Impact Accelerators are one of the key ways that ServiceNow Impact helps you realize value faster from your ServiceNow investments. They are fixed-scope service engagements that are included with your Impact subscription, providing insights and prescriptive guidance to help you quickly achieve success. There are three different types of Impact Accelerators—Strategy, Architecture, and Technical — providing comprehensive coverage throughout your ServiceNow journey.

In this blog, we’re going to dive into Architecture Accelerators.

What are Architecture Accelerators?

Architectural Accelerators, as the name implies, address architectural and technical governance challenges. For example, they can help you set up an architectural blueprint or implement effective data governance. You can also get targeted assessments from ServiceNow experts—for example, they can review a solution design or give you a detailed analysis of the health of your ServiceNow implementation.

What are available?

Here are some examples of Architectural Accelerators. You can find a complete list here. Note that the architecture Accelerators you’re entitled to use depend on your Impact subscription type—Guided, Advanced, or Total.

• Architecture Blueprint: By creating an architecture blueprint, you enable more effective platform management, governance, and decision-making. This accelerator provides guidance and insights that help you develop your architecture blueprint—including data architecture, application architecture, and technology infrastructure architecture. It starts with a 90-minute initial alignment meeting, followed by 120-minute working sessions (three for Guided / Advanced and five sessions for Total). In these working sessions, ServiceNow will introduce the Architecture Blueprint to participants, cover guiding principles, collaborate with you to create an initial blueprint based on relevant architectural templates, and provide guidance on how to continue to refine your architecture templates going forward. You can also request an optional follow-up Q&A session after the working sessions are completed.
• Technical Governance: Effective technical governance is critical to ensure ServiceNow platform stability, facilitate faster implementation and upgrades, simplify and accelerate development, and increase feature adoption. This accelerator gives you a framework for establishing technical decision-making processes and governance policies. After an introductory 60-minute session, we’ll hold a 4-hour workshop with you to review the current state of your technical governance processes, discuss leading practices, and develop a technical governance action plan together. Optionally, you can also request a 60-minute follow-up session to review the plan and get additional guidance on leading practices.
• Data Management and Governance: The goal of effective data management and governance is to achieve high levels of data quality. This accelerator provides insights and guidance that help you assess and improve your data management and data governance. It begins with a session where ServiceNow goes through the five pillars of data management—architecture, security, quality, operations, and governance—and collects inputs for subsequent working sessions. In the first couple sessions, we’ll review your inputs with you and discuss the current state of your data management and data governance practices. This is followed by ServiceNow recommendations, reviews leading practices, and works with you to identify next steps for implementing recommendations and measuring results. Again, you can request an optional follow-up Q&A session once the working sessions are completed.
• Design Review : With this accelerator, ServiceNow will review one or more ServiceNow specific applications you plan to implement or have already implemented. It helps you make design decisions that leverage the power of the ServiceNow platform, avoid technical debt, and improve scalability, maintainability, and upgradability of the respective applications. After an introductory section where ServiceNow goes through the application process and gathers inputs, we’ll hold another session together where ServiceNow reviews your solution design, discusses leading practices, and proposes actions you can take to improve your design. This is followed by reviews of the results with ServiceNow. Note that you can use this accelerator multiple times to review multiple designs.
• Health Assessment: This accelerator provides you with guidance on how to measure and improve the health of your instance. It includes a technical analysis of your instance as well as a review of key platform health indicators— such as manageability, performance, security, upgradability, and user experience. It also provides prescriptive guidance on how to improve instance health, along with pointers to leading practices. After an initial introductory session to create alignment, we’ll work with you to understand your pain points and focus areas in a discovery session. At this point, ServiceNow will assess your instance using HealthScan. We’ll present the detailed findings in a coaching session and explain how to interpret them. Health Assessments are in the Technical sub-catalog for Guided customers.

Go to your Impact home page, click on the “Initiatives tab”, and choose “List View” from the drop-down menu. Click on the “Start New Initiative” button at the right-hand side of the page.

Scroll down the page to the “Impact accelerators” section and locate the Accelerator you want, using the arrows to navigate. Click on “Start Initiative”.

Fill in any relevant details Or things you may want to learn about in the “Details” form and enter an estimated date when you’d like to complete the Accelerator. Once you’re finished, scroll down to the bottom of the page and press “Complete Setup”.

Your CSM will now be automatically notified about your Accelerator request, and they will reach out to you to schedule your coaching session.