ServiceNow just concluded its inaugural 2024 Best Employee Portal Contest (BEPC), and we’re thrilled to announce the winners!!
First, a huge congratulations to all the participants. We received a ton of submissions and were amazed by the level of sophistication we saw in terms of the contestant’s Portal Strategy, User Experience Design, and Continuous Improvement Initiatives – the three categories that contestants were judged on as part of this contest. Portal submissions ranged from entirely out-of-the-box to completely tailored designs and experiences, and included single departmental service portals, multi-departmental or unified service portals, and modern intranet portals.
All the finalists, the top 11 (there was a tie for the 10th place), leveraged ServiceNow’s Employee Center Pro product and invested extensively in user research to build beautiful portals that employees love. There was a tie for 10th place, so we decided to recognize eleven customers below.
This blog provides a high-level synopsis of the finalist’s portals with screenshots and videos.
ServiceNow has released a detailed report that highlights what makes these portals great. The report provides aspiring customers with ideas and approaches for creating their own world-class employee portals.
#1 Grand Prize Winner
A unified services portal with employee journeys built on EC Pro for HR, IT, Finance, Workplace, Career Hub, Manager Hub, Onboarding, Global Meetings & Events, Global Spend Transparency, Global Travel, Expense & Card Program, Lab Operations, Legal, Library & Information Sciences, Office of Business Integrity & Ethics (OBIE), Privacy, and Purchasing Goods & Services.
Through meticulous UX research, Vertex created a tailored experience that is highly personalized and encompasses purpose-built portal experiences for employee journeys, such as Career Hub, Manager Hub, and their Go! New Hire Onboarding portal.
“We endeavored in human centric design thinking. We looked across geographies, generations, genders; what’s important to all these different personas. And what we found is that one size fits none.” – Kimberly Rose, Executive Director of People Experience, Analytics and Digital Innovation, Human Resources, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Vertex’s business outcomes realized through their portal:
- HR achieved a record-high 93% HR case deflection in the month following our Unified Portal launch.
- Technology Service desk has achieved 93% CSAT and a 68.29% reduction in DSAT responses
- Career Hub resulted in increased manager effectiveness, internal mobility, talent retention, and we’ve realized multi-million-dollar cost avoidance.
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My Vertex’s homepage experience |
My Vertex’s career hub experience |
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ServiceNow Partner: CASK
Team credit: Kimberly Rose, Exec Dir of People EX, Analytics and Digital Innovation; Jacqueline Houts, Senior Director, People Experience; Jacki Holcomb, Senior Director, Business Engagement & Technology; Patty Anand, Senior Director, Enterprise Platforms; Michael Klein, Business Engagement & Technology Principal Engineer; Vineeth Nair, Associate Director, ServiceNow; Joan Werlinsky, Associate Director, Core Technology; Chris Hall, Vice President, Business Engagement & Technology; Jon Grant, Director, Core Technology; Kanna Amirthalingam, Business Engagement & Technology Principal Engineer
#2 – First Runner-up
A modern intranet portal built on EC Pro for Communications & News, HR, & IT.
Taking advantage of the flexibility of EC Pro, the Communications team at Rocket Companies leveraged into their creativity to create an engaging experience reinforcing their culture and helping employees stay better informed and productive.
“We didn’t want a traditional intranet. We wanted a digital workplace with powerful search, service workflows, flexibility, extensibility, and integrations.” - Chris Smith, Director of Internal Communications, Rocket Companies
Rocket Companies’ business outcomes realized:
- 95% team member monthly engagement
- Achieved a 10X increase in self-service with the launch of RockWorld
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Rockworld’s homepage experience |
An internal page on Rockworld |
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ServiceNow Partner: CDW
Team Credits: Ashley Shuell, Communications Project Manager; Chris Smith, Director of Internal Communications; John Gorecki, Senior Web Interface Engineer; Valentina Basho, Brand Designer
# 3 – 2nd Runner-up
A unified services portal with employee journeys built on EC Pro for Communications & News, HR, IT, Facilities, Environmental Health & Safety available in 7 languages. BMS also created a Facilities Site Directory with information and services available at every location.
