How To Prepare Your Team for ServiceNow Implementation With Organizational Change Management

As a leader in your organization, you’ve experienced your fair share of frustrating business inefficiencies and breaches that have led you down the path of automation.  

After losing time and money with manual processes, you’ve done your research, and decided on a ServiceNow solution- but the idea of implementation is daunting.

Chances are, you’ve either seen or been a part of an implementation that has gone awry. You’ve seen projects take up way more resources than you ever expected, and they still went over budget. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Many leaders believe that change management is all about setting expectations, but it’s so much more than that.

If you focus on future outcomes, communicate your long-term strategy and processes, and provide proper training for your team, they can flourish with a new solution - bringing along impressive results.

As implementation partners with many years of experience, we can help you put a concrete plan in action for organizational change management so your process can run smoothly.

But first, you need to know the risks of inaction:

What happens if you don’t enact organizational change management?

 Employee frustration.

When your employees aren't well-trained on the new tool, they’ll constantly find themselves in frustrating situations where they have no clue how to use it.

How does that affect you, you might ask? Well, imagine seeing twice as many tickets escalated — and half as many resolved. Your team might start losing trust in the new solution and probably won’t be excited about future changes. Some may even switch roles, or quit in frustration altogether.

 Lack of user adoption.

If no one knows how to use the system, it won’t be used. After going through an entire implementation, how are you going to feel after having spent all that time and all that money, for no one to even use it?

Without knowing how to best use your solution, your employees are likely to do what humans typically do: fall back into the same comfortable manual processes they used before. Even when those exact processes were the ones wasting their time in the first place.

 Painful costs.

Running your new system alongside your old one and extending your contract agreement is expensive. With a lack of systematic training, users are being taken away from their current roles to train on the new system - costing you not weeks, but months of time and money.

 Unexpected challenges.

Organizational change management is more than just simple communication. Employees, both current and incoming, will benefit from in-depth knowledge about your ServiceNow solution. If you don’t have a plan in place for your organization, you won’t be able to determine and mitigate future challenges the implementation process may present.

What steps can you take to have incredible organizational change management?

 Identify your “change champion.”

It’s important to designate a change champion from the beginning of the implementation process. Why? Because you need an advocate who will be responsible for engaging their colleagues to inspire awareness, acceptance, and adoption of the new solution. It works best if this team member is from the team affected by the change.

 Listen to the correct stakeholders.

Identify the participants who understand what it takes to make your implementation go as planned and learn from them about system requirements and any potential gaps. This is an opportunity for you to be proactive and eliminate unnecessary roadblocks that could hurt your chances as a successful implementation.

 Pinpoint effective stakeholder communication.

Decide which role each stakeholder will play and determine how to effectively communicate with them. It’s crucial to a successful implementation that each stakeholder’s needs are met.

 Make your implementation exciting.

Change can feel scary, but it doesn’t have to. Share the positive outcomes with your team. Create marketing strategies to promote the implementation process - whether it’s a fun tagline, mascot, or a friendly competition involving your team members. With a plan in place, your ServiceNow implementation won’t feel as overwhelming—and you should see greater buy-in.

Think about all of the benefits change management will bring.

You’ll have:

• Happy end users.
• Improved adoption.
• Decreased costs and time wasted.
• Long-term sustainability and effectiveness.

If your organization has struggled to implement ServiceNow modules and you’re looking to increase the human connection within your business to bring about success, reach out to one of our specialized team members.

With decades of experience and our proven process, we can help you deliver a successful outcome with quick time-to-value, the right way.

Connect with an expert and let’s talk about your organization.