How to prove IT's value to executive leaders with ServiceNow
IT managers spend countless hours trying to demonstrate the value of IT in general and their teams in particular, but it’s hard to do if you don’t have the right tools at your disposal. ServiceNow, the popular cloud-based IT management platform, provides an excellent opportunity to prove IT’s value to executives through reporting, metrics and documentation explicitly designed for them. Let’s take a look at six ways you can use ServiceNow to help sell the value of IT to executive leaders and move from being just another necessary cost centre to an essential profit centre by helping the business achieve its goals.
1) Identify your SLAs
SLAs, or service-level agreements, are contracts between organizations that define how various services and systems will function. Knowing exactly what you are responsible for in terms of SLAs can make it much easier for you to meet your goals with executive leaders because it simplifies reporting. You can tell them exactly how many times you met an SLA target and when any breaches occurred. Executives typically appreciate clarity, so if you can clearly illustrate where your organization is succeeding and failing in terms of system uptime, latency or resource usage, then there’s a better chance that they will be satisfied with their investment in IT.
2) Leverage a User-Friendly UI and UX
When it comes to business value, having an easy-to-use, intuitive interface is key. Consider how much easier life would be for your users if they could access all of their relevant information from one location. Imagine how happy your executives would be if their day-to-day interactions with IT were more streamlined and efficient. Great user experience goes beyond look and feel; that’s what’s important. Ultimately, great UX leads to greater adoption—which ultimately results in better business outcomes. You can take any complex piece of software or technology and make it intuitive by making it easy to use and providing a consistent user experience across all platforms where possible, whether it’s a website, mobile application or desktop application.
3) Set Up a Self-Service Portal
It may seem counterintuitive, but enabling end-users to use self-service features is one of the best ways to reduce help desk calls. Users who know exactly what they are looking for and how to find it are much less likely to call—and that means you will save on staffing costs. Plus, those same users will be able to respond faster if they need assistance later, so your team will stay more productive overall. A ServiceNow self-service portal allows employees to do things like access expense reports, check balances in their accounts or troubleshoot a device issue without having to wait for someone from IT or tech support.
4) Build Workflows That Provide Transparency
In most organizations, it’s often hard for business leaders to understand what their IT department is doing day-to-day. To give executives more transparency into your organization’s IT department and its workings, develop specific ServiceNow workflows that focus on IT metrics that can be immediately shared with them. This way, they will be able to see how well your team is performing and make adjustments as needed. For example, you could build a workflow that allows you to track how long tickets have been open in relation to when they were created—and send that information directly to your executive leadership team. It’s a simple strategy but one that has made a big difference in my organization.
5) Provide Reports That Are Easy to Understand
Business leaders have a lot on their plates, so it’s up to you to make sure they are getting what they need—in a language that is easy for them to understand. Reports and dashboards should be created in such a way that executives can make smart decisions on them. For example, some leaders may be more visual learners, while others may have a greater grasp of numbers. Using reporting tools allows you to provide customized data visualization formats with detailed reports in no time at all.
6) Know Your Data
If you want to provide a compelling business case for investing in your organization’s technology infrastructure, knowing your data is critical. Knowing where and how long your data is stored, what tools you have available for analyzing it, how frequently it changes, etc., will provide context for determining whether a tool like ServiceNow—or any other technology for that matter—can actually make an impact on your business. Before making a recommendation or justifying an investment, put yourself in your executive leaders’ shoes and think about what they really need to know and why.
Conclusion
In order for you to make an argument that your organization needs a software platform like ServiceNow, you will need some compelling points and data to back it up. In other words, get ready to make a business case. While there are no industry-wide standards as to what constitutes a good business case, you need to define the problem and outline how you plan on addressing each problem.
