Thinking about adopting ServiceNow?

Here’s a 3 step roadmap to make sure you get the most out of your investment.

It's no secret that ServiceNow is an investment you have to make with intent, but when organizations short-change the adoption planning for this platform, their relative success or failure is in many ways predetermined.

However, when the implementation of ServiceNow is envisioned from the start as a programmatic approach, the ROI can be astronomical.

Here’s a potential roadmap for effectively adopting the ServiceNow platform and realizing the full value your investment:

1. Think Big Picture

When setting up for a successful adoption of the ServiceNow platform, it is crucial to be thinking programmatically. Too often, organizations opt for isolated point solutions to solve problems. While these may get the job done, they do so independent of all the other IT functions and solutions.

What a missed opportunity!

Mature thinking organizations see their IT problems as part of a much larger story; a story that is wholistic and programmatic in nature. Modern IT issues are big, cross functional, interconnected, wicked problems that deeply impact the whole organization. It takes a culture of programmatic thinking to leverage one-off needs and turn them into powerful drivers of organizational success.

Mature IT asks questions like “How can we boost employee attraction and retention?” or “How can we revolutionize patient care?” They look for areas where the overlapping of functions occurs and programmatically leverage them to meet larger goals.

For example, consider the number of IT touch points when a doctor meets with a patient:

IT Requirements & Relevant IT Functions

Does the organization know doctor has an iPad? TAM, MDM

Do they know which iPad the doctor has? ITAM

Do they know what apps are on that iPad? SAM

Do they know if they have a license for the apps on the iPad? SAM

Does the iPad work? ITSM

Is the iPad totally secure? SecOps

Is the iPad up to date? Discovery, Config-management, Compliance

What’s the cost if the iPad breaks and the doctor can’t do the work? Service Mapping

Are we reasonably confident that Patient Health Information is being protected and do we know the relative risk? GRC

Legacy IT would have each of these functions in a silo and there would be 10+ point solutions to meet each IT requirement. Looking for the larger story, a mature organization might ask a question like “How can we leverage the data from each relevant function (HAM, ITAM, SAM, ITSM,MDM, SecOps, VR, VM, Discovery, Config-Management, Compliance, SM, GRC) and use that data to optimize all other functions involved in improving patient care?”

When adopting ServiceNow, it’s imperative that you consider the larger story being told. Think programmatically and find areas of the organization where overlapping IT functions can be leveraged to maximize outcomes and meet larger organizational goals.

2. Build the case

The most common trait of organizations that are unhappy with ServiceNow is that they didn’t have a value management plan prior to adoption. So once you have an idea of how a programmatic approach to IT will speak to your organizational goals, you need to build a case for ServiceNow: a value management plan that defines a process for continually analyzing the business value of ServiceNow in order to continuously improve and maximize its positive impact to the organization. Continually managing ServiceNow’s value is crucial in determining its long-term success. Here are the most important elements of a value management plan that you should consider:

1. What are the capabilities you are delivering?
Although ServiceNow functions can be applied to solve any number of organizational issues, outline exactly which functions you wish to implement as well as how those functions resolve or mitigate your current and future problems.

2. What are your financial priorities?
Maximizing ROI with ServiceNow requires continual investment. Do you understand the full level of investment it will take to get the outcomes you want? It’s important to be honest with yourself and your organization about the totality of investment required to be successful.

3. What’s the business case for ServiceNow?
What are the outcomes that are expected of ServiceNow and what are the measurables you will use to illustrate its success? Are these in-line with the outcomes your stakeholders have in mind for IT or for the organization as a whole? Business stakeholders will want to see more ROI from ServiceNow than a point-solution solution and demonstrating ServiceNow’s business value from the get-go is key. Your goal is to connect your success criteria—the business value expected from your ServiceNow investment—with the strategic drivers and desired business outcomes articulated by your executive-level stakeholders.

4. Do you have the right level of sponsorship?
If your CEO, CIO, CTO, and CFO don’t fully understand the business case, investment, key outcomes, measurables, and financial impact, they will be perpetually dissatisfied with ServiceNow and you will be in a constant uphill battle trying to validate your decision. Make a strong business case and get buy-in from the necessary stakeholders before making the jump. As you begin to implement, give all necessary stakeholders the continual insight they need to make decisions based on a clear analysis of the business value ServiceNow is bringing.

5. Do you have an experienced partner to guide you?
The bottom line is that successful ServiceNow adoption is contingent upon the experience of those implementing the platform, plain and simple. Staff-aug firms aren’t going to get it done efficiently. Offshore, low cost resources aren’t going to get it done right. High dollar management firms aren’t going to get it done at the right cost. You need to find an experienced partner that knows how to guide you through efficiently implement ServiceNow and maximize its value to your organization.

3. Make a plan

Our experience has shown us that many organizations make the same mistakes during implementation – mistakes that can be easily avoided with a plan. Once you solidify the sponsorship needed to greenlight your efforts, consider the following elements when road-mapping your adoption:

1. What is your maturity level?
ServiceNow isn’t for every organization. Ultimately, the life-blood of ServiceNow are systems like SCCM and Discovery that feed it with data. For example, if your current asset management system is reporting less than 95% compliance on your known active assets, you have work to do before simply moving the data to ServiceNow. If your baseline can’t be trusted or you don’t have adequate change management procedures in place (or running efficiently,) implementing ServiceNow might have to wait.

2. Do you have the right people on your team and are they in the right role?
To drive successful outcomes, you have to invest in human capital, period. It is foolish to consider personnel as a cost saving lever during your adoption. Assess if you have the right individuals on your team to handle the long and tedious adoption journey. Also, consider if those individuals are in the right role. You might have a person on your team that you currently consider a C player but if they were moved into a role more suited to their skills, they could become an A player overnight. Human capital as a key driver of successful ServiceNow adoption cannot be understated.

3. What kind of culture do you have?
Adopting ServiceNow requires a collaborative and communicative culture, no buts about it. Consider the ways that you can hold yourself to a higher communication standard and set the bar for your team in these areas.

4. Evaluate your technology road map
ServiceNow needs to be an integral part of your technology roadmap. Having sustainable and scalable processes for an org-wide technology adoption is the only way to be successful.

Implementing the ServiceNow platform correctly will set you up to tap the goldmine of ROI it is designed to provide. While it might seem like a tall task, putting in the time to evaluate your needs, building your case, and making a plan for your ServiceNow adoption will pay off in spades. If you’d like to talk about how you can do this at your organization, let us know at www.itsdelivers.com/contact