Highly successful companies and individuals share one similarity: They have an extremely clear vision of what they want to achieve and why. They know that although all work delivers outcomes, not all outcomes yield the same value. That’s why goals and a goal framework are important. Goal setting has always been essential to business success. Businesses today face different conditions and need systems to support their unique challenges in managing goals.

As corporate budgets shrink worldwide, product and engineering leaders are making tough prioritization calls to focus on the initiatives that truly deliver business outcomes. They’re also looking at ways to optimize costs, especially those resulting from heavy manual processes. The Forrester Wave™: Value Stream Management Solutions, Q4 2022 could not have come at a more important time.

Uncertain times are often a catalyst for important innovations. During the Great Depression, for example, inventors created nylon, magnetic tape recording, and the first working helicopter—all of which are still in use today. To be prepared for the future, you need to take stock of where you’ve been, what you’ve accomplished, and where you want to go. Let’s look at four tech trends that are resonating with ServiceNow customers.

The traditional wall between IT operations and IT services—along with tedious, antiquated processes for resolving IT issues—is harmful to a company’s productivity. It’s also soul-sucking for team members. Those conditions hinder data sharing and collaboration. As a result, IT staffers must spend hours on cumbersome tasks rather than focusing on meaningful, strategic projects that make them look forward to their workdays.

Nearly every business leader these days is focused on achieving value—and for good reason. Business leaders are accountable for ensuring all the work they do delivers the most value possible to the business. Some have adopted Agile methodologies to achieve this. For Agile methodologies to be effective, you need to measure the right things. And to measure the right things, you need the right data producing the right information to provide you with the right insights. Agile value metrics can help.

These are uncertain times. When leaders are uneasy about the future, they start to look at ways to drive efficiency and cut costs to prepare for what might lurk around the corner. Most organizations know they can optimize processes, but they struggle to pinpoint where and how. ServiceNow customers are doing this by creating low-code apps using our App Engine solution.

Fred Luddy, founder of ServiceNow, is not a traditional learner. He worked at a car wash and a mechanic shop, lived on a farm, and did various odd jobs while learning about his passion—computers and programming—from magazines, books, and tinkering with technology. “I really didn't want to go to school,” he says, referring to college. “I was really interested in programming and anything dealing with computers.” Fred thought he could probably have more fun working.

Digitizing the customer experience remains a key initiative for many organizations—even during a tough economic climate when cutbacks are running rampant. Investing in digital strategies to connect people, processes, and systems can yield a unified approach to customer service that drives efficiencies, empowers colleagues, and increases customer loyalty.

In modern organizations, employee efficiency matters just as much as—if not more than—productivity. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, they capture different phenomena. Productivity measures how much work an employee gets done overall. Efficiency refers to an employee’s ability to get more done in less time, with fewer resources.

Businesses face tough competition for employees in today’s job market. According to McKinsey research, 89% of employees want to feel they’re living their purpose. For 70% of survey respondents, that sense of purpose is largely tied to their work. If an employer doesn’t meet that need, many workers will flee to a company that does. Cultivating a climate that helps workers fulfill their purpose is vital—and can lead to increased employee satisfaction and decreased turnover.