BMS is using every feature of EC Pro to create a highly effective unified services experience. Their dedication to employee feedback and User Experience Analytics has led to a robust cycle of continuous improvement.
“We are respected and viewed as the central hub of information within our company; and value is recognized by the various groups partnering with the portal team to generate traffic and promote awareness for their projects and services.” – Ken Meisch, Senior Manager of Workforce Portal Experience, BMS
| myBMS’s homepage experience (1/2) | myBMS’s homepage experience (2/2) |
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ServiceNow Partner: None (Self-Implemented)
Team Credits: Ken Meisch, Senior Mgr - Workforce Portal Experience; Andy Guerriero, Associate Dir - Digital Workforce Experience
Rounding out the other Finalists (alphabetically)
A unified services portal on EC Pro for HR, IT, Communications, Facilities, and Finance available in 13 languages with real time virtual agent translations and the NOW Mobile app.
Arrow Electronics initially deployed separate HR & IT portals five years ago. Those previous portals were used re-actively, where employees would visit only when they needed assistance. As part of the new My Connect Employee Center Pro implementation, HR & IT partnered with their internal Communications team to set up a Global Content Committee. The committee convenes every two weeks to uphold the standard of delivering high-quality and pertinent content to employees. Content is consistently updated with fresh and current information, thereby keeping employees well-informed and actively engaged, fostering a culture of continuous communication within our organization. The experience has been so successful that Arrow averages over 51,000 visits monthly from their 22K employees.
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Arrow’s MyConnect portal’s homepage experience |
Arrow's MyConnect’s mobile version (using native mobile app) |
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ServiceNow Partner: Thirdera
Team Credits: Sierra Hayden-Plaut, HR ServiceNow Manager; Ashley Jostes, Project Manager, HR ServiceNow; Missy **bleep**erstrom, Applications Engineer; Cheryl Wickwire, Product Owner
A unified service portal built on EC Pro for HR & IT with real time integrations to Workday. Employees can select their theme colors: Dark, Classic, or Engage. Baker Hughes has taken advantage of the versatility of our service portal technology framework and partner solutions to create custom navigation (sliders), widgets, and modes (e.g. dark mode, light mode, engage mode).
“During the design phase, decisions were made to have dedicated IT and HR homepages in addition to the unified homepage. Post-go-live, User Analytics has helped us to identify that our employees prefer to access the information directly from the unified homepage rather than navigating to the dedicated IT or HR homepage. Based on the user analytics, we have changed the approach and started publishing announcements and time-sensitive information directly on the unified homepage.” – Nihal Malik Mohamed, Specialist HR Strategy & Transformation, Baker Hughes
Baker Hughes’ homepage experience in two themes
ServiceNow Partner: NewRocket
Team Credits: Nihal Malik Mohamed, Specialist HR Strategy & Transformation; Lakshay Bindra, Lead HR Technology Specialist; Siddharth Porchezhiyan, Executive - HR Tech Strategy & Transformation; Elie Alam, Chief Technology Officer, Functions Digital Transformation
A modern intranet portal built using EC Pro for Communications & News, IT, HR, Finance, Legal, Travel, Risk Management, Marketing Research, Sourcing & Procurement, and Sustainability!
IT partnered with their Communications team and other parts of their organization to replace their legacy SharePoint intranet portal with their new InsideTrack portal built on EC Pro. It’s mobile-friendly for their traveling employees and includes a locational site directory.
“We wanted IT to be accepted across the NASCAR enterprise as strategic technology thought-leaders; ready to graciously serve and support our internal business communities enabling everyone to work together effortlessly” - Chris Tozier, Managing Director of Enterprise Applications, NASCAR
| Nascar’s InsideTrack portal’s homepage experience |
Nascar’s InsideTrack portal’s mobile experience |
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ServiceNow Partner: HGC Technologies
Team Credits: Ashley Heath, Sr Manager, Enterprise Solutions; Chris Tozier, Managing Dir Enterprise Applications; Elizabeth Barlow, Sr Analyst QA & Communications
A modern intranet portal built on EC Pro for News & Communications, HR, IT, and Workplace Services.
