ServiceNow® is big, really big. And it keeps adding more capability as it delivers valuable functionality to growing organisations. How do you get the most value out of this highly capable platform?
Maximum value is much more than return on investment (ROI). There is a plethora of ROI studies done by ServiceNow to show the cost savings from a unified platform. But at its core is a cost you can’t ignore.
Usually run by IT, ServiceNow is an enterprise solution that is another cost in a zero-profit department in the business. IT departments are only ever seen as a necessary cost, so to run as efficiently1 as possible is the raison d’être. However, no successful enterprise is going to succeed with cheap solutions.
Harvard Business Review has stated (emphasis mine):
‘The purpose of a business…is not to make a profit, full stop. It is to make a profit so that the business can do something more or better’.
Reducing costs for the sake of increasing profits is upside down.
The ServiceNow investment should fulfil the role of doing that ‘something’ more, and better. And to do that, you should be most concerned about wringing every last drop of value out of the capabilities you have spent years planning, developing, rolling out, and upgrading. I believe that you can only successfully achieve this with the proper performance measurement.
Performance Analytics has been designed to increase productivity and drive efficiency. It hits a middle tier of activity that helps to deliver continual service and process improvement. But that is only scratching the surface.
Performance Analytics is the ‘something’ identifier. This will mean two things:
- Unused or underused functionality can be pinpointed and brought into the portfolio of capability being delivered
- New functionality available from ServiceNow can be added to the roadmap
A good release will have success measures built into it that will benchmark day one, to compare with day one hundred and one. I’m not even talking about the big bang release of ITSM or SecOps. Do you have success measures defined as part of your small bang release? Is that business rule working for you? All of this thought process will build the next business case because you have quantifiable and evidential success. This will lead to a better understanding of answering the question, “what next?”
Hopefully the various topics I aim to cover will be useful in defining and delivering the ServiceNow roadmap in your organisation, using Performance Analytics as the single-pane-of-glass that demonstrates continual success:
- Get more secure [SecOps]
- Deliver better projects [PPM]
- Run your cloud efficiently [CMP]
- Make your CMDB attractive again [ITSM]
- Automate risk and compliance [GRC]
- Provide better employee experience [HR]
- Make customers happy [CSM]
- and…
