would I know when next month's ServiceNow ® Benchmarks data is available?

An email notification is sent out when new ServiceNow ® Benchmarks data is download to your Instance. You can go to User preference - Email notification preferences and change the notification settings.

What can I do if my data is not correct in ServiceNow ® published reports?

You can analyze what data is used for ServiceNow ® Benchmarks within your Instance. Go to ServiceNow ® Benchmarks Dashboard — Click on a KPI to go to Performance trend — Click on your Instance trend line — this will take you to individual data values used for that month's calculation. You can modify the KPI condition if your current data is not matching your implementation.    

Will there be a performance impact from such collection?

ServiceNow ® found no performance impact because the collection is based on usage count information. We tested the impact of data collection on very large instances having as many as 10 million incident records and an additional 50,000 incidents created each month and found no performance impact.  

How can ServiceNow ® help if I want to improve my service performance on specific KPIs?
ServiceNow Benchmarks comes with actionable recommendations on improving the customers' service performance. Rather than be a one-size-fits-all, these recommendations are personalized to the customer instance. Customers may use Guided Setup for step-by-step instructions on implementing those recommendations.

Additionally, the ServiceNow ® Professional Services team can help further customers' service excellence. Contact your ServiceNow ® Account Representative to explore available options.

[johnfeist]

This is an interesting and informative article.  Is there any way that I can find out how many customers, not who they are, fall into our peer group?  Benchmarks are much more useful if we know that we are not just looking at data from one or two other customers.

[Manjeet Singh]

We have thousands of customers that have participated in Benchmarks. We then aggregate the data at Industry Categories levels (only 10). Each Industry Category is big enough with couple hundred customers in each and we do not allow to use more than one filter on Benchmarks UI to maintain the full anonymity. We also have an additional check for minimum participation (as determined by our data scientists) in each category before the aggregation starts. 

Hope this answers your question.

[Community Alums]

Is there an option to add our custom KPIs in Madrid version?

[Manjeet Singh]

Hi Varun . Thanks for your question. 

You can not add custom KPIs in Benchmarks. Allowing that will make it hard to produce aggregated Benchmarks. The purpose of Benchmarks is to provide peer comparision on standarize KPI common across many customers and are easy to understand.

You can share your KPI suggestion via Idea Portal request here community. We are considering new KPI addition with every new release.

Hope this helps,

-Manjeet

[SusanWinKY]

Does disabling a KPI mean we no longer participate in sending/receiving data for that KPI?  Or does it just mean it's hidden from the Benchmarks dashboard?

[Akshay Hatkar1]

Hi Anne Barnes,

We have Opt-in for benchmark dashboard.

But still my benchmark dashboard shows following Error when we open an Dashboard.

could you please let me know any solution for this error?

Thank you