ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management Reviews

We wanted to build not just in operations but a whole system, service portfolio, and strategic portfolio. We're using it to map the IT strategy and our capabilities. Our service portfolio could help us form a long-term perspective to see where our deficiencies are and continuously improve.

We only started to use it last year because I took an administrator's course to understand how it all works, and I started to iteratively build onto that. Now, we have a full strategic portfolio management of our current capabilities against our workforce, the business needs, and what we're servicing. We have metrics against that to see where we're failing or what we're good at.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

The solution is deployed on cloud.

There are 10 people using this solution. It's used occasionally, not daily. We have plans to increase usage. I set up the demand management side, and we're starting to have regular catchups and get the business to start registering the demand so we can do roadmap planning. It's going to be used a lot more in the next coming months.

The ease of use is the most valuable feature. It's very intuitive to set up. Everything has a logical sequence, and you can see how it all links together. It's a good win for ServiceNow.

We also chose this solution because we're building an environment of ServiceNow. We're looking at the financial side, so it's almost like we have a single pane of glass of how we're running the business in terms of IT. The more we use it, the more value we're getting out of it.

I have used this solution since 2018.

We haven't had any issues with stability. I've had a few blips with the configuration, but that's because I set it up wrong.

I had a few issues with the AI machine learning. I looked at the data to give me some insights and it just didn't work, but it was because of how I set it up.

I would rate the stability as nine out of ten.

The scalability is very good. There's flexibility with customizing how it all works, and it's pretty straightforward. If you need extra fields or extra workflows, you can do it.

I would rate the scalability as nine out of ten.

I would rate technical support as nine out of ten. 

Technical support is helpful. They would log in and say, "Oh, you've done X, Y, and Z, but you need to change this." They don't give generic answers. They actually  see how it's done and give me some corrective measures to fix it.

ServiceNow has very clear guidance on how to set it up correctly. It wasn't difficult, it just took some time to set up.

I would rate the setup as seven out of ten.

We used an integrator to set up the basics, just enough to get the operations working, but ultimately I set it up. It took me a year or so, but I managed to get it all working.

We have seen ROI. We're looking at the consolidation of our applications and spending. In terms of ROI, we have full visibility, and we're starting to cut costs. There's definitely ROI in terms of the data because we've never had all of the insights, and it's definitely helping drive business change and decisions.

When we originally set it up, we had some kind of success manager free of charge, and now it's an additional charge over and above what we're paying. It's an extra £8,000, but then they would help you drive the adoption better or whatever you need for the business. I only used them for the last few months and then they said that it would be chargeable at our next renewal.

I would rate the cost as five out of ten.

I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

My advice is to thoroughly blueprint what you're trying to achieve. It took me a long time to understand what we needed to get out of the solution. Having an integrator would have been helpful. I think you should understand your business requirements before you start implementing.

We primarily use ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management for demand management, resource management, and Agile Management. It's integrated with another solution where our portfolio data resides, but ServiceNow supports our information and processes enabling seamless connectivity to our portfolio. We've utilized certain aspects of the platform during this time, although not the entire range of features, focusing more on specific functionalities rather than a comprehensive implementation across all areas from idea management to HR.

The most valuable feature is the end-to-end processes, which enable us to manage strategies from start to finish. It covers idea management to implementation and beyond. Real-time analytics in ServiceNow SPM significantly support our operational decision-making processes.

The main challenge we face with SPM is its flexibility, which can sometimes lead to lengthy discussions and slow down implementation. As for improvements, integrating IT finance management tools like AppTio or Nearos would be beneficial. We already have data mining capabilities, but continuous updates and enabling of new features would be great, considering the rapid pace of DevOps advancements in the market. In terms of forward-looking analytics and comparison to tools like Power BI, there are areas that could be enhanced, especially in drill-down reporting.

It's been about four years since we began working with ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management, or SPM.

We've experienced performance issues with SPM, but the support team is quick to resolve them within a couple of weeks, making it stable overall. 

SPM is scalable, supporting around 120 users globally across multiple locations.

The technical team is highly responsive and helpful.

Positive

The setup process for SPM was complex, taking around four to five months. However, compared to today, the setup time has reduced to around three months. The maintenance is relatively easy since we stick to standard processes, minimizing the need for extensive maintenance.

Regarding ROI, we've seen improvements in time to market, which is great.

The pricing is negotiable based on the contract and licensing perspective.

The main advantage of ServiceNow SPM, from my perspective, is its end-to-end processes and integration across various functionalities on one platform, making it easy to measure from idea inception to operational implementation. However, a drawback is its excessive flexibility, which can lead to challenges in Standardisation and adaptation within the organisation.

I would recommend ServiceNow SPM to others. My advice would be to negotiate for a flexible contract initially to avoid unnecessary costs.

I would rate ServiceNow SPM as eight out of ten.

The product is quite convenient and user-friendly. It provides a lot of flexibility in portfolio and project management. Compared to SAP, ServiceNow is much more user-friendly and easier to handle. It is easier to implement new developments and customize them.

