This is the second in a series of blog posts intended to serve as an introduction to SnowMirror for executives who may be new to the tool, its uses and benefits.
ServiceNow’s functionality, flexibility and community have made it extremely popular among companies looking to automate their workflows. In addition, the data collected in ServiceNow also has tremendous value if it can be analyzed to create insights. But that requires specialized data analysis tools like Tableau.
That’s where SnowMirror comes in as an intermediate step between ServiceNow and Tableau. SnowMirror is a smart replication tool for ServiceNow that lets you make copies of your ServiceNow data from the cloud to your own infrastructure, flexibly, reliably and powerfully. Using SnowMirror, companies are able to make a replica of their ServiceNow data, either to on-premises hardware or to cloud services like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Snowflake. Tableau can also be run on-premises at a company, or run from cloud services such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS.
Once your company’s data is replicated to your infrastructure, you can use Tableau to analyze the data for important trends, usage patterns and information that may have been overlooked in standard reporting. Data analyzed by Tableau can also power effective dashboards that can help managers to make more informed decisions.
How those dashboards are designed and perceived is something Tableau is concerned with as well. For example, the Tableau documentation provides insightful advice on how to approach dashboard design. “The best visualizations have a clear purpose and work for their intended audience. What will you be trying to say with this dashboard? Are you presenting a conclusion or a key question?”
The Tableau documentation also advises a key point when designing a dashboard. “In addition to knowing what you’re trying to say, it’s important to know who you’re saying it to. Does your audience know this subject matter extremely well or will it be new to them? What kind of cues will they need? Thinking about these questions before you head into the design phase can help you create a successful dashboard.”
In many cases, the decision of whether to use the default reporting tools in ServiceNow or a third-party tool such as Tableau boils down to the kind of reporting your company needs operational reporting or strategic reporting. In somewhat simplified terms, operational reports can provide a view to current performance related to KPIs. But strategic reports can help businesses set targets based on insights into historical data. In this way, Tableau is better used as a tool for strategic reporting and analysis.
However you set out to use Tableau in your company, you can rest assured that SnowMirror will provide your data reliably and flexibly.
If you’d like to to talk with us about how SnowMirror can help your business get the most out of ServiceNow, please get in touch.
