Digital Runbooks - the missing piece of the Operational Resilience puzzle.

The Business Challenge

Organisations across every sector are critically dependent on technology systems to run their business, to operate their supply chain and to serve their Customers. All businesses face the common challenges of delivering rapid technology change, recovering quickly from any technology failures, and planning for business continuity if some form of disaster scenario occurs. 

To achieve all of that, businesses need to invest in Operational Resilience – a fact that more and more boards across the globe are recognising and responding to with significant investment plans.

In highly regulated industries, there is the additional incentive to meet new Operational Resilience regulations. A great example is the DORA Regulations in the Financial Sector in European countries. Regulation is just a lever, albeit a powerful one and should be viewed as a further incentive for businesses to invest in this key capability.

The real strategic driver for building rock-solid technology resilience capabilities is to meet the needs of Customers, Partners, Employees, Shareholders, Markets and even Society itself. Operational Resilience is not a destination but process of continuous improvement and innovation. 

Laying the Foundations with ServiceNow®

To successfully achieve operational resilience, organizations need to lay the right foundations. Fortunately, many CIOs have had the foresight to select ServiceNow® as their organization's strategic platform for IT Service Management and much, much more.

IT Service Management

This has traditionally been the first solution that triggers the adoption of ServiceNow® by a Customer. The solution implements the core ITIL-based processes that are required to provide comprehensive IT Service Management to a business.

This includes the following fundamental ITIL processes:

• Change Management
• Incident Management
• Problem Management

ITSM encompasses a set of policies, processes, and procedures that align IT services with the needs of the business. It helps organizations streamline their operations, improve service delivery, and enhance customer satisfaction. By implementing ITSM best practices, organizations can establish a solid foundation for Operational Resilience.

Effective IT Service Management (ITSM) strategies depend upon a robust configuration management database (CMDB). The development of a cohesive suite of interconnected solutions hinges on a unified data model that seamlessly integrates all components.

ServiceNow® excels in meeting these critical requirements. 

Configuration Management Database

The ServiceNow® configuration management database (ServiceNow® CMDB) is a centralized repository that stores information about the configuration items (CIs) within an organization's IT infrastructure. It provides a comprehensive view of the relationships and dependencies between various CIs, enabling organizations to understand the impact of changes and make informed decisions.

Common Services Data Model

The Common Services Data Model (CSDM) is a framework that defines the structure and relationships of configuration items (CIs) and services within an organization. It provides a standardized approach to organizing and managing data, facilitating better collaboration and integration between different teams and departments.

ServiceNow® has it's own definition as published within the CSDM Executive Brief:

Common Service = A standard and shared set of service-related definitions across ServiceNow® products and platform that will enable support.

Data Model = A Configuration Management Database (CMDB) framework across ServiceNow® products and platform that will enable and support multiple configuration strategies. 

By embracing ServiceNow® to lay the foundations of ITSM, CMDB, and CSDM, organizations have established a solid base for operational resilience and ensure they have the necessary visibility and control over their IT assets, processes and operations.

Risk, Audit & Compliance Phase

A massive part of Operational Resilience is defining what's important to your business, what adverse events could impact your business and to then identify and manage the operational risks that you are carrying. Some of these risks will be within an organisation's risk appetite, other will not. Capabilities will be defined, implemented and verified.

Achieving operational resilience requires organizations to go through a risk, audit, and compliance phase. This involves identifying potential risks, conducting audits to assess the effectiveness of existing controls, and ensuring compliance with relevant regulations and standards.

ServiceNow® offers a suit of solutions under the Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) portfolio. These solutions include the following:

• Integrated Risk Management (IRM)
• Policy and Compliance Management (PCM)
• Audit Management (AM)
• Vendor Risk Management (VRM)

During the risk assessment phase, organizations need to identify and evaluate the potential risks that could impact their operations. This includes assessing the likelihood and impact of various risks, such as cyber attacks, system failures, and natural disasters. By understanding the risks they face, organizations can develop appropriate mitigation strategies and contingency plans.

Audits play a crucial role in assessing the effectiveness of existing controls and processes. They help organizations identify areas of improvement and ensure that they are operating in accordance with industry best practices and regulatory requirements. Regular audits provide valuable insights and enable organizations to proactively address any compliance gaps or vulnerabilities.

Compliance with relevant regulations and standards is also essential for operational resilience. Organizations need to stay up to date with the latest regulatory requirements and ensure that they have appropriate controls and processes in place to meet those requirements. This includes data protection regulations, industry-specific standards, and internal policies.

By going through a comprehensive risk, audit, and compliance phase, organizations can identify and address potential vulnerabilities, strengthen their controls, and enhance their operational resilience.

Specific Business solutions

With a solid foundation in place and the integration of strong Risk, Audit, and Compliance solutions, organizations can enhance their operational resilience by implementing advanced solutions customized for specific business scenarios.

These additional solutions provide custom features designed for their use case scenario and complement and interact with the existing foundational services and core risk management framework. Ultimately this strengthens the overall operational resilience capability, demonstrating the Better Together proposition that is at the heart of ServiceNow®'s product strategy.

Examples from the ServiceNow® solution portfolio include the following: 

• Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM)
• Security Operations (SecOps)
• Security Incident Response (SIR)
• Operational Resilience Workspace
• Business Continuity Management (BCM)

The Urgent Need for Digital Runbooks

With ServiceNow® widely recognised as the strategic platform for achieving Operational Resilience, companies are accelerating their product journey from core ITSM to advanced risk solutions to a growing portfolio of other ServiceNow® solutions. Collectively, they are building strong capabilities with huge benefits as they build this ecosystem of complementary, mutually enriching solutions. 

