What's New in Tokyo for In-Platform Process Mining (Process Optimization)

[dangrady510]

I’ve been lucky enough to travel to many of the cities ServiceNow has used for release names in the past, but I’ve never been to Tokyo.  So, I decided to do a little research.

Did you know that Tokyo is home to more than 226 Michelin-starred restaurants, has hosted the Olympics twice (1964 and 2020), and was originally named Edo? Perhaps the Eureka release would have been the Edo release if ServiceNow was around prior to 1868 when the named changed.

Tokyo is also considered the world’s largest city with a population of 37 million.   The Shibuya Crossing is the busiest intersection in the world with 7 crossings from either side of the streets and as many as 2,500 people crossing the intersection every time the lights turn green. Locals call this moment ‘the incredible scramble’. The sight of cars stopping in all directions to make way for this large mass of people to cross the street is captivating.  

The city must constantly be looking for ways to optimize to support such huge population.  

One of my favorite examples is that they employ “Pushers” to literally push people on to crowded trains in order to get as many people on as possible. (Their actual title is Passenger Arrangement Staff.)
 
There are many more modern examples of efficient operation.  For instance, you can get almost anything from a vending machine in Tokyo (there is 1 vending machine for every 23 people). There is also a hotel, the Hen na Hotel, that is completely operated by robots. The word Hen in Japanese means “change”, and the hotel chose this name to demonstrate their commitment to improve and evolve.

A commitment to improve and evolve is also something ServiceNow demonstrates with each release - and Tokyo is no different.  We’ve made a number of key enhancements to our in-platform process mining solution (Process Optimization) which coincidentally is designed to help you identify opportunities to continually improve your workflows running on the platform.

First, we’ve expanded Process Optimization’s workflows coverage to include Employee and Creator Workflows.  So as of Tokyo, customers can apply in-platform process mining to applications that live in the ITSM, Customer Service Management, and HR Service Delivery offerings.  Then in the November release we’ll open up the ability to apply process mining to custom applications created with our App Engine solution.  These entitlements mean that you can run mining against tables covered by that solution and you get content packs with common findings/inefficiencies, so you have a head start.

Next, we’ve added support for mult-dimensional mining.  This allows us to get an end-to-end view of an entire workflow by visualizing interconnected processes.  Many workflows are a series of interconnected processes – think of HR onboarding or a complex service catalog request. Prior to Tokyo you had some but limited flexibility and maybe had to pick and choose which portion of the workflow you wanted to focus in on.  (Which isn’t necessarily always a bad thing to do by the way.) This changes in Tokyo where we make the leap from a single process view to multi-process by giving you the ability to link parent and child tables or reference tables when creating a process model.  

One of the advantages of using an in-platform process mining solution like Process Optimization is the prebuilt integrations with other parts of the platform to help create a more closed loop continual improvement experience so you get the most out of your process mining activities. Prior to Tokyo we’ve had integrations with Performance Analytics so you could go right from a KPI to a process map visualization of the data behind it and with Continual Improvement Management so you could capture insights and ensure they get acted upon.

In Tokyo we’ve added two additional integrations. First with Automation Center so you can create an automation idea from a workspace when an automation opportunity presents itself.

Second, we’ve added an integration with Workforce Optimization.  Insights are typically most valuable when they are in the flow of the day to day lives of the people that can act on them.  Team leads and service desk managers will now have process visibility right within their workspace.  We’ve embedded findings cards, root cause, and variation analysis for work that touches their teams right within the workspace.

Finally, let’s talk about the enhancements we’ve made to finding definitions.
With most workflows there are likely to be a common set of inefficiencies and bottlenecks – finding definitions help process owners or analysts by identifying records that match these patterns and then guiding them to improvement opportunities.  If you’re interested in learning more about finding definitions check out this post. 

In Tokyo we’ve made three enhancements to findings definitions:

• Flexibility to add rules at the project level, not just the process level.  Prior to Tokyo all rules for a given table would be applied across all projects on that table. Not anymore. Individual analysts can create their own project level rules.  
• Ability to create custom start and stop conditions.  There may be scenarios where you want to analyze an isolated portion of a workflow – for example, many customers asked to just analyze a workflow up to a resolved state and not include the closed transition. This helped keep their numbers in line with some of the KPIs they were tracking.
•  Flexibility to how you define the rules to account for more complex use cases.
   

There are also a number of UI/UX enhancements that you’ll notice as your start navigating your process maps looking for inefficiencies.

Like someone in Tokyo trying to board a crowded subway train we’re all being pushed to operate more efficiently and get more out of our existing resources.

These new enhancements to Process Optimization will make it easier to pick the most impactful process inefficiencies to act upon out of the crowd and get your workflows moving as smoothly as Shibuya Crossing.

If you are interested in a live demonstration of the Tokyo enhancements for Process Optimization check out this Process Optimization Academy session.

Have questions about Process Optimization post to our Community Forum or check out our FAQ

Interested in learning more about Process Optimization take the on-demand Now Learning course or register for our bi-weekly Process Optimization Academy sessions.

Other Content

Winning at Hide-and-Seek with process inefficiencies

Process Mining: Wingman for those that have a "Need for Speed"

"Know Better" with in-platform process mining 

Why and what of in-platform process mining through moving pictures(demo recording)

Interested in additional blog posts on Process Optimization, Performance Analytics, Predictive Intelligence and the Virtual Agent?  Check out this Now Intelligence blog carnival.