Getting the Green Light from Leadership to Transform your IT

It’s not that ServiceNow isn’t valuable to your organization. It’s that you haven’t shown that it is.  

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “We are struggling to get the sponsorship and resources we need for our ServiceNow program because our executives are unable to correlate specific ServiceNow value and the associated investment.” IT managers and directors are often left scratching their heads because they see ServiceNow as a transformational platform and an imperative contributor to the company’s healthy bottom line, but their leaders simply do not. It’s a disconnect as old as organizational flow charts.

It’s hard to fault the executive level in this case. They’re simply doing the best job they can with the information they have. The key phrase there being “the information they have.” They are unaware of the true value creation of the platform and they may even view ServiceNow as another overpriced tool. 

In order to get the support needed to achieve true transformation, IT managers and directors simply need to do a better job of continually showcasing the value ServiceNow is bringing to the organization. They need to lay out a sustainable business case and demonstrate the real ROI and cost savings with hard numbers. If the organization isn’t being shown the success you are achieving, they will assume failure, plain and simple.  

Here are four steps to getting the continual buy-in from executive leadership you need to transform your IT:

Step 1: Measure the Baseline  

Each ServiceNow business case must start with a baseline measurement of key metrics for every IT “business as usual” workload. Start with the basics; CMDB health, incident, problem, change, hardware and software asset management.  

Because these numbers are all inter-related, a savings in one area will be amplified in others. These will serve as the baseline against which you will measure your progress so it’s important to get an accurate picture across the board. 

Check out our article on Going back to baseline with ServiceNow.

Step 2: Set Your Goals 

Examine your baseline results for the measured workloads, set a realistic goal for each workload, and set a timeline to achieve each goal. The ultimate success for each workload is when it can operate at the lowest cost to the organization and achieve maximum efficiency, but even small gains in maturity can generate impressive savings across the system. For example, a maturity gain in hardware asset management can generate savings across multiple foundational IT workloads. 

Step 3: Develop a Reporting Runbook 

Once you’ve set your goals and timelines, you need to develop a runbook  for reporting against your baseline measures on a consistent basis. How often will you measure each function? Is the reporting in alignment with metrics that the organization cares about? What workloads will you emphasize? Knowing your plan in advance helps to break your goals down into smaller, more manageable subsets and helps the organization feel like their investment is returning value. 

Step 4: Tell the Story! 

Start with the most significant cost reduction wins and begin to make the changes necessary meet your goals. As you implement new ServiceNow applications, processes, and procedures, your run books will show that you have achieved significant savings in nearly every “business as usual” IT workload. These results translated into cost savings and ROI are powerful communication tools when articulating the program’s value to the organization. Keep the runbooks up-to-date and available to “Tell the Story” at any time.