Yes, that's great progress, but .... there’s a but, and it’s a big but. 

Despite all this investment, all this innovation and all the capabilities that the ServiceNow® platform and these solutions bring, we are still seeing the continued use of spreadsheet runbooks:

• In every geographical sector.
• In every industrial sector.
• In every change and recovery scenario.

The continued use of spreadsheet runbooks and the accompanying operational methods result in excessive operational risk, heightened uncertainty, inefficiencies, and significant costs for all involved.

The spreadsheet runbook represents the horse and cart in the age of electric vehicles.

Let’s highlight a few real-world examples where the continued use of spreadsheet runbooks ramps up operational risk and undermines an organization's operational resilience capability:

Planned Change

Go-Live / Cutover Plans

The Project Manager, using Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) to build and manage programme and project plans ...

... but still reaching for Excel to build the go-live cutover plans.

 

Service Recovery

Incident Recovery Plans

The Incident Manager, using the most modern and powerful IT Service Management (ITSM) solution on the global market ...

... but still reaching for Excel to build the incident recovery plans.

 

Disaster Recovery

Technology Recovery Plans

The Operational Resilience specialist, using Business Continuity Management (BCM) to define and run Business Continuity and ITDR Events ...

... but still reaching for Excel to build the technology recovery plans.

 

Time to act.

Right now, in organisations across the globe, there’s huge investment underway in tackling the Operational Resilience challenge. 

• Thousands of people are spending their time creating runbooks.
• They are creating vital assets that capture their knowledge and expertise.
• And, with nothing better available to them, they’re reaching for the Excel spreadsheets.
• Building sub-optimal assets that will wither on the vine. Again.

If you've already invested in ServiceNow® you're in a good place.

Digital Runbooks on the ServiceNow® platform

Whether you're just laying down the foundations or already have your risk, audit, and compliance solutions in place, or even utilizing specific business solutions, the key is to prioritize digital runbooks on the platform. It's a strategic move that ensures operational resilience and efficiency, no matter where you are on your organizational journey.

Before investing further in spreadsheet runbooks, digital runbooks on the ServiceNow® platform are the way forward. 

To truly address the Operational Resilience challenge, we must bid farewell to spreadsheet runbooks, once and for all.

• We need Digital Runbooks, not spreadsheets.
• We need runbooks that complement the features of the solutions we currently use.
• We need these digital runbooks on the ServiceNow® platform.
• We need them now.

That’s where Runbook Management, a native ServiceNow® application, fits as the missing piece of this complex jigsaw. By leveraging the power of the ServiceNow® platform and implementing digital runbooks, organizations can take a significant step towards achieving operational resilience in the digital age.

Benefits 

Implementing Runbook Management, and embracing digital runbooks, offers several benefits for organizations striving to achieve operational resilience.

Working in harmony with your other solutions, Runbook Management gives you:

• The ability to deliver more change, in less time, with lower risk.
• The ability to recover important business services quickly when they fail.
• The peace of mind to know that you are well prepared for any major disaster.
• The ability to reassure your customers, colleagues, partners, shareholders, and regulators that your business is operationally resilient.

The New World

As we have seen already, ServiceNow® has emerged as a strategic platform, moving way beyond it's original market leader position as in IT Service Management solution. As the solution portfolio grows on the platform, the sharply defined boundaries between different solutions are being blurred as a unified data model and common business processes becomes the norm.

This isn’t really integration as we know it today. This is the fluid, blending of solutions together, where the user seamlessly transitions from one product to another from a single, shared user interface. The ServiceNow® platform with the Common Data Service Model is the foundation that enables this Better Together vision to happen.

• Think of a Project Manager working for months in the SPM tool then flipping, when the time is right, to the use of Runbook Management to create the cutover / go-live plan using digital runbooks – all initiated from and embedded within the SPM interface.
• Envisage a Business Continuity Manager creating their Technology Recovery Plans, using Runbook Management from within the BCM solution and seeing the effect of these digital runbooks on important business services and impact tolerances.
• Imagine an Incident Manager using Service Operations Workspace, working with a team of experts to rapidly create a Service Recovery Runbook in response to an Incident. They’ll all be using Runbook Management, leveraging the Templates and Content Packs that the solution provides to build those digital runbooks– and it will all feel entirely seamless.
• Imagine an Incident Manager using Security Incident Response, working with a team of experts to create a Service Recovery Runbook in anticipation of a Cyber Incident. Preparing with Runbook Management. Building digital runbook assets that demonstrate resilience. 

The Emerging Horizon 

In addition to this Better Together vision, the ServiceNow® platform offers huge scope and potential for efficiency, optimisation and collaboration.

Runbooks will be optimised by integrating DevOps tools to automate the manual tasks that are performed today. Content Packs will capture detailed instructions that can be updated, optimised, automated, and propagated to existing runbooks. Collaboration will be enhanced – with notifications and warnings flowing to the right people, at the right time, in the right collaboration tool whether that’s Sidebar, MS Teams, Slack.

Then we have Gen AI, where the platform itself will deliver capabilities that we are only just beginning to envisage. 

In summary, the future for Operational Resilience entails a continuous journey of enhancement and creativity. For organizations dedicated to the ServiceNow® platform, embracing Runbook Management as a fundamental element of their Operational Resilience strategy is crucial. Integrated into the solution portfolio, Runbook Management empowers organizations to drive efficiency, accelerate processes, enhance clarity, and maintain consistency, ultimately reducing operational risks and cutting down on operational costs significantly.