ServiceNow is constantly improving the service delivery process and has started to evolve every business unit as a strategic business partner to deliver better cost to value. ServiceNow has transformed IT into an active and strategic business entity with ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (formerly ITBM) module. The ServiceNow SPM elevates the IT department with a business-driven methodology to streamline efforts in line with business goals and drive overall business value and success.
What is ServiceNow SPM?
As defined by ServiceNow, Strategic Portfolio Management helps IT demonstrate value to the organization and rationalize investments to focus more on innovation and also transforms the delivery of new products and services through lean execution methodologies.
Common SPM Challenges and Solutions with ServiceNow SPM
Aligning strategic objectives with project portfolios, proper utilization of resources based on priorities, identifying risk data, ensuring better stakeholder communication, and accelerating data-driven decisions are all big SPM challenges for modern organizations. ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management is a modern approach that provides organizations with the tools they need to define, execute, and optimize their strategic initiatives successfully.
Would you like to know what SPM challenges could be efficiently resolved with the ServiceNow SPM module. Click here: Overcome Challenges in Strategic Portfolio Management with ServiceNow
More IT Team Challenges Solved by ServiceNow SPM Module
ServiceNow strategic portfolio management provides end-to-end visibility into organizations’ project portfolios, optimizing project delivery and business outcomes. Here are a few IT challenges that ServiceNow SPM can address efficiently.
- Understanding and mapping out ambiguous business goals
- Prioritizing projects and business need to maximize returns
- Channelizing business investments
- Driving business transformation
- Cross-verifying investments to ensure they are generating value and meeting goals
- Making sure high costs of developing, managing, and administering IT is proportional to the value created
- Projecting return on value for the costs incurred
- Understanding the total value brought to the organization from all business units
For more details, recommended to read: Can ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management Solve IT Challenges?
ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Modules List and Use Cases!
ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management use cases (ServiceNow SPM use cases) help organizations manage projects, portfolios, demands, changes, and investments through a centralized platform. Let’s dive deep into the most common use cases of ServiceNow SPM.
Top 5 ServiceNow SPM Use Cases
ServiceNow SPM Use Case 1: Demand Management
By assessing incoming project requests, ServiceNow SPM’s demand management module allows managers to evaluate each request, such as optimizations or changes and prioritize for approvals. It helps in filtering which requests generate value faster.
ServiceNow SPM Use Case 2: Project, Portfolio Management
By creating portfolios, the ServiceNow Portfolio Project Management (PPM) module is the best solution for segregating and balancing IT investments for different departments. ServiceNow PPM benefits teams by managing portfolios/projects, from planning to execution and delivery, ensuring proper alignment of budget and resources, all while ensuring increased transparency into timelines and progress.
Recommended to Read: The ServiceNow Project Portfolio Management Implementation Guide
ServiceNow SPM Use Case 3: Resource Management
It is one of the most common ServiceNow SPM modules used for improving resource utilization across projects. It ensures the right people are assigned to the right work by evaluating employee skills and availability. Thus, organizations can improve productivity and process agility.
ServiceNow SPM Use Case 4: Application Portfolio Management (APM)
APM or Enterprise Architecture is one of the best ServiceNow SPM modules that helps companies evaluate their applications in terms of cost, performance, and value. Through application rationalization, ServiceNow Enterprise Architecture optimizes technology spend , helps organizations decide which apps to replace, retire, or migrate, and enhances decision-making.
ServiceNow SPM Use Case 5: Financial Planning and Tracking
ServiceNow SPM includes specific modules for managing project financials. It allows teams to better track budgets and forecast across portfolios and projects. It ensures investments are allocated strategically within financial limits.
Access Our Whitepaper : Strategic Portfolio Management: A Keystone for A Resilient Company
Benefits of ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management
A strategic ServiceNow SPM implementation helps organizations experience a bundle of benefits in terms of operational agility and enhanced strategic alignment. The core ServiceNow SPM benefits are-
- Process Efficiency: ServiceNow SPM implementation helps organizations map their objectives with project management strategies to make growth-driven and productivity-oriented decisions, improving process efficiencies.
