Jan Prochazka
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04-23-2025
03:26 PM
Introduction
Many organizations invest in the ServiceNow ITSM suite with the goal of transforming their IT operations. However, it's not uncommon for them to leverage only a small portion of the capabilities available under their contract.
As a CMA, the author often steps into environments where significant investments have been made in a cutting-edge platform, only to see it used in a limited and outdated way. Incident, Problem, Request, and Change Management represent just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface lies a wealth of powerful features designed to enhance productivity, increase visibility, and drive strategic alignment.
In this article, we will first examine the typical reasons behind the underutilization of advanced capabilities and discuss how to address them. Next, we will highlight three underutilized capabilities within the ITSM suite and explain why it’s crucial to unlock their full potential:
- Service Operation Workspace (ITSM Std & Pro)
- Digital Portfolio Management (ITSM Std & Pro)
- Platform Analytics ITSM Dashboards (ITSM Pro only)
This is by no means an exhaustive list of all underutilized features within the ITSM. Rather, this selection is based on the author's personal experience with customer projects. It highlights features that, when properly utilized, can have a significant impact on maximizing the overall value realized from a ServiceNow implementation.
Each capability will be shortly introduced and there will be explained:
- The value it brings
- Brief architectural solution
- Typical barriers protecting the feature from being utilized straightforwardly
- Hints how to break these barriers
Reasons for underutilization
Before exploring the specific capabilities within ITSM that are often underutilized, let's first examine the common reasons behind this underutilization and discuss potential solutions.
Reason | Explanation | What can be done to address that |
Awareness
| Customers are often not fully aware of all the features included in their license, especially when new capabilities are introduced without strong communication.
The answer to the question “why it is not used” is usually something like “nobody introduced that capability to us”.
| Conduct regular value realization reviews. Work with business owners to walk through what's available. Show comprehensive list of capabilities available within the contract and level of their adoption.
Make ServiceNow Capability Mapping an integral and regular part of any implementation – build a solid roadmap.
Show every underutilized capability as a potential of gaining more value out of the ServiceNow and increasing ROI.
|
Maturity
| Organizations may lack the internal processes, governance, or structure to make effective use of more advanced capabilities.
| Use ServiceNow’s Maturity Model and Recommended Implementation Sequence. Start small, identify quick wins, build momentum. |
Lack of resources
(Limited budget) | Organization is aware of the capability but consider it as of low priority and is reluctant to invest in its activation for not seeing its real value.
| Build a strong business case for each available capability, demonstrating the value it can bring.
Actively identify business needs that can be addressed through the activation and use of these capabilities, by understanding the current and future challenges within the organization.
|
Competing Capabilities | Similar capability might be already covered by another tool.
Fragmented solutions and resistance to consolidate.
| Perform a rationalization analysis. Emphasize the benefits of consolidation: better integration, lower costs, and better visibility.
This topic is related to Enterprise Architecture disciplines, specifically Business Capability Management and Application Portfolio Management. These disciplines help rationalize the portfolio of systems, applications, and tools used by the organization to meet business needs, ensuring that their capabilities are maximally utilized and that there is no overlap or competition between them.
|
| Technical Debts
| Customizations and deviations from out-of-the-box configurations can introduce complexity, hindering the use of newer, advanced capabilities.
Many advanced capabilities rely on CSDM alignment and the quality of CMDB data. Gaps in these areas often prevent the effective use of advanced features. | Perform a technical debt assessment. Prioritize cleanup and refactoring. Promote “Back to the Box” as a strategic direction.
Revise the Data Foundations and align CMDB with the CSDM framework in its latest version. |
Missing Skills | The implementation partner may lack deep expertise in certain areas, resulting in a "safe" delivery that avoids lesser-known capabilities.
| Choose partners with proven experience in ITSM Pro. Upskill internally or request specific enablement sessions from ServiceNow or partners. |
Service Operations Workspace
Introduction
SOW is a unified, role-based workspace (the successor of the Agent Workspace) built on the Next Experience UI for ServiceNow ITSM and ITOM users. Bring together ITSM and ITOM to provide a reinvented and unified user interface for people working as fulfillers within ITSM. It’s designed specifically for service desk agents and operations teams to manage incidents and major incidents, problems, changes, requests and all corresponding tasks from a single, streamlined view. It consolidates all relevant data needed to “get the job done” into one place.
Note: For new ITSM implementations and those undergoing modernization, the Service Operations Workspace is not the option, it is the primary choice (forget classic forms). SOW is a must-have prerequisite for many new ServiceNow features (e.g. enabling Now Assist skills).
Value
- Agent Productivity: It reduces context switching and cognitive overload.
