ServiceNow just made its Rome release available to the general public on September 16, 2021 and there are lots of exciting updates from a GRC perspective.

The newly restructured layout includes three distinct “workspaces” specifically designed for the roles of Risk Manager, Compliance Manager and Audit Managers that keep all of their relevant information in one easy place and properly manage their day-to-day tasks without clicking around to several different places.

The user interface, workspaces and 360 degree visibilities are all particularly exciting for those risk management professionals out there that employ ServiceNow.

Roy Verrips, GRC Senior Manager at Cential, provides insights into the new features and user interface changes:

Key ServiceNow Rome Updates For GRC

User Interface

With the Rome release, the ServiceNow user interface (UI) has drastically changed, with the focus of the new UI experience prioritizing efficiency, intuitiveness, and ease of use.

The processes and principles have all stayed relatively the same, but the actual workflows and layouts are visually much cleaner with efficiently segmented information, effective filtering and grouping systems, along with intuitive graphs and list views for plans or engagements.

ServiceNow users will find that the interface is efficiently organized, centralizing on clean visuals and a crisp, intuitive layout.

Workspaces

About three years ago, ServiceNow introduced workspaces. The first workspace introduced was within the IT environment, and then about 18 months ago with the Orlando release, ServiceNow added in a workspace for customer service.

With the Rome release, there are now four new workspaces within the GRC environment:

  • Audit management
  • Compliance management
  • Business continuity 
  • Risk management

The goal of the ServiceNow workspaces is to streamline work, get people the actionable insights that they need to perform their job, require a lot less clicks, and provide everything you need in one place laid out in a way that is easy for GRC practitioners to work with.

360 Degree Visibility View

Another exciting feature that’s come along with workspaces is the 360 degree visibility view, which allows you to have an all-encompassing view of entities upstream and downstream with the controls, tasks and engagements associated with it. 

With the risks, indicators, issues, and more so easily accessible and filtered, risk managers are able to quickly identify the important, actionable information and focus on their day-to-day functions rather than feeling overwhelmed by an onslaught of unorganized information.

Optimizing Your ServiceNow Rome Release Implementation

When it comes to implementing the new ServiceNow updates and making the most of the new features, we recommend designing a dashboard optimized to support the first line of defense by identifying what information is crucial to include and what information should be left off.

As a part of our general ServiceNow implementation process, we start by taking the time to identify the relevant users and stakeholders along with the actionable insights they need in order to create streamlined service portals and intuitive dashboards.


As an organization, Cential has been focusing on ways that we can streamline and simplify our GRC processes by taking away the extra information and leaving only the important, actionable insights on the user dashboard or service portal.

The features and improvements made in the ServiceNow Rome release are a prime example of how we can implement tools to create a streamlined, organized GRC approach that encourages adoption by end users and efficiency of the programs in place.

Verrips will be continuing to explore the ServiceNow platform updates and the new functionalities that come along with it. Follow along to stay up-to-date on what’s new with ServiceNow.