ServiceNow Releases Four Emergency Response Apps to Help Customers Navigate COVID-19 Crisis Management Globally

ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW), the leading digital workflow company that makes work, work better for people, today announced a customer care plan to support its public and private sector customers globally in managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of this effort, the company has announced four new community apps to help its customers, including government agencies and enterprises, manage complex emergency response workflows. These apps are now available at servicenow.com/crisisresponse for customers to access free of charge through September 30, 2020.

“In this battle to flatten the COVID-19 curve, none of us is as smart as all of us,” said Bill McDermott, president and CEO of ServiceNow. “These ServiceNow applications will enable emergency outreach, self-reporting and exposure management, which are precisely what organisations need to do right now to help people get through this crisis.” 

“We are particularly proud to partner with Washington State’s Department of Health to make an emergency operations app, which they developed on the Now Platform, available to all government agencies fighting this pandemic. This is all about sharing best practices, which is why we’ll do everything we can to get the Washington State app in use everywhere,” McDermott continued.

Emergency Response Operations app for government agencies

Washington State’s Department of Health, a ServiceNow customer, initially created the the Emergency Response Operations app on the Now Platform to manage their own response to COVID-19. Working with ServiceNow, the Department of Health is making the app available to all government entities globally at no charge.

“As the epicenter for COVID-19 in the U.S., the State of Washington’s agencies, emergency responders and public health professionals had to rapidly assemble an incident management structure to lead outbreak response and mitigate the spread and impact,” said Jennifer McNamara, Chief Information Officer, Washington State Department of Health.

“Leveraging ServiceNow’s Now Platform, we were able to digitise processes that allowed us to quickly resource critical Incident Management Team positions. This automated a manual and labor-intensive process that was fraught with errors while also providing real-time visibility into resource allocations. Improved accountability will allow us to secure the maximum federal reimbursement for incident expenditures. We are building on the success of this phase with automation of the other Incident Management Functions such as resource demobilisation, planning, logistics, and finance.”

“Given the complexity and importance of community within this crisis, we believe it’s our duty to share our approach and the application we were able to quickly develop on the Now Platform. That’s why we have worked with ServiceNow to make our application freely available to other governmental entities. By digitising these processes, responding to an emergency does not have to create an emergency to coordinate,” McNamara concluded.

Customer care plan

ServiceNow has launched a customer care plan to support its customers as they focus on maintaining business operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes a commitment to maintaining virtually 100% uptime for ServiceNow instances; and launching a Now Community forum where customers and partners can interact with other customers, as well as an Apps Suggestions portal, where customers and partners can provide their ideas for COVID-19 related apps or features.

In addition to the State of Washington’s Emergency Response Operations app, ServiceNow has developed and introduced three, free of charge community apps to benefit all customers. The additional apps include:

* Emergency Outreach: during a crisis, this workflow leverages the Now Platform to help companies connect with employees to assess the impact. Employers can reach out by email to provide information and safety measures and request a response to confirm if employees are safe and where they are located. Employers can also leverage the ServiceNow Now Mobile App to send push notifications to employees via mobile to get response.

* Emergency Self Report: this workflow helps an employee notify their employer that they are self-quarantined and when the employee will return to work, and provides workflow support for the employer.

* Emergency Exposure Management: when a company becomes aware that its employee is diagnosed with an illness, this workflow helps the employer identify other people who might have been exposed based on the employee’s meetings history and job location.

More information about ServiceNow’s customer care plan, including accessing the community apps, can be found at servicenow.com/crisisresponse.

Customer support

As a global company, ServiceNow has critical business functions, including technical support and cloud operations, distributed in regions around the world. This model will help ensure consistent, world-class customer support and service levels for its customers.

is committed to maintaining virtually 100% uptime for ServiceNow instances to ensure that customers have all of the capabilities available to them to continue their operations. ServiceNow maintains an Advanced High Availability Architecture with the ability to run a customer's production application from a pair of data centres located in geographically different regions.

ServiceNow's business continuity plan covers the ability for our cloud operations and technical support teams to work remotely in a safe and secure manner so they can continue to serve the company’s customers. All remote access happens using secure connections and multifactor authentication.

ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2020 customer event goes digital

In order to protect the health and safety of its customers, partners and extended community, ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2020 event will become a digital community experience. This digital event, which starts on May 5, replaces the in-person event scheduled May 3-7 in Orlando, FL. The Knowledge 2020 digital experience will showcase all the ways to unlock productivity through modern digital workflows, highlight the latest customer and platform innovations, and inspire the ServiceNow community to continue to create great experiences and unlock productivity for businesses.

Protecting our employees

ServiceNow has taken action to maximise the well-being and safety of its 10,000-plus global employees, office staff and communities. As part of its efforts, the company:

* Has asked all employees globally to work from home, effective March 11th, in an effort to encourage social distancing;

* Is continuing to compensate all full-time and part-time workers, contractors and support staff during this work-from-home period; and

* Is requiring that employees avoid business travel unless it’s deemed business-critical, and is within their own country.

Community giving

Across ServiceNow’s global community, we recognise that healthcare workers on the frontlines of COVID-19 are in need of support. These workers are in need of supplies, such as masks, protection suits, goggles and medical testing equipment, as well as basic necessities, such as food, lodging, training and support. ServiceNow is making donations to the International Medical Corps and the CDC Foundation totaling $100,000 to support these efforts.