This was written by an experienced Infocenter ServiceNow implementation lead with 5 years of ServiceNow planning, implementation, and managing experience across multiple industries.
Benefits of the Platform
ServiceNow is an incredibly powerful platform that’s leveraged by thousands of organizations around the globe. Introducing it to your organization is an exciting endeavor, with endless possibilities for improvement, efficiency, accountability, and visibility within your company. However, between planning your roadmap, executing projects, and maintaining the platform, the journey may require more than anticipated.
Things Happen
During the implementation process, to put it simply, things happen. Roles change, priorities shift, support from key stakeholders lessens, and numerous other obstacles can arise. Although these changes often occur, your organization has the power to keep a major aspect constant, a great implementation partner.
During the road mapping and implementation journey, below are some instances where your expectations may not exactly meet reality.
Deciding on the Implementation Strategy: Both Long and Short-Term
Expectation
Deciding to implement the powerful platform of ServiceNow is exciting and the possibilities are endless. With spirits and optimism at an all-time high for those involved, everyone will be aligned with the short-term goals, quick wins and overall roadmap. Stakeholders will be present, engaged and will weigh-in on their goals and expectations. The plan will completely align with the organization’s short and long-term goals and choosing where to start is an easy decision.
Reality
Most likely, the goals for the company and each stakeholder at the table will change at least once during the beginning stages of implementation. ServiceNow can help companies tackle a plethora of business problems, both inside and outside of IT, so picking exactly where to start can be heavily debated. Some stakeholders may be more risk-averse and want to be slated later, even if their department would see the highest ROI, and some may not have been invited to the table.
Defining a Governance Model & Ownership
Expectation
To ensure the roadmap defined earlier for the ServiceNow journey is followed, the structure is put in place for ownership and governance. This way, all parties involved will know who gets to make the final decision, how changes will be discussed and made to the platform, and sharing the same sandbox will be easy for multiple groups. Once these decisions are made, they are set in stone and unlikely to change.
Reality
While this should be the next logical step to move the ServiceNow Implementation Roadmap forward, it tends to be an afterthought. In many cases, IT ends up owning the tool and ServiceNow modifications typically fall into the IT Change Management processes currently in place. This can be a foreign concept to Human Resources, Legal Management, Finance, and the enterprise PMO as the platform is expanded; which can lead to disagreement between stakeholders.
Defining Processes
Expectation
At this point, the organization is diligently preparing to kick off its first-ever ServiceNow project. Deciding on which group comes first on the roadmap will help to decide on a vendor. The partner will have documented processes that will estimate a clear scope of work. And since much work is done up-front, automation will be easy to accomplish and the next, easy leap forward on the roadmap.
Reality
Defining processes may happen once a vendor is picked, SOW signed, and workshops have commenced. Many times, processes will not be clearly documented. Also, because most of these processes are fairly manual as the current state, it may take a bit of process and organizational change to get to true automation.
However, these can be mitigated through an Infocenter RADIUS™ strategy engagement to help define the scope, budget, functional specifications, and even a Proof of Concept before officially initiating a long term contract. Get started today!
Project Execution
Expectation
There was much up-front work done with creating a plan, deciding on a product owner, defining the governance model, and documenting processes. The scope has been clearly defined with the vendor–especially if an Infocenter RADIUS planning engagement was conducted beforehand– and all members of the project team will be fully allocated to the success of this project. All stakeholders and decision-makers will make themselves available since spending time moving ServiceNow forward helps them achieve the goals they initially set out.
Reality
The requirements may not be totally defined and agreed upon. This is normal because organizations may not have realized the full potential of the ServiceNow platform. The platform’s immense capabilities across all departments are seemingly endless and truly can bring digital transformation to organizations!
Additionally, Scope creep may be a real issue within the project for a few reasons:
- While some processes are defined in the current state, they may be developed with the future state in mind and the organization is not ready for that level of change.
2. The key stakeholders and decision-makers are usually leaders within organizations and have limited time to devote to this specific project. On top of that, most people on the project team have other responsibilities that they cannot delegate and the ServiceNow project may not have their full attention.
Training & Adoption
Expectation
Between picking a great ServiceNow Partner and the intuitive design, minimal training will be needed for those working in the platform and for end-users. The adoption will be instantaneous and old processes will be quickly retired.
Reality
Change is hard for ANY organization, so individuals may have plenty of questions and adoption may take some time to ramp up. The old processes may linger, especially if end-users are used to communicating with that department via email. Many times, instantaneous and easier adoption is expected, leading to training that may be well after go-live and quickly put together.
Although, picking the right partner may help this reality align with the expectations above. Infocenter’s Certified Experts are well-versed in organizational change and have domain expertise that can help your organization map out a change management, communication, and create a training plan.
Post-Implementation
Expectation
Since ownership of the tool was clearly defined in the beginning, the designated administrators of the ServiceNow platform will have had a substantial knowledge transfer from the vendor and feel comfortable running the platform moving forward. All enhancements from the initial project are documented and prioritized so that admins will continue to enhance the platform. All data points within the tool will be consistently updated and the source of truth for those data elements will be clearly defined and agreed upon.
Reality
The designated admins may have a general idea of how to support the platform and new processes, however, it may take some time to familiarize themselves with the new tool. Because of shifting priorities, enhancements and backlogs may become stale pretty quickly. And unless it’s coming from an automated feed, the manually maintained data may suffer the same fate.
All of the above can be completely outsourced to certified experts through Infocenter’s DEVSHOP™ offering. We can manage the current environment, work on items in the backlog, and maintain basic admin functions in your environment; which alleviates the burden on your organization’s time and resources.
Choosing the Next Item on the Roadmap
Expectation
Choosing the next department for ServiceNow is an easy decision after the initial implementation. All roadmap items on the journey still align with departmental and company goals. Funding for the initiative will be easy because budgets haven’t changed. This will help accomplish enterprise-wide initiatives.
Reality
Often, stakeholders play a game of musical chairs throughout the roadmapping session. Some may have switched roles and no longer need to be a part of the group, while others may have just been introduced. Company goals sometimes change during this time, either bringing new items to the forefront, or budgets are re-allocated depending on business needs. Because of this, the initial roadmap for the ServiceNow journey may need to be re-visited and new strategies may need to be put into place.
Selecting a Partner
While the end-goal may seem daunting, picking the right partner can make your expectations a reality. Choosing a solid partner, not only for the implementation but also for planning beforehand, will be critical to your organization’s successes.
With Infocenter’s deep domain expertise across the platform and experienced, certified consultants, we can work with your organization to help plan your journey with our RADIUS™ offering, deliver and develop to the highest standard with our Professional Services, and maintain your ServiceNow platform through our DEVSHOP™ offering.
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