Plat4mation–Blog–ServiceNow CSDM: The Ring With The Power to Rule Them All

ServiceNow CSDM: The Ring With The Power to Rule Them All

6 mins

For those of you who have read Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, you already know what I’m talking about. For those who haven’t: it’s basically a story about 20 rings of power. 19 of these rings give the bearer a unique strength. But there is one ring with the power to rule all others. The ServiceNow platform has a similar structure with its wide variety of powerful out-of-the-box workflows (“the rings”) like ITSM, SPM, IRM, CSM, WSD, HRSD, etc.

Each ring brings great strengths to the business units that use them. However, you can unlock even greater strength when you connect the dots between all of these rings. This will result in powerful cross-departmental use cases like onboarding (HR, IT, Facility) and delivering service enhancements (business, Dev, Ops).

So, what is required to get these cross-functional workflows in place? You probably guessed it: ServiceNow CSDM (Common Service Data Model) is the ring with The Power To Rule Them All.

Bird's eye view

In the books of Tolkien, Sauron is depicted as a large eye that can observe every part of middle-earth. Business leaders like CIOs and COOs need to have a good view over the lands they control too. But in reality, it is almost impossible to get a coherent end-to-end (cross-departmental) view over your operations. This is often caused by siloed systems. But even when you run all your workflows on a single platform like ServiceNow, it can still be difficult to get a complete picture. What you need for that is a coherent data model that connects the dots between the individual workflows.

This what the Common Service Data Model (CSDM 3.0) is all about! It provides business leaders that 360-degree view on their operations. You’ll know exactly:

What developments are being executed
How they relate to the company strategy
How well a service is performing
How much is spent
Who the service consumers are
What is being charged
And more!

Common Service Data Model 3.0 — Source: ServiceNow

Establish a CSDM fellowship

The Common Service Data Model cuts your operations up in services. Unfortunately, the way operations are structured differs from one company to another. This also means that your service decomposition will be unique to your organization.

Defining your CSDM data model and ensuring it remains accurate over time is therefore a real journey. In The Lord of The Rings, they form a fellowship with delegates from different origins (Elves, Dwarfs, Humans and Hobbits), each bringing different traits. To be successful in your CSDM journey, you too need to establish a CSDM fellowship consisting of at least Service (Portfolio) owners, Data Stewards, Enterprise / IT Architects, ServiceNow specialists, and possibly more.

Get yourself a guide

Controlling the ring was no easy task for Frodo. Getting your CSDM in place will not be easy either. What helps is to have a guide like Aragorn/Strider on your side to navigate the treacherous worlds of CSDM and complete the mission.

At Plat4mation, we’ve already guided many customers on their CSDM journey, and we can also support you! We’ve created a powerful arsenal to fight the risks of scope creep, budget overruns and missed deadlines. We’ve even developed a virtual ServiceNow CSDM game to educate your Fellowship on what CSDM entails and what the journey will look like (Crawl, Walk, Run, Fly).

Via an effective workshop approach, we quickly retrieve the right services data and our data collection templates allow for easy data collection and import into ServiceNow. And most importantly, because we successfully completed the journey before, we make sure you avoid common pitfalls and get the success factors in play to become the hero that saves the world (a.k.a. the one that gets the right overviews in the hands of senior business stakeholders)!

Elmer in handwriting font