3 ways to unify your organization under a compelling ServiceNow vision

Regardless of how strong a platform is or how dedicated your team is to change, no digital transformation can succeed without a strong vision—and ServiceNow is no exception. In a recent interview, Stacey Fournier-Thibodaux, President of Cask U.S., revealed the importance and strategy behind a shared vision to implement ServiceNow, including how to drive stakeholder engagement, drive innovation, and continuously improve.

With a 20-year background in service management, Stacey is ITIL Master certified and one of the first visionary ServiceNow platform owners. She owned and grew one of the most successful platforms in the ServiceNow ecosystem after 10 years, bringing 70 internal teams into the Now Platform. Her unique perspective offers insider tips and tricks for developing a thriving ServiceNow instance through a shared vision.

In this piece, we’ll explore the importance of a compelling ServiceNow vision as well as three recommendations for how to make your own vision come to life. Let’s dive into the valuable information Stacey had to share.

A vision is essential to digital transformation

If you’re ready to develop or expand your ServiceNow instance, you already have big ideas and even bigger dreams for what you want to achieve. Now, you need to put that vision to paper, prepare your business case, and plan to share it in every room you find yourself in.

Without a vision, your ServiceNow transformation is unlikely to succeed for a few key reasons. First, ServiceNow is robust in its functionality—even out of the box. If you dive in without a vision for where the platform is going, it can be impossible to know what to include in your initial launch and in follow-on releases. Second, without a vision, it’s more difficult for people to buy into the transformation required by ServiceNow, let alone come into the project with the excitement needed to drive true change.

Your vision will be the roadmap for your implementation—make sure it’s something that both users and business partners can get excited about. Here are three important tips that can help you solidify your approach and connect stakeholders in your organization around one shared goal.

1. Always consider how to justify the cost

Even with the best ServiceNow vision, you will be asked to justify the cost of implementation. “When it comes to justifying cost, you need to compare the price of what you’re doing to the price of ServiceNow,” says Stacey. “For example, you can say, ’We have five disparate systems, but with ServiceNow, we can condense them into one. Here’s the bottom line.’ It’s just a few addition and subtraction problems, right?”

Often, the cost of not using an efficient platform like ServiceNow far exceeds the cost of implementation itself—even with the cost of vendors involved. That’s because companies spend a lot of money on time-wasting processes that could be improved with the Now Platform. Time is money in business.

For example, one company working with Cask was going to lose half of its total IT team within the next five years as they retired. The company quickly realized how inefficient their processes were, as well as how much they relied on each person to complete tasks and projects. End-to-end execution of even one task was expensive, and it was easy to lose visibility into the complex steps in those processes. However, leaning out those processes and implementing them on ServiceNow greatly contributed to a reduction in people waste, reduced errors and risk, and added transparency and automation while improving both the submitter and fullfiller’s experience.

2. Help stakeholders visualize what’s possible

One of the easiest ways to drive support for your digital transformation using ServiceNow is to show your users and stakeholders the effects of the change. According to Stacey, “When [people] see it and feel it, that’s when they fall in love with the platform. It’s intrinsically rewarding . . . because [they see that] the hopes and dreams [they] have can [be enabled] on the platform.”

With the capabilities offered by ServiceNow, you can make your employees’ jobs easier, not only freeing them up to do more fulfilling tasks but also growing their skills. As each end user experiences the change themselves, they’ll be more motivated to take on new work as excitement grows.

Automation is key to offering these benefits. “Most people are in that kind of mindset where they wish they could do other things, but they’re spending so much time doing something manually, like checking their inbox and sending emails, managing work through spreadsheets, and pivoting between multiple system to execute tasks or understand a full story,” says Stacey. “ServiceNow can reduce the chaos and allow employees to expand their abilities. Reducing repetitive, non-critical activities is a great way to free up time and maybe even spend a little more time with leadership working on their development plan.”

At the end of the day, automation is there to make everyday tasks easier for everyone. Companies must drive continuous innovation to remain competitive, eliminate waste, and free employees to tackle more productive tasks.

3. Break it down into a clear roadmap that crushes misconceptions

To many business leaders, ServiceNow is simply an IT or help desk tool. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Now Platform offers a broad service management system, providing value to departments from procurement to HR to customer service and beyond. As you form and share your compelling ServiceNow vision, you must change the perception of ServiceNow to show the complete versatility of the platform.

According to Stacey, innovative conversations and lunch-and-learns are great ways to create awareness about ServiceNow’s capabilities. Without that widespread knowledge of the platform, companies often “start getting these silos of tools, where [they] could have [everything] on a singular platform.” This can lead to redundant or rogue tech that fails to offer the agility and productivity the organization has invested in with ServiceNow. “Understand from the business what their business problems are,” she says. “If you don’t have visibility to that, you’re definitely missing the boat.”

The answer to this lack of visibility and siloed systems? A clear roadmap—even if it’s not funded. This guiding document will not only keep track of desired outcomes but also enable all stakeholders to see the importance and power of ServiceNow.

Your next steps for maximizing ServiceNow value

Hopefully, these insights from Stacey have given you the skills you need to build and share a compelling vision for ServiceNow and take on your next implementation project. However, this wisdom is just one stepping stone in your holistic ServiceNow journey.

1. Dive deeper: To continue developing your understanding of ServiceNow, we encourage you to visit our additional resources. Learn about the benefits of digital transformation, how to overcome common ServiceNow implementation challenges, the traits of the best implementation partners, and how to find the best ServiceNow partner that boosts your investment:
   • 12 Benefits of Digital Transformation
   • Overcoming ServiceNow Implementation Challenges: 5 Lessons from a Former Practitioner
   • 9 Traits of the Best ServiceNow Implementation Partners 
2. Learn more about Cask: As an Elite, highly rated ServiceNow partner, Cask understands the challenges of navigating digital transformation. We help clients through a broad range of services–from implementing ServiceNow solutions and optimizing your business processes to streamlining service delivery and strengthening user experiences. Reach out to learn more.