Test Management is not done at a granular level. I prefer using Jira. The product does not give us the freedom to capture all the instances, test cases, and evidence. There are multiple things that a tester has to capture for the test that is being performed. However, I think the product keeps improving. I spoke to a service person who told me that these features would be added to the next version.

I have been using the solution for more than one year.

The system is quite stable, and we are getting very good support from the ServiceNow team.

The solution is very easy to scale. It is the best part of ServiceNow. Our main customer is Samsung Electronics, which is an enterprise. They are planning to implement the tool globally. As of now, we are targeting seven regions. Depending on the success, it will be implemented globally for field service management.

Maintaining operability and moving to the new platform was a challenge. There were a lot of complexities that we had to resolve. However, our team, along with ServiceNow’s support team, was able to manage the process.

We moved from our legacy system to ServiceNow. We switched to ServiceNow because our legacy system was not that scalable. We wanted something scalable, maintainable, and light.

The installation is quite easy.

We were able to manage the deployment within 15 to 20 days. It was a field service project for Samsung. The system installation and the environment setup were quite easy. A team of 150 people deployed the product. The system will be implemented in September this year, after which the solution will be maintained.

ServiceNow has a lot of flexibility in multiple integrations that normal systems do not have. We have to write specific codes or prepare interfaces for normal systems. However, in ServiceNow, the interface is much easier than other systems. The product is quite maintainable. It's quite easy to operate. It gives us a better understanding of our business. It is an end-to-end solution.

The solution was quite expensive. However, the results we get from the product are worth more than what we spend on the product.

Every solution has stability issues. Implementing their product for Samsung is a flagship for ServiceNow. We faced a lot of integration issues while connecting our legacy system with ServiceNow. We had to change the architecture. Our priority was to move on with the business. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for incident and knowledge-based management. 

We mainly use the solution to support operations and align our ITSM operations with our business goals. This involves coordinating between our application development, support teams, and network engineering teams. When there's an issue at the product or network level, we raise a ticket, and our team works together to resolve it.

ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management must improve its interface, which is not very interactive or user-friendly compared to other tools like Zendesk. The real-time reporting feature doesn't help much in our decision-making process. It's quite complex to use and lacks the rich features needed for visualization. Overall, I find it to be very poor. 

I have been working with the product for eight to nine months. 

The tool is 100 percent stable. 

Regarding agents, we have roughly 50-60 who can resolve tickets in ITSM. However, around 2000-2500 people can report tickets and view tickets company-wide. 

I don't directly interact with ServiceNow support because our internal team is responsible for that. They handle any requests for configuration or development on ServiceNow. If there are any issues, they will reach out to ServiceNow support. So, I can't say for sure, but I presume they're receiving good support based on how things are handled internally.

Positive

We were using on-premise CRM solutions to handle our support cases. However, we've decided to retire CRM altogether. So, we needed to find an alternative solution. I started looking into options and consulting resources like PeerSpot and Gartner to help us decide.

The tool's deployment is difficult. I rate it a four out of ten. Integrating and setting up the basic system took a long time, about eight months. We started in December 2022 and finished in July. There were many complex scenarios and options, making it difficult. Understanding and configuring everything properly was a challenge, especially compared to setting up a similar system with Zendesk, which only took a month.

My team and I were involved in our design team. Four developers, one analyst, and two QA guys were on the ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management implementation side. So, in total, there were six people on our IT team. It took them about eight months to configure everything for us.

We moved from using an old tool to ServiceNow. The collaboration feature is a bit slow for us. We think it might be because of how we use it, not ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management. We want to make it better by connecting it with Microsoft Teams.

We've been trying to integrate the solution with Teams, but it's been challenging. We're also looking to integrate it with SharePoint and Power BI. We've requested these integrations and are waiting for developers to implement them. I expect it should be straightforward based on the documentation I've seen, but I'll know once they're done. It's on hold right now, and we're waiting for them to pick up the tickets. Once they start working on it, it may take a week or two to complete. If it takes longer, it might indicate a more complex integration process.

I recommend starting with a proof of concept for ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management. There are simpler options out there. People tend to prefer products that are easy to use and configure. So, I'd suggest trying out the POC before deciding.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

In our company we use this solution on a daily basis as an administration application for reporting, where you can assign incident tickets or trade tickets and the relevant department uses it for follow up on problems or changes that have occurred. I use it to create reports that show our teams where the issues are, what's going well and what can be improved. My colleagues use it from a workflow perspective. 

We have different organizations with a centralized help desk that will lock calls into groups of 20 or 30 people. We have a team that builds and customizes it and then we have all kinds of managers that pull out reports. Finally, we have numerous end users working on their own products. We also have external parties that provide services that use this application to work on incident problems and changes. 

We are a customer of ServiceNow. I'm in IT design and work as an execution reliability engineer at a financial institution in the Netherlands. 

One of the key areas important to me is the reporting side. The dashboard interface is limited functionally and is not very user friendly or particularly intuitive so that, for example, if you want to combine or correlate incidents with relevant changes for a report, it's not easily done and makes reporting difficult. It's a gap in the solution. What I do now is take the data from ServiceNow and put it in Power BI for visualizing and for combining data analysis because ServiceNow doesn't give me that option. Also, the performance on the test boarding in my view is quite slow - every time that you change something in the automatic report, your interaction in building the dashboards is really horrible.