- Quick Change Implementation: By identifying and streamlining project priorities, the ServiceNow SPM module enables demand managers to quickly respond to changes with high priority, driving productivity.
- Improved Resource Utilization: By providing visibility into resource availability and project priorities, ServiceNow SPM implementation helps organizations allocate the right resources to the right projects, reducing conflicts and delivering value faster.
- Greater Agility: The flexibility and scalability of ServiceNow ServiceNow strategic portfolio management allows organizations to adapt quickly to changing business environments and emerging opportunities.
ServiceNow SPM Implementation: How to Set Up ServiceNow SPM
Here are the best practices for SPM deployment. ServiceNow SPM implementation needs a clearly defined approach for deriving maximum impact.
- Choose the right ServiceNow implementation partner
- Define clear goals and scope.
- Engage stakeholders early.
- Start small, scale fast.
- Customize features, if needed.
- Follow phase implementation approach.
- Implement integrations and migrations.
- Set up a governance framework.
- Monitor progress and optimize workflows.
How ServiceNow SPM Delivers Business Value
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Assess, Gather and Handle Business Demands
The power of ServiceNow SPM implementation services not just limited to portfolio management but extended to ROI creation.
IT teams struggle to locate, track, and assess business needs and accordingly plan and channelize business investments. This is because there is no centralized approach to manage demands from various business units. Requests can get lost, and there is a lack of visibility into the overall queue. As businesses rely on IT teams to care for demands, not having a channelized approach to handle business demands will result in a communication gap between IT and business leaders. This also limits IT’s to enable businesses to make informed business decisions.
With ServiceNow portfolio management capabilities, SPM develops a thorough portfolio of all business applications. This includes data about every functional module’s usage and its implication for the organization. Through the portfolio management dashboard, organizations can have detailed information about various parameters like cost, risk, user satisfaction, and alignment with business goals in real time.
Using the demand management application (refer to the below image) SPM provides a unified approach to gather and strategically analyze requests coming from business units. Businesses now have a quantified understanding of the business scope and can channelize accordingly or prioritize investments.
Hassle-Free Investment Funding for Informed Decisions
Demand management isn't the only responsibility of IT business management. Organizations need to methodically assess and prioritize demands, then decide on where to invest and allocate funds. Mismanagement of funds can result in failure to reach organizational goals and also affects relationships with stakeholders.
IT teams often find it hard to plan and track investment and release funds based on demands. As it requires various business teams to come together and place their respective project deliverable priorities (that would have a direct impact on the business goals and ROI). Planning investments and releasing funds to demands always has a risk factor.
ServiceNow SPM’s Investment Funding application mitigates these risks and assists IT and business teams in having conflict-free decisions on investments and funding based on the demand management data and organizational strategy and goals. To make strategic decisions, investment funding uses domain separation to isolate data, processes, and administrative tasks into small groups called domains.
SPM follows a top-level investment approach to acquire and distribute funds. Investment funding allocates requested funds to appropriate IT requests based on existing funds. Businesses can track spending and utilization status. This way, IT teams provide transparency to top leadership and stakeholders and have a clear understanding of how funds are working toward growth.
Conclusion
ServiceNow SPM enables IT teams, to deliver business value by being proactive, developing strategic collaboration within business units, becoming value-driven, and proving ROI to top leadership.
To learn more on how V-Soft can help you maximize business value with ServiceNow SPM, talk to our ServiceNow experts.
FAQs
- SPM vs. PPM vs Application Portfolio Management (APM)
Application Portfolio Management (APM) focuses on the management of business applications, and Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is involved in managing the entire project portfolio. ServiceNow SPM comes with these two tools for prioritizing initiatives and aligning with business objectives.
- Does ServiceNow SPM Control Costs?
By prioritizing value-generating applications, projects, and portfolios, ServiceNow SPM helps organizations invest in impactful initiatives, controlling costs and maximizing ROI.
- Do I need any special license to use ServiceNow SPM applications?
Yes, to leverage the full capabilities of ServiceNow SPM applications and features, organizations must purchase a dedicated SPM license. Based on the functionalities required, you can choose among the Standard SPM license or the professional version.
