5 KEY Steps from CEO of GlideFast Consulting
In this article, you will receive 5 tips on how to have a successful ServiceNow implementation.
The 5 Key Steps we will discuss are:
Executive Sponsorship
Crawl/Walk/Run
Solve for the 80, not 20
Marry the Technology and the Process
Get input from the USERS and people in the field
The most important step is getting executive sponsorship. This means having your senior leaders on board to inform the rest of the staff and employees and team members this is the platform we're moving to. We're moving away from our legacy processes, out of email, out of legacy systems. We are adopting ServiceNow, and this is the platform we're going to use.
Executive leadership is also needed to clear roadblocks and increase morale and acceptance of this new technology. A lot of people are afraid of change — they like using the old ways to do things — but digital transformation is crucial to the success of businesses now. It's important for executive leadership to be involved not only to send the message that the organization is moving, but also to keep people calm that this is not a project or initiative to eliminate jobs — it's to eliminate the swivel chair.
Another important part we like to refer to as crawl/walk/run, not just trying to go from zero to hero and trying to do all this automation and talking about artificial intelligence. Stepping into digital transformation doesn't mean you're not going to get ROI and that doesn't mean you can't adopt and adapt a lot of the platform immediately day one, but it's setting your expectations to be successful. If there are expectations that we're going to go from a maturity level of zero or one and all of a sudden ServiceNow is gonna solve all these problems, you likely won't be successful —you need to fail fast.
Sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you see it, until you try it, until you use it, so it's important to set the expectations of an achievable level. One thing that's different with ServiceNow as compared to other processes and technologies, is that with other technologies historically, you implement and you're done. With ServiceNow, your journey, the platform and your processes are never done because your business is never done. You might be in one phase of that project, but you always have to think about what is coming next.
Solve for the eighty percent, not the twenty percent. There's always going to be workshops and discussions about the planning of a project, how we're going to use ServiceNow, and what we are going to use it for. What are the processes going to look like in the workflows? There's always going to be some conflict. There's always going to be people that want it one way and then some other people who want it another.
Majority of the staff can use the workflow one way, and 80 percent of our user base are going to get exactly what they want. When you focus on the 20 percent, that user base may have to modify the way they've been operating. In reality, you're never gonna get a bullseye every time. You're never gonna get a hundred percent of everyone being happy and getting exactly what they want, so there's definitely a level of compromise that needs to be factored in. Decisions need to be made exact and that’s going back to number one, the executive leadership should be making those decisions and think for the 80 percent not the 20.
Marrying the technology and the process — this is important because the technology is not going to fix a broken process. If you have a broken process and you're not evaluating those processes and making sure you're maximizing them to the best efficiency levels, ServiceNow is not going to fix everything — you really have to focus on having a good process.
You also can't have a process that's in cement either. You have to be flexible and be willing to modify the process a little bit to how the technology of ServiceNow is because some of those processes work right You don't want to do something that's unnatural, so if there's a compromise, we can make adjustments to the process to fit to how the technology works. It’s not just a one way street for a process; it has to work both ways.
It’s important to make sure you're getting input from the user community. If we're talking about something as simple as an incident management implementation, getting first-hand feedback from the help desk staff and from the user allows for an advantage. You know the users are the ones submitting the tickets, incidents for their group or floor. Getting their feedback and input is useful because they are the ones using it.
Sometimes management is great at management, but hands on the keyboards that really know what the desired experience is for the users is key. It's important to make sure we have the right audience making these decisions and giving their feedback. We want to understand what their work life looks like, and what their ideal work life looks like.
Did you find these 5 steps toward a successful ServiceNow implementation helpful? Are you ready to start your journey with ServiceNow? If you want to find out more information about GlideFast Consulting and our ServiceNow implementation services, you can reach out to us here.
About GlideFast Consulting
GlideFast is a ServiceNow Elite Partner and professional services firm that provides tailored solutions and professional services for ServiceNow implementations, integrations, managed support services, application development, and training. Reach out to our team here.