For additional features, I think we are now implementing our own chat bot, so they should do a lot more on visualization. I would prefer to have a really nice interface into Power BI if their test board is not up to it. 

I've been using this solution for a few years. 

Sometimes things are slow but it's a stable solution.

e.g. when making an Report, the response from the system is slow, compared to other products.

- for some actions like approving /submitting an change or problem, it takes several seconds before it finalize the action. This might be related to the database setup, and internal verification/calculation. But the action itsels seems straightforard, and should not take long to submit a record. 

- other examples are the api, interface is not fast enought to be used when more than eg 30000 records are retrieved, the api request will most likely timeout. and some Paginating is necessary. 

Scalability is quite good, we probably have a couple of thousand users. 

We don't need the technical support because we have an internal team that assists when necessary. 

The solution is provided to us, we didn't do the setup so I'm not sure about how difficult it was. I assume it's not difficult. I'm a user of the product, and we're on a development operational organization model. The product is managed externally and the service provided to us. 

It's a workflow thing so I guess one of the most important things is to really think about your requirements and your process flow because you need to customize to use it out of the box and match your work flow.

I would rate this product a seven out of 10. 

We use the solution for strategic management. We use the solution to plan the organization level to plan the overall picture or the KPI of the organization. Then, they decide on the management and the department's projects or department resources to align with their organization's directions.

Information management is very beneficial for our customers.

If the customer has accurate information and the vendor implements it correctly, the customer should gain a clear overview of their organization's strategic direction and current performance. If they need to adjust resources or focus more on dynamic KPIs, using the appropriate tools will make this process more convenient. They can review the planned outcomes they aim to achieve in their projects or KPIs and compare them to the results.

If we have enough information, we can address issues from the cloud to the top level of the organization. This allows us to see if our resources are being allocated properly from an executive perspective. 

Their packages often include advanced features, typically offered in Standard, Professional, and Enterprise tiers. New or advanced features are usually available only in the Professional and Enterprise packages, which require customers to pay significantly more.

I have been using ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management as a reseller for one year. We use the latest version of the solution.

I rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten.

It is suitable for medium enterprises. Everything tends to work well for the customer if it's properly configured and implemented and the right information is provided to the system.

I rate the solution’s scalability a ten out of ten.

The initial setup is easy. I rate it a nine out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The pricing is average. They always have some extra options to add.

I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

In SysML solutions, it's common for this to be just one module. When used with other modules in ServiceNow, they can function as a unified platform for the organization. All the data is in the same data model, making it easy to use other modules and expand across the organization.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I'm a project manager, and I'm handling ServiceNow for different clients from overseas. There are many clients which are UK-based and configuring ServiceNow for their business needs.

I can have many details in one place. It offers good centralization.

There are different modules that are quite helpful. 

You don't need a lot of plugins.

It's pretty user-friendly and easy to figure out. 

They could work on their templates. Many of them need some improvement. There are fewer templates available right now. We need help from other tools. If we had more templates, it would make things easier. 

If you want to opt for a Waterfall model, there should be relevant templates to help create project plans faster. 

The user interface could be more modern. We'd like it to be easier to understand without having to reach out to ServiceNow. It should be easier to find the steps to use the modules. It would be ideal if they had guides for creating projects and/or templates. 

I've been using the solution for one to two years. 

I've never contacted technical support. However, I've had team members who have reached out. 

I do not have pricing information. I have used the demo version in the past.

We have a partnership with ServiceNow. 

I'm using a lot of ServiceNow methodologies in my project management tasks. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. It provides everything we need in one place. 

I would recommend the solution to others. When I was first using the solution, I was impressed by how centralized the solution was. We didn't need so many plugins. I found it very easy to use.

The main thing for new users is to look at the availability of the tools to see if the solution can do what they need it to do.

We use it for portfolio, program and project management. 

It was implemented throughout the company and the governance processes of strategic projects are carried out in the system. Different levels of professionals use the system, both in agile, hybrid and waterfall approaches.

It acts as a single point of truth for our project management. We are able to gather the information in it for reporting. The parameters of project forms act like minimum requirements for the project, enhancing project management skillset.

We like the ease of making the dashboards, gathering information of a set of projects, programs and portfolios. Also, the status report feature, embedded with project schedule and financials, makes it an excellent tool for knowledge management during the project. The whole history of the project is there. 

The possibility to customize some of the approval flows between a demand, an idea, and a project is another thing that is valuable. We are able to customize it in-house.

Import of really big project (hundreds of tasks) done in MSProject, we face some problems with dependencies and subtasks. 

Also, currently the 'percent complete' field is purely duration-based, therefore the presence of parallel workstreams limits the usefulness of that metric, since the amount of work being performed every day could be widely varying. An useful metric to be developed would be a 'percent work complete', such as the one available by default in Microsoft Project.

I have been using this solution for one year, since January/21.

We are in Brazil, and for us, it could be a little expensive the licensing for some cases.

Microsoft Project, Planview, Jira Software and some others in the local market.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.