Performance Analytics concepts

Use Performance Analytics to visualize data that is collected over time. This data reveals trends, which you can use to make real-time adjustments and improve how your business functions. You can use Performance Analytics to align resources, systems, and employees to strategic objectives and priorities.

The single system of record approach within the ServiceNow platform enables you to measure and drive performance faster and easier within and across all service request management processes. Provide time-based perspectives of relevant data and focus on trend anomalies to prompt action.

With Performance Analytics, companies can:

  • Drive performance: Provide actionable insight on each level and for every role using key indicators, mobile-enabled scorecards, time charts, analytics, drill-downs, and dashboards.
  • Establish a single version of truth: Share clear, up-to-date visualizations of performance across teams and organizations, establishing a single version of truth as the basis for objectively discussing service delivery and driving behavioral change.
  • Realize fast time-to-value: Implement business intelligence within the base ServiceNow system within days, instead of months, and make better use of the time and money that currently go into labor-intensive manual reporting.

Benefits of using Performance Analytics may include:

  • Align the organization with company goals.
  • Decrease time required to create strategic or operational changes by communicating the changes through a new set of goals.
  • Increase overall quality of services.
  • Lower cost of services.
  • Improve availability of services.

When working with Performance Analytics, you can use:

  • Indicators: also known as metrics, business metrics, or KPIs, are a type of performance measurement, used by businesses to measure current conditions and to forecast business trends. Indicators are commonly used to evaluate success or the success of a particular activity. Success may be defined as making progress toward strategic goals, or as the repeated achievement of some level of operational goal (for example, zero defects, or 10/10 customer satisfaction). Choosing the right indicator requires a good understanding of what is important to a department in the organization - for example, the KPIs important to finance are quite different from the KPIs important to sales. To help develop this understanding of importance, indicator selection is often closely associated with techniques to assess the present state of the business, and its key activities. These assessments help identify potential improvement areas; so KPIs are usually associated with performance improvement initiatives. Indicators are usually presented in graphs to make them easier to read and understand.
  • Breakdowns: also known as dimensions or drill-downs, these divide data in different ways. For example, incidents can be divided by priority or by assignment group. In Performance Analytics, data can be subdivided two levels deep for further analysis. A first-level breakdown could be by priority, for example grouping all Critical incidents. In this example, a second-level breakdown could be by assignment group, subdividing Critical incidents into, for example, Service Desk, Database, CAB, and so on. The breakdowns can also be turned around; for example, first by assignment group and then by priority, creating a so-called breakdown matrix.
  • Scorecards: a graphical visualization of the scores of an indicator. The basic feel and look of a scorecard can not be changed. Scorecards can be enhanced by adding targets, thresholds, trendlines, and useful comments for significant changes. In a scorecard the scores of an indicator can be analyzed further by viewing the scores by breakdowns (scores per group), aggregates (counts, sums, and maximums), time series (totals and averages applied to different time periods) and drilling down to the records on which the scores are based.
  • Dashboards: a single-screen display of multiple Performance Analytics, reporting, and other widgets. Dashboards can be responsive or non-responsive. To create or share a responsive dashboard, you need at least one role, but this can be any role. You can drag to move and resize widgets on responsive dashboards. Non-responsive dashboards use less flexible drop zone layouts, and require Performance Analytics roles to view, create, and edit.
  • Widgets: a graphic visualization on a dashboard. Widget configurations are used to view, set up, edit, and manage properties for dashboards and visualization types: time series, scores, lists, and breakdowns. For example, a widget can display data as a chart, latest score, speedometer, dial, scorecard, or column. Many variations are possible. Widgets are only visible when added to a dashboard.
  • Data collector: the engine that collects scores from your database on a regular basis by running jobs.