Get the most from what you have
There’s a common belief in the ServiceNow world that to get sophisticated analytics, you must have the premium Platform Analytics Advanced license. And while the advanced tier is excellent for historical trending and future forecasting, you may be surprised by the amount of value packed into the standard Platform Analytics license you already own.
The key is to shift your thinking. Instead of just building reports, let’s talk about building a strategic reporting service. By combining the features of your standard license with a solid methodology, you can deliver serious value to your organization without any additional cost.
Insights provided by:
Melanie Selman
ServiceNow Specialist
Specialized in Architecture & Portals
Jonas Schneekloth Løkkegaard
ServiceNow Expert & Team Lead
Specialized in bridging the gap between business & IT
Before You Build: Planning with a Purpose
A report without a business question is just data on a screen. The most effective analytics work starts long before you open the dashboard editor. It starts with a clear business objective.
Instead of waiting for a request like “I need a report of all open incidents,” ask your stakeholders, “What business goal are we trying to achieve?” A great starting point is a high-level objective – for example, reducing IT support costs by 10%. From there, break it down into measurable, behavior-based indicators that can be tracked in your dashboards.
Example: Supporting a Goal to Reduce IT Spending by 10%
While the Platform Analytics Standard license doesn’t provide cost reporting or historical KPI tracking, you can still create valuable dashboards that highlight cost-driving behaviors – using only live operational data.
Incident measurement suggestions for highlighting cost-driving behaviours:
| Measurement | Why it Matters | Visualization Suggestion |
|---|---|---|
| Total Incident Volume | High volume = higher labor cost. | Weekly line chart |
| Reassignment Count | Duplicate effort inflates handling time. | Bar chart by Assignment Group |
| Average Business Duration | Slower resolution = more labor cost. | Trend line |
| Incidents Open > X Days | Aging incidents require more effort. | Filtered count + pie chart |
| Incidents Created via Portal | Self-service reduces manual triage. | Group by Channel |
| Top 5 Categories by Volume | Reveals high-volume areas that may benefit from automation or better triage. | Horizontal bar chart |
Use filters like Assignment Group, Priority, or Category to identify where to optimize or automate. This gives you actionable insight to reduce time and effort — and ultimately, cost.
Add a purpose statement to your dashboard like:
“This dashboard supports our goal to reduce IT support cost by 10% by surfacing inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas where automation or better triage can reduce effort per incident.”
If you’re looking to align your dashboards with business goals, start by writing a short purpose statement at the top of your dashboard. This helps communicate the ‘why’ behind the numbers, even in operational reporting.
Empower Your Users with Self-Service Analytics
One of the most useful features in the standard Platform Analytics Workspace is Analytics Q&A. This is a natural language query (NLQ) engine, which means a manager or process owner can ask a question like, “Show me incidents resolved last week by priority,” and get an interactive chart back instantly.
You’ll want to schedule time to validate your most important dashboards after the migration to ensure everything works as expected.
This self-service capability is ideal for users who need quick answers and help reduce the number of report requests your team must manage. It’s best suited for simple reporting and rapid idea validation; more complex reports should still be configured manually.
Build Smarter, Not Harder: Dashboards and Data Visualizations
Once you have a plan, how you build your analytics matters. Writing clean, efficient, and reusable components will save you many hours and improve trust in your data. First, adopt this core principle: Fix the Application, Not the Report. If you find yourself writing a complex script just to handle a poorly configured field, stop. For example, if a field that should have a finite set of values is a free-text string, the right solution is to push the application team to change it to a choice field. This not only makes reporting easier but also improves data quality for the entire platform.
With a clean data foundation, you can design dashboards that truly guide a user to an insight.
- Design with Intent: Always start by answering the question, “What decision will this dashboard help someone make?”. Use tabs to organize content logically, for instance, by giving a dashboard an Overview tab and a Trends tab.
- Use Filters to Reduce Duplication: Instead of building ten dashboards for ten teams, build one and add a filter for Assignment Group. For even more personalization, you can use dynamic filters like Assigned to is (dynamic) Me, which automatically shows each user their own work.
- Build for Consistency: Choose the right chart for the job, like using line charts for trends and bar charts for comparisons. To ensure everyone reports on metrics the same way, you can save and reuse visualizations in a Visualization Library. This is the foundation for creating Certified Visualizations, which acts as a stamp of approval that this is the official, trusted source for that metric.
From Data to Action: The Continual Improvement Mindset
The goal of any dashboard is to drive action. A well-designed dashboard should make it easy to spot inefficiencies in your processes, which is the heart of Continual Service Improvement (CSI).
For example, by analyzing an incident dashboard, your service desk manager might notice that tickets are spending an excessive amount of time in the “Awaiting User Info” state. That one observation, made possible by a clear visualization, can spark a project to improve communication templates or automate follow-ups, directly leading to a better customer experience and faster resolution times.
This is how a simple report evolves into a tool for process improvement. You are no longer just presenting data; you are providing the starting point for a valuable business conversation.
Business Outcome: When you apply these strategic principles, your standard Platform Analytics license becomes more than just a reporting tool. It becomes a strategic asset. You empower your business users with self-service, you build trust through well-governed and consistent data, and you create a framework for using data to drive genuine process improvement. This is how you can find and deliver immense value with the powerful tools you already have.
Do you need help getting more from your ServiceNow investment?
Maximizing the tools you already have is the smartest way to increase value. Contact us if you want to explore the full potential of your standard Platform Analytics license, need assistance in setting up a solid governance model, or want to train your teams to build effective and trusted reports.
