It’s that time of the year again, when folks are rushing to the movie theaters, checking off their list, and (if you’re like some of our Acorio team members) placing their bets on which movies and actors will be taking home the prized, golden statue – that’s right, it’s Oscars season!

And while we are huge movie fans at Acorio – trust me, this year we have our fingers crossed for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri and Lady Bird – we’re also faithful to our one true love, ServiceNow. And so we thought, why can’t we have our own Oscars to celebrate our favorite ServiceNow “wins,” consequently the start of our inaugural Acorios!

Below is a compilation of Acorio’s best ServiceNow achievements – what we have seen and done in the ecosystem – in 2017: Most Innovative ServiceNow Solution, Best Teamwork, Best Picture (Webinar), Most Impactful Case Study, Our (2) Favorite Helpful ServiceNow Time-Savers, plus the Newest ServiceNow Feature We Can’t Get Enough Of.

And the awards go to…

Most Innovative ServiceNow Solution

Acorio’s Student One Stop Solution

The Student One Stop is a A NOW Partner Catalyst Higher Ed Solution, contextually driven to support students, parents, and guardians requesting services from student-facing entities like financial aid, registrar, bursar, etc.

From the application process through graduation, the student experience has changed but the technologies supporting that experience have not.

Endorsed Partner

Designed to be mobile friendly, Acorio’s Student One Stop solution is changing the way

we typically think about students – thinking of them as customers instead (and high-end ones, specifically). Fulfilling the consumerized expectations of today’s

students and parents/guardians, the Student One Stop solution has the power to rapidly modernize and consolidate student information into one system of work, while creating a more modern, mobile-enabled student experience.

Part of the ServiceNow Partner Catalyst Program™, this designed approach is making it cheaper, faster, easier, and more intuitive for students to navigate university resources. You can read more about the student experience transformation here and how Suffolk University is already leading the charge!

Best Teamwork

A Customer Service Management Home Run for a Major Global Aerospace Firm

A major global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technologies company wanted to migrate existing and outdated Customer Service Management processes (email, spreadsheets and legacy systems) into ServiceNow to enable a better customer service and reporting experience by leveraging a single system of record.

This project kicked off on in mid-November with a go-live of early January – talk about a tricky timeline with a serious line-up of several holidays! Yet, despite the short timeline and holiday obstacles, The Acorio team not only met the deadline but exceeded the client’s expectations.

The team was able to develop a solution that allowed the client to not only flawlessly use their existing processes, but make improvements by leveraging the automation and reporting capabilities of ServiceNow. This enabled a more efficient customer service experience not only for their customers, but for their employees as well. Thanks to the team’s dedication and turn-around, this led to additional projects and a true partnership with the client – double win!

The A-Team members: Jana Hrgota, Carleen Carter, Greg Mest, Bradford Shelley, Chris Pao, Ryan Gillespie

Best Picture (Webinar)

ServiceNow Roadmap Check: Make the Last 3 Months Count

In under one hour, Marci Parker and Kaushik Nanavati break down quick ServiceNow wins, a realistic strategy to execute a complete project in under 90 days, plus the right strategy to plan for this year.

No matter when you watch the webinar, this webinar is a perfect way to strategize and help organize your ServiceNow journey, breaking down some simple questions like “How is your roadmap going?” to more complex goals, like driving true business transformation and how you communicate the business case for IT transformation.

Watch on-demand and find out the 90-day business plan and process one of our clients, a large multi-national financial institution, used to go-live with 3 new modules (HR, ITFM, and Marketing), 7 Trends we see in our pipeline (enterprise service management, organizational change management, and self-service, just to name a few!), and three optional paths, depending on where your ServiceNow instance stands today!

Most Impactful Case Study

Gemalto – A new ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) strategy opens opportunities to improve satisfaction scores and increase revenues

When Gemalto, a global cybersecurity firm headquartered in France, acquired the U.S. security company SafeNet, the parent firm used the merger as an opportunity to review the U.S. company’s customer service management (CSM) platform. Thorough customer surveys provided feedback for meaningful improvement, including: making the service desk easier and more rewarding to use; modernizing the interface; and giving end users more direct access to the information and downloads they needed (e.g., drivers, manuals).

