Life is tough in the modern IT department. In fact, life is so tough that delivering a reliable and uniform level of performance is no longer enough. This reality check was delivered by ServiceNow's James Ramsay in his role as Business Management Advisory Solutions Consultant during NowForum London 2016.
"Keeping the Status Quo is not an option," said Ramsay.
In simple terms, the modern IT department has to do more than just operate. The modern IT department has to deliver change; and the modern IT department must act as a catalyst for business growth itself.
Codifying the change portfolio
Today we know that the contemporary IT business manager needs to align him or herself to a position where they can achieve a new level of balance as organizations now start to develop a formally-defined 'change portfolio'.
This total scope of the so-called change portfolio would typically be composed of four pillars of change:
- Strategic change
- Enhancement-focused changes
- Changes that have to happen just to keep the business running
- Regulatory 'must-do' changes driven by compliance & governance etc.
"All organizations have some sort of defined change process model which will, in the most basic terms, be built to discover, define, execute and then subsequently review changes," said Ramsay. "But even in firms with weighty change process models, we tend to find that these organizations have no way of managing the total change process."
Fragmented islands of change
Ramsay argued that firms lack a coherent, end-to-end solutions framework to effectively drive and govern the whole change process. This then results in fragmented islands of change. The pipeline of activity, resources in use and finance spend for each disconnected change all exist in separate silos… and so the inefficiencies here should be obvious.
In direct response to this scenario, ServiceNow provides a single system of engagement so a firm can capture all the change requests that are produced across the whole business. As an end-to-end change framework, ServiceNow then allows firms to rationalize resources so they can prioritize with complete financial transparency.
Tracking project elements
James Ramsay was joined on stage at NowForum London by ServiceNow's Simon Grice in his role as Principal Solutions Consultant. Grice used his session time to explain how a working use case example of the newly-launched ServiceNow IT Business Management Suite (ITBM) allows the CIO to gain key insight into their Portfolio of Business Services.
Insight came from key performance indicators grouped by the categories of Cost, Operation, Risk & Investment. Focusing then on the category of Investment, Grice dropped into a Project Portfolio to show how projects can be actively managed.
From business risk to Net Promoter Score to costs, ServiceNow presents a visual business dashboard to track key indicators by project.
This is why ServiceNow ITBM has been called 'a command centre for the CIO' by the firm's Kevin Nanney, Senior Director, Product Management, ITBM, ServiceNow.
"Every IT leader can now have a vantage point over all IT resources, projects and costs to make sure they are driving the business forward," said Nanney.
The project manager's role
Looking deeper into a specific portfolio use case back at NowForum London, Grice demonstrated exactly how budget can be tracked across a variety of projects running across the breadth of an organization. Project managers are tasked with the responsibility to provide status reports into this system so that the higher-level status of the project can be tracked at any one time.
"Project Managers spend about 40 percent of their time chasing project status. This technology addresses that pain point directly," said Grice.
ServiceNow also provides 'collaboration in context' straight within the records for each project. A planning console then allows users to work with their 'project critical path' and this level of management works across Agile projects, Waterfall or whatever methodology a team chooses to work with.
Key takeaways
ServiceNow points to tangible benefits here in terms of cost savings, resource productivity and speed to market abilities, which can be realised through managing end-to-end change from ServiceNow's ITBM platform.
Without proper visibility and control, companies often deploy point products to attempt to solve the most pervasive problems. But the time‑consuming, manual processes required to collect financial data, manage integration and development, and report on progress, serve as strong headwinds to achieve business goals.
To learn more about ServiceNow IT Business Management Suite read the official product release news statement here.
