Solving Digital Transformation with ServiceNow’s App Engine Studio

ServiceNow has always been in the business of enabling innovation. With their Quebec release, customers were introduced to the Creator Workflow and App Engine Studio, which combines fast low-code app development with their signature workflow capabilities. This aims to solve the problem of developing time-sensitive solutions through citizen development whilst maintaining a level of governance and management control. With companies seeking drastic measures to accelerate their digital transformation, ServiceNow’s App Engine fills a major gap that most digital strategies are missing.

The Birth of Digital Urgency

CIOs today are facing a dilemma. Everyone in their organisation, from executive leadership to first-day employees, are expecting them to lead digital transformation efforts to modernise their technology. While management is seeking advanced solutions to see how to increase efficiency and data transparency, employees are expecting the “Amazon-like experience” every time they request time off or order new equipment. This is putting a lot of pressure on the business to adapt quickly to frequently changing requirements, but the process for implementing these solutions is often time consuming, expensive, and potentially unreliable.

This has given birth to the neologism digital urgency. If digital transformation is the modern jet plane that takes you wherever you want to go, digital urgency comes from the horse-drawn carriage that sluggishly conveys you the airport. Everyone knows that the jet is the better option of the two, but there’s an unavoidable journey that needs to take place before that can happen.

Why Digital Transformations Fail

According to Forbes, 70% of digital transformation initiatives fall short of expectation or simply don’t succeed. This is because many projects struggle with the need to manage consistency: unified processes under a single source of truth, with autonomy: enabling people to create solutions that fit their unique needs. The more a company enables their employees to contribute to their own solutions, the more fractured the data and processes become across the enterprise. On the other hand, the more control companies put around protecting those processes, the less effective are the solutions for meeting specific employee needs. 

Another problem is that the demand for digital solutions is moving much faster than the supply. This is evidenced by the fact that companies are estimated to be attempting to build over 500 million new apps in the next five years, but there is currently an estimated shortage of 1.4 million necessary developers for 2021 alone. This is creating a clear gap between the capabilities needed to complete these projects and the number of available developers to accomplish these goals.

Finding a Balance

The uncomfortable truth is that finding a solution to these problems is a matter of survival for most companies. According to Gartner’s Top 10 Application Predictions Through 2025, “low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity” within the next three years. However, as we’ve seen in previous examples, a low-code vehicle on its own will not facilitate the consistency needed for a successful result. What is needed is a solution that supports an overall low-code strategy that blends the autonomy of low-code development with the consistency of process and data governance.

During a joint webinar with Thirdera, ServiceNow’s App Engine expert, Paul Warren described low-code development as a “team sport”. According to Paul, ServiceNow’s App Engine studio enables a united effort with citizen and technical developers to build an app quickly. It is important that these apps meet end-user business requirements, but also satisfy the compliance standards set by their oversight team. This adds a layer of security by ensuring that new development meets an established governance model to run efficiently and safely on the ServiceNow platform. In this model, all three parties are equally empowered and accountable for their role in the development process.

Join the Digital Revolution

ServiceNow’s App Engine solves the problem of digital urgency by giving non-technical users a vast tool kit, templates, and reusable building blocks to collaborate with the development process and return high-speed results. Not only does this create a rapid turnaround for product creation, it also yields user friendly solutions that allow for ServiceNow’s intelligent self-service and first class user experiences. The Creator Workflow aspect grants organisations the ability to administer governance to scale without sprawl, and deploy applications that are safe, effective, and adaptable. This undeniably saves time and money for ServiceNow customers and promotes higher rates of success for digital transformation initiatives.

Schedule a Free App Engine Workshop

If you would like to see how ServiceNow’s App Engine works first-hand, you can schedule a free three-hour session with the low-code experts at Thirdera to see this tool in action. During this workshop, you and your team will learn best practice strategies for planning app development from the idea phase through development and publishing the application to the rest of your team.

Contact us to learn more about App Engine, or to reserve a workshop spot for your organisation!