Application Portfolio Management Welcome Guide

[ServiceNow]

Welcome to ServiceNow® Application Portfolio Management Are you ready to start your APM implementation journey? This guide gives you valuable information you can share with your team, including proven guidance and links to key resources—all designed to set you on the path to success. While this guide is primarily designed for ServiceNow platform owners, it also contains useful information if you have a different role in your organization.  Let’s get started!
Guide Overview Here is an overview of the topics we will cover in the guide: Familiarize yourself with APM Decide on business outcomes Chart your implementation path Work with ServiceNow experts Choose self-implementation Prepare for organization change Bookmark resources
Start by familiarizing yourself with APM APM comes with many features that help accelerate your decision making to reduce risk and lower costs. You can get an high-level overview of these features in the APM datasheet and product documentation. Here are some key features to keep in mind: APM portal: View business, information, application, and technology portfolios on a single page. Application portfolio: Make data‑driven decisions on whether to invest, sustain, or replace your business applications. Capability mapping: Align technology investments and services to business value streams via capability-based planning. Technology portfolio management: Manage technology risk by monitoring the versions and lifecycles that run critical business apps. The box on the right will also tell you how you can benefit from using APM in your organization. This Application Portfolio Management (APM) Fundamentals (Tokyo) on-demand course will also help you learn the basics of APM, including the features and benefits, as well as how to get started with APM in ServiceNow. If you are new to ServiceNow, we also recommend taking Get Started with the Now Platform and/or Getting Started with the Now Platform (Next Experience) course to learn the platform basics. If you want a deeper dive into the Now Platform, a longer ServiceNow Fundamentals course is also available.	Benefits of Application Portfolio Management: Eliminate risks: Create plans to address end-of-life applications and protect your business. Lower costs: Get rid of redundant and obsolete applications to reduce IT expenses. Think strategically: Stay one step ahead by aligning your applications to what the business does best. Plan for tomorrow: Create roadmaps to anticipate and support future business strategies.
Identify your desired business outcomes Before you start to implement APM, it is critical to have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. APM allows you to deliver many positive business outcomes, and you can achieve all this over time. However, by deciding which outcomes are most important for your organization and agreeing on them with your stakeholders, you can set clear expectations and tailor your initial implementation to realize these goals. APM helps you reduce costs by eliminating redundant applications, minimize risk to the business by having a plan for end-of-life applications, and helps you align with the business by mapping business capabilities to applications. If you want guidance on maximizing the value of your APM investment, ServiceNow success maps show you how to envision, create, validate, and champion value using Now Value, our proven methodology to realize success with ServiceNow. This success map gives an overview of implementing, maintaining, and getting maximum value from APM.
Chart a path to implementation  Work with ServiceNow experts If you have chosen to work with a ServiceNow partner or ServiceNow Expert Services for your implementation, it is important to clearly communicate the business outcomes you want to achieve and agree on a well-structured roadmap to attain these goals. If you need guidance on successfully engaging with an implementation partner, this workbook is an excellent starting point. To accelerate time to value and reduce risk, make sure that your partner uses Now Create, ServiceNow’s library of more than 700 leading implementation practices. We also recommend you use Now Create if you are self-implementing, as it provides a wealth of assets designed to guide you to success. If you want to work with a partner but have not selected one yet, check out our Partner Finder or talk to your ServiceNow account representative about ServiceNow Expert Services.  We can also work with your chosen partner to infuse our expertise into your implementation through our ServiceNow Co-Delivery service offering. For those of you who have purchased ServiceNow Impact services you will have ServiceNow experts and resources at your fingertips to help you through your implementation of APM and achieving your goals. If you do not have a ServiceNow Impact package, consider how having dedicated resources, discounted training, and jumpstart services can help you get the most out of your ServiceNow investment. Read more here.
Self-implementation Build your team’s skills If you are planning to self-implement, you need to give your platform team the skills they need to succeed. The best way of doing this is to become a certified ServiceNow professional. We offer several certification paths for distinct roles on your team. Check out the links below: Tokyo Delta – Certified Implementation Specialist – Application Portfolio Management Application Portfolio Management (APM) Implementation (Tokyo) Application Portfolio Management (APM) Implementer ServiceNow Certified System Administrator Make your implementation smooth and easy For a comprehensive implementation process framework that is proven to scale to the largest, most complex global deployments, check out our Success Packs on Now Create. Success Packs tailor our core Now Create methodology consisting of more than 700 leading practices to deliver business outcomes aligned with specific product sets. Here is the Success Pack for APM: Application Portfolio Management Foundation success pack is to help modernize and optimize the customer's Enterprise Architecture, addressing challenges such as: Unified Visibility of Application & Technology Landscape – Businesses are using varying tools and technologies to deliver critical capabilities. Many of which create redundancy. Modernization of Application & Technology Strategy – Today, IT (Information Technology) is seeking to modernize the way to deliver outcomes in the form of cloud & hybrid delivered technology. Measurement & Alignment of Capabilities to Strategic Objectives – Business needs to focus on what delivers value most to their customers, and ensure investments are focused on these key capabilities    Join the Employee Center community Visit the APM community page. You will find best practices and other useful resources for APM implementation, and it is also the forum to talk to ServiceNow experts, get your questions answered, and connect with other community members.	Pro Tip  Stick to out-of-the-box ServiceNow functionality wherever possible. This APM process guide provides detailed descriptions of “as designed” ServiceNow functionality for key APM capabilities. Understand ServiceNow releases and upgrades If you are not already on the latest ServiceNow release, we strongly recommend that you upgrade before you go live. By upgrading, you get new ServiceNow innovations into the hands of your users faster, get access to the latest performance and security enhancements, and ensure that support is there when you need it. To make your upgrade smooth and successful, look at these upgrade resources.
Prepare for organizational change To successfully deploy APM, you need your business to understand and use APM and recognize its benefits. To do this, you need to communicate what is changing and why to both your end users and service desk agents. You also need to ensure that your agents are trained on ServiceNow APM. Next, tell them why the change is important and what it will give them (how it will make their lives easier and given them better reporting). The Organizational Change Management (OCM) Planning provides detailed guidance on how to plan for organizational change. If you need help creating a winning communications plan, this communications plan template also provides useful advice. You can view our Recommended Trainings blog for APM to start your journey of learning about APM.  The following courses are a great starting point for training your agents and other APM process users: Application Portfolio Management (APM) Fundamentals (Tokyo) Get Started with Now Create ServiceNow Platform Certification On Demand (San Diego)
Bookmark these resources! ServiceNow Customer Success Center - The CSC (Customer Success Center) is a one-stop shop that gives you instant access to proven methodologies, leading practices, and expert insights and advice. NowSupport - You can get technical issues resolved quickly by contacting our team comprised of ServiceNow employees with deep product knowledge and real-world experience. Read more here on how to use support. Delta Decks - These decks are designed to give you detailed release level feature capabilities. Please ensure to review them every release, they will give you insights into new features and enhancements (search in the ServiceNow Community “Delta Decks” for each release relevant features enhancements).  You can use Live on ServiceNow for latest event series to help you deploy, adapt, and achieve value faster from your ServiceNow products.  Product Documentation - This will direct you to the Application Portfolio Management product documentation page where you can learn in-depth about each feature for all our releases.   APM Data Sheet – will provide more high-level details on the APM features and functionalities.