The ServiceNow SPM (formerly ITBM) is about managing IT-as-a-business on its own. Strategic utilization of the IT can help the business to achieve meaningful outcomes in terms of strategy, planning, client/customer service, financial visibility, and modeling. ServiceNow SPM (formerly ITBM) offers unique ways to solve the challenges of IT and scale up the digital transformation efforts of businesses.
The Key Challenges of IT
- Struggling with adding value to the business.
- High costs incurred in developing, managing and administering the IT for business may not proportional to the value being added.
- Difficult to project the ROV (Return on Value) for the costs incurred.
- Perceived value brought to the organization from other departments..
This leaves IT with 3 key questions:
- How to move to a more proactive role
- How to develop strategic partnerships within business units
- How to be value driven and show an ROI benefit
Solutions to IT Challenges with ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management
Answer to all the above challenges lies in connecting cost to value
In the process of developing solutions, IT must operate like a business focused on strategy, client/customer service, business objectives and value-based outcomes using technology. Even though there are enough best practices like ITIL, Cobit, ISO 20K suggest on strategizing, developing, administering and maintaining, however in practice a lot of gaps in successful implementation of these practices is noticed.
The comprehensive SPM (formerly ITBM) strategy can help the IT with a business focused approach and drives the overall corporate success.
In shifting to an SPM posture, the IT leaders can:
- More clearly convey the value of IT for business executives
- Put in place solutions for efficiently managing IT cost, quality, and performance
- Align IT with enterprise goals and enhance decision-making capabilities
- Increase business value and lower costs by integrating governance and execution
IT can use the ServiceNow SPM (formerly ITBM) not only in connecting the cost of IT easily to ROI and ROV, but also successfully drive and maintain the direction of IT expenses. This way businesses can get a good understanding into projects and application portfolios along with the detailed insight of financials in to the cost of service. Moreover, businesses can gain better management of demands, resources, and budgets.
With the ServiceNow SPM (formerly ITBM), the IT team can decide intelligently:
- Understand where to invest to best support organizational goals
- Gain Visibility into Demand and Financials
- Align IT Investments with Business Goals
- How to Optimize Application Portfolios
ServiceNow SPM (formerly ITBM)'s Applications
The wide range of applications the ServiceNow SPM (formerly ITBM) provides are:
- Demand Management: This application addresses strategic and operational demands help us in capturing in a centralized application and assessing the demands
- Resource Management: This application enables the people requesting resources to create resource plans, request resources and analyze resource availability and utilization
- Project Portfolio Management: This application addresses the portfolio, program, and project tracking. Handle activities right from the initiation of a project/program to the completion along with financial planning is addressed here.
- Agile Development: This application provides solutions to develop applications using agile methodology from creating and planning to manage the releases, sprints, and stories
- Test Management: This application provides a tool for manual software testing
- Financial Charging: This application is part of financial management and helps in reporting the financial aspects of a service to stakeholders
- Financial Planning: This application facilitates planning, managing and performing budget related tasks
- Financial Modelling: This application facilitates auto-allocation and auto-run of workbench allocations
- Application Portfolio Management: This application addresses understanding the application portfolio and managing and addressing the budget
Advantages of ServiceNow SPM (formerly ITBM)
Below is the list of ways ServiceNow SPM (formerly ITBM) impacts in managing "IT-as-a-Business":
- Better visibility to Demands
- Better utilization of Resources
- Controlled Project Portfolio Management
- Enhanced Agile Development mechanisms
- Better Test Management
- Facilitates Financial Charging
- Facilitates Financial Planning
- Facilitates Financial Modelling
- Controlled Application Portfolio Management
Want help in getting better understanding about SPM (formerly ITBM) in regards to your industry, contact our experts for a free consultation.