Paramount consolidated 20 intranet portals into a single consumer-grade experience with a bleeding-edge design. Paramount invested in employee experience in part to attract and retain top talent. As part of their EX initiative, Paramount launched their “Murray” portal just before their SuccessFactors go-live to provide a hyper-personalized experience in which employees can access targeted news and information, as well as, find answers, services, and support.
| Paramount’s Murray Portal’s homepage experience |
Onboarding experience on Paramount’s Murray Portal |
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ServiceNow Partner: Logical Design Solutions & Intellective
Team Credits: Stuart Winchester, VP of Portal Experiences; Janni Plattner, VP of End User Technology; Daniel Ojeda, Senior Developer
A unified services portal built using EC Pro for HR, IT, Communications, Facilities, Finance, Informatics Education, CEPD, Patient Experience, Supply Chain, and Nursing is remarkable for the consistent, unified experience it provides employees across many departments. It is also available on the NOW Mobile app.
The AskSHC portal on ServiceNow’s Employee Center Pro helps employees Find Information, Get Help, and Take Action as the engagement layer above our system of records/transactions like Workday, Concur, etc.
“The AskSHC service portal brings together platforms like Workday, Concur, Healthstream, and many more, to enable employees to start from a single location to get work done with minimal clicks.” - Ritesh Monu, Director ServiceNow & Business Apps
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Standford Healthcare’s portal’s homepage experience (1/2) |
Standford Healthcare’s portal’s homepage experience (2/2) |
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ServiceNow Partner: None (Self-Implemented)
Team Credits: Ritesh Monu, Sr. Manager Business Services; Gopinadh Nuthalapati, Lead ServiceNow Developer; Tim Edward, Lead Business Systems Analyst; Katherine Sjeklocha, Internal Communications Specialist
Visa has created multiple portals using EC Pro, notably their Ask People Team HR portal, their Diversity & Inclusion portal, and their Prehire portal. With meticulous attention to human centric design thinking and UX research, VISA designed and delivered highly integrated experiences that are exceptionally tailored and branded.
- 97.58% satisfaction with preboarding overall
- 99.5% feel valued as Visa employee 99.03% feel prepared for their first day
- 93.08% satisfaction with the portal
(this is 8 points higher than we had with our Workday pre-hire portal)
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Visa’s Ask People Team portal’s homepage experience |
Visa’s Inclusion and Diversity portal’s experience |
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ServiceNow Partner: CASK
Team Credits: Aaron Saini – Director, Service Delivery Systems; Corrine Gosselin – Senior Analyst, Service Delivery Systems; Corinna Willard – Analyst, Service Delivery Systems; Samantha Zarrini - Director, Market Intelligence & Human Centered Design; Praveen Kaushik - Senior Director, People Systems
A large US-based bank
This is an IT-only portal deployed on EC Pro. The bank is leveraging targeted, proactive, actionable communications inherent with EC Pro to attract 43K employees per month to their MyTech portal, which is far greater than what we see with reactive ITSM portals. Because of this, their IT self-service rates are exceptionally high. Together with automated self-service diagnostics and fixes the bank has achieved a massive uplift in measurable employee productivity.
“Employees spent more than 4.8 million hours engaged in support issues throughout 2022. With the automation across MyTech and the virtual agent, these tools have already saved the firm $2.4M in employee productivity.”
- VP of Data and Analytics and Product Management, Major US Bank
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The bank’s portal’s homepage experience |
The bank’s native mobile experience |
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ServiceNow Partner: None (Self-Implemented)
A large Australia-based bank
A large bank in Australia created their HR “Sidekick” portal leveraging EC Pro and their development skills to deliver a highly integrated experience that is exceptionally tailored for their organization.
The bank conducted extensive UX research via surveys and workshops with various employee segments and stakeholders. It exposes key high-volume employee data including leave balance, mandatory learning activities, and pay cycle information served up on Sidekick’s ServiceNow homepage leveraging integrations with their core HR learning (Cornerstone) and HRIS (Workday) platforms. Employees also have access to their Employee Files on Workday.
The bank's SideKick portal’s homepage experience
ServiceNow Partner: None (Self-Implemented)
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