Beyond IT: Five Unexpected Ways to Utilize ServiceNow

By now, most IT leaders know that ServiceNow is much more than just a ticketing tool to help technology departments manage service requests. Increasingly, we’re seeing organizations adopt ServiceNow across their IT operations, using the platform to break down silos and automate technology-related workflows.

And yet, many of the organizations using ServiceNow (80 percent of Fortune 500 companies, at last count) could be using the tool for so much more.

Here are five valuable but often overlooked ways that organizations can leverage ServiceNow.

Even the best HR departments can get bogged down by burdensome paperwork and unintuitive processes that frustrate employees and slow down the pace of business. ServiceNow’s HR Service Delivery offers a unified employee experience platform, streamlining previously cumbersome workflows. This tool also allows organizations to deliver targeted campaigns and announcements to employees based on their role or location, provides leaders with tools and resources to better support workers, and gives managers complete visibility into their teams’ journeys, statistics and requests.

Organizations can allocate, track and report on their expenses across various departments using ServiceNow’s Financial Management application. With this module, businesses get real-time visibility into their spending, can implement budgeting and forecasting, track variances, and align financial plans with corporate strategy. Key features include an allocation engine that uses an organization’s cost model to calculate expenses, as well as dashboards and graphical financial reports that intuitively illustrate where expenses are coming from.

ServiceNow estimates that 9.4 percent of project budgets are wasted, on average. Its Project Portfolio Management tool allows leaders to prioritize key goals and objectives, fund investments to achieve them and allocate resources at a granular level. This can all be done in a single platform, preventing the confusion and redundant work that are often a byproduct of poor product management. With this tool, managers can ensure that all project work is strategically aligned, and they can optimize their resource utilization and gain visibility into their teams’ performance.

Many large companies use ServiceNow’s customer service portal directly on their websites or mobile apps, so you’ve probably interacted with it without realizing it. The tool streamlines customer engagement, enables self-service across channels and provides customer service representatives with the real-time information they need to do their jobs. It also gives customers access to virtual agents, omnichannel messaging and service catalogues that route customers to the correct resource.

Both within and outside of IT, asset management is a critical task that too often gets neglected, resulting in technical debt and deferred maintenance. ServiceNow makes asset management simple by driving transparency, resulting in improved planning and decision-making, ultimately reducing capital and operating expenses.

By now, most business leaders understand that the perception of ServiceNow as a simple IT ticketing solution is obsolete. Still, it’s not clear how well businesses understand the breadth of ServiceNow as a robust, comprehensive platform that can support and transform workflows in virtually every part of the business.

Organizations that limit their use of ServiceNow to IT service management are only beginning to scratch the surface of the platform’s capabilities. It’s a powerful tool, and a complex one. Businesses are often surprised when we talk about how much it can do, and grateful for the help in guiding them through the subtleties of its capabilities and licensure agreements.

Story by Chris Cortez and Ben Dunesby