ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management Reviews

We define business strategic goals in the latest SPM. Last year, the new ITBM was changed to SPM, and we have updated to SPM accordingly. We align our demands towards the business strategies and goals. Additionally, we are integrating APM with SPM, linking our applications to understand the priority and business value of each application.

The new feature includes different lenses, like the organizational lens or project manager lens, allowing us to view data through various perspectives. Previously, the journey started with demand, project, and idea management. Now, strategies and goals are aligned with demands and partners, making it a strategic approach for the enterprise. What was once an operational tool focused on maintaining the project center has evolved into a strategic tool. The introduction of objectives and strategic goals is a game changer.

I have integrated Splunk with ServiceNow as part of my work. I am a ServiceNow expert, although my knowledge of Splunk itself is limited.

The best feature is the effective reporting system for project portfolio and program management. It allows us to track tasks easily, create cost budgets for individual tasks, and is aligned with AI features. 

It's a comprehensive strategic project management tool, Agile tool, and business continuity tool. The platform consolidates multiple offerings into one module, eliminating the need to invest in siloed applications.

Our company uses the solution for map planning. For a particular year, we look at different needs, initiatives or programs, and associated projects. 

We also use the solution for tool management and determining how a resource such as a thermostat will be used across different projects. 

We have 2,000 to 3,000 users throughout our company. 

The demand management tool is very strategic because it helps assess risk, gives you a visual of different demands, and rates those values. It provides a fairly good assessment in a bubble chart. 

There were specific use cases. We focused on the technology portfolio, trying to understand how to reduce the impact of software end-of-life on various business services. We had to integrate the data structures associated with the technology portfolio with the CMDB to understand which applications or services would be potentially impacted if the particular hardware or software associated with them or supporting them wasn't upgraded or updated over the next few months or so, based on their technology life cycle. That's one use case that was prominent for one of our customers in the UK. We use it across programs to track and manage our requirements. The requirement management process is handled through the Requirement Application, and delivery is tracked via a separate classification.

Anything that has to do with the application and technology portfolio is important because it reduces part of your tech depth, as that is one of the parameters enabling you to identify technical depth in your organization. It has a helpful capability. The PPM module is an excellent service.

Predominantly, we used to have something like Clarity in the past to maintain our project portfolio management, our demand management, and agility management. However, we were not too happy with the analytics and the dashboards in the past with the Clarity product, their PPM product. That is when we migrated to ServiceNow. The main use case predominantly concerns demand management, forecasting, and portfolio management. The whole ITBM right now is also known as Strategic Portfolio Management. It's the whole portfolio across the practice as an entire thing managed through that. It's our whole go-to platform for managing merger planning. It is an enterprise agile planning tool.

The most important feature for us is project portfolio management. That helps us manage and track the entire life cycle of a project or a program at an enterprise scale and across business portfolios. That has been the key differentiator which we use from the product. 

To look at the whole demand management perspective, now we are spread across the globe. We might have different demands coming in from the India region, from UK, APAC, US, et cetera. With this, we can figure out how to manage and forecast the whole business demand. That has been another major use case for us from a demand management perspective. 

The resource manager is useful. If we know the demand, we know the business, how do we tie that up with resource ramp-up, ramp-down? It is not just about a few FTEs. This also includes expanding to an ODC, looking at what we can track, and seeing our resource availability and allocation according to skills, geographies, and levels. The whole resource management has been very helpful in visualizing resources. 

There's lots of innovation within the product itself.

We are a services company, and we have implemented ServiceNow ITBM to track our 6,500 or so resources for productivity, project management for our existing customers, and streamlining the demand activities and lead-to-cash activities. It is being used for lead management to demand management, demand management to project management, project management to resource management, and resource management to endpoint management.

Everything is valuable. It is tough to choose a particular feature, but project portfolio management along with agile 2.0 are two key product features that I would suggest for services companies like us.

Currently, based on our scope, we are mainly using Customer Service Management (CSM) and the IT Service Management (ITSM) part.

There is room for improvement in customer service and support in terms of response time.

Another area of improvement is pricing costs.

In future releases, I would like to see more AI and machine learning concepts to make the processes easier and more efficient.