On the backend, Gemalto’s support team had no easy way of accessing customer entitlement records, forcing them to give free support regardless of service status. Each product family had its own support site, creating inconsistent service experiences for end users. Worse, the old CSM had been custom built on top of Seibel; any change, no matter how small, required the attention of a web developer.

After initial consideration of various CSM options, Gemalto realized that a cloud-based SaaS platform would provide greater long-term value. In particular, the company could benefit from routine upgrades that kept pace with emerging technology without having to reinvest in new rounds of coding.

Even with standardized upgrades, ServiceNow offered a flexible platform to support Gemalto’s growing needs and scale. Working with Acorio throughout the implementation, Gemalto was able to integrate their new CSM with a number of crucial on-premise applications (you can read about those here)

The Results? In just ten months from RFP to rollout, the implementation was complete, and customers seeking service were pleased to see a modern, Gemalto-branded portal for fast navigation and rapid insight into case progress.

Favorite Time Savers

ITOM CI Class Controls

A challenge with the CMDB is controlling the interaction with it. To control this for each CI can be a large task and gets out of date very quickly, or you need to have many roles and ACL’s that can get complicated. The CI Class Controls application gives you the ability to control access, approvals, notifications, task assignments and more at a class level. It makes administration of the CMDB a lot simpler, quicker and more effective. For example, if you have a team that updates your Windows server CI’s, you can give that group access to edit that class of CI without changing ACL’s or roles.

If you want to have named individual responsible for the completeness and accuracy of all of you Linux servers you can specify them in the Class control record and use it for reports and notifications without updating all the Linux server records.

When a new CI is created in a class it is already under the controls specified for that class in CI Class control record without having to update the CI record or specify default values.

Kingston’s new Knowledge Article Templates

Use Kingston’s new Knowledge Article Templates to power up your organization’s Knowledge Base.  Templates let you standardize the content and formatting of your articles by collecting specific fields based on the type of article you are writing.  For example, the pre-defined FAQ template collects a Question and Answer to ensure consistency across this article type.

Article Templates are a feature of the free Knowledge Management Advanced plugin which also includes Article Versioning, Article Subscriptions, an available External Content Integration plugin, and more!

Best ServiceNow Feature

Flow Designer

With the release of Kingston, ServiceNow continues to apply technologies that reduce the coding burden and increase automation

With the release comes a revised Flow Designer drag-and-drop workflow tool with natural language comprehension and more an intuitive user interface. An improvement on its current workflow tool, Graphical Workflow Editor, the Flow Designer is not just easier to use but can draw upon “reusable actions” – workflow building blocks created once for multiple uses.

Another cool part? You don’t have to be the admin or a developer to build a flow – with Kingston, the new tool is also targeted at Process Owners, allowing subject matter experts to automate simple flows on their own! If you want to see how to build a flow, jump to 12:11 in our last month’s webinar, “The ServiceNow Kingston Update: Machine Learning, AI, UX, Oh My!”

Even though real life may not be as glamorous as the movies…

We think we’re doing some pretty cool things while transforming businesses with ServiceNow – and it’s always fun to recognize those teams, projects, and ServiceNow features that are deserving of their own award! If you’re interested in how this team of ServiceNow experts can help your organization achieve the true value of ServiceNow, contact us today!

NOTE: This content was originally posted by Devon Clarke on March 1st, 2018 on the Acorio website at https://www.acorio.com/acorios-servicenow-achievements/ The Acorio brand retired in April 2023 after acquisition by NTT DATA. Some links may no longer work.

Published On: March 1st, 2018|Tags: |

About the Author: Carleen Carter

ServiceNow developer and architect since 2009, Carleen is self-described as a Serious Script Includer and Low Code Lover. She holds several ServiceNow certifications, including Certified Master Architect. Carleen has a knack for explaining challenging concepts in a relatable and approachable manner. She thrives on enabling customers & colleagues and loves to see their success. She excels at crafting creative solutions to complex problems with an eye on the big picture.