- Faster MTTR: By combining service data and automation insights, it supports quicker triage and resolution.
- Better Collaboration: Supports swarming and task assignments across siloed teams, rich collaboration functions including MS Teams conferencing directly from SOW (requires additional licensing)
- Future-proof: It’s aligned with ServiceNow’s vision for “workspace-first” experiences across workflows.
Architecture
- Built on Next Gen UI Framework
- Data backbone: the whole ITSM data model, CMDB/CSDM, Knowledge Management
- Integrated with GenAI – Now Assist skills are integrated to SOW naturally
- Highly configurable via Admin Center / Configuration Hub (and via UI Builder if needed)
Barriers
- Lack of Awareness and Training Gaps: Many teams still operate in classic UI views. Users often lack onboarding for workspaces and don’t see the productivity benefits right away. New skills are needed to fully configure and customize (where unavoidable) the SOW.
- Provide all users of SOW with sufficient hands-on training
- Get people who are fluent with SOW administration and development into the implementation/configuration teams.
- Customization Pitfalls: Heavy customizations of ITSM user interface or processes might not align well with SOW components.
- First de-customize ITSM processes, then migrate to SOW, potentially re-customize in SOW friendly way where it is unavoidable. Beware that many techniques developers are used to from a classic UI won’t work for SOW.
- Organizational Resistance: ITSM teams may not be well integrated procedurally.
- SOW will force the teams to cooperate, use it as an opportunity to improve processes where they are not optimal, not as a blocker.
Want to know more?
- Service Operations Workspace - Process Workshop Presentation
- Service Operations Recommended Implementation Sequence
Digital Portfolio Management (DPM)
Introduction
Digital Portfolio Management (DPM) is a strategic ServiceNow capability that enables organizations to align digital investments with business outcomes by managing products, applications, and services as part of an integrated digital portfolio through their full lifecycle. Instead of managing IT demands purely via projects or applications, DPM lets you manage capabilities and value delivery across products, services, and technologies in a unified, business-aligned view.
Note: The Digital Portfolio Management (DPM) builds on top of other portfolio management areas: Service Portfolio Management, Application Portfolio Management, and Strategic Portfolio Management. Its full potential is realized when all these portfolios are managed. However, even with ITSM and Service Portfolio Management, DPM begins to deliver its benefits and is worth activating.
Value
- Transparency – DPM provides clear visibility into digital assets (applications, services, products), their health, ownership, cost, and value.
- Strong data foundation – Data for DMP are CSDM aligned and builds also on ITSM data models (and SPM and APM). This standardizes how Portfolios are defined and enables unified reporting.
- Flexibility in portfolios definitions – DMP works with both personal and enterprise Portfolios. Users can group services & applications into their own custom portfolios to allow them to roll-up items into a view specific to their role. Enterprise Portfolios provide a view of portfolios as defined by the organization’s taxonomy.
- Portfolios governance – DMP provides standardized way how portfolios are governed and enforces this governance through the organization: Lifecycle – how portfolio items (e.g. services) are managed through their lifecycle (for example how often will they be reviewed, what happens when significant changes in the organization occur that impacts them); Roles - who will be responsible for creation, approving, amendment, retirement of portfolios and objects? What happens when those owners leave the business?
- Unified view - DPM Workspace provides a unified view on health and performance of items in portfolios. Owners have a single place to go to understand the health of the services/applications they own. All information rolls up into a service performance snapshot so they can see how their services (or applications) are performing at a single service (or application) or as the whole portfolio.
Architecture
- DMP combines data of Supporting and Augmenting Capabilities:
- Supporting Capabilities – These capabilities provide core information to the DPM workspace (Service Portfolio Manager, Application Portfolio Manager, Project Portfolio Manager)
- Augmenting Capabilities – These capabilities enhance the overall view of portfolios within the DPM workspace (Incident Management, Problem Management, Request Management, Change Management, etc.)
- DMP workspace – includes the following views: Home Page, List Views, Enterprise Portfolio Views, Personal Portfolios Views, Lifecycle Views and the following Sidebars: Needs Attention, Contacts, Catalog Items, Attachments.
- Dependency view – DPM provides Unified Map capability to show relationships for Portfolio items (e.g. Services)
Barriers
- Conceptual Complexity: Many organizations are not mature in portfolio management and product-centric or capability-based thinking.
- Start Small with a sound Use Case: e.g., rationalize overlapping services to save for their support, identify products supporting a key business capability to focus on priority things.
- CMDB/CSDM Dependency: Poorly defined services or apps in CMDB make DPM insights weak or irrelevant.
- Mature the CMDB, ensure good service/application mapping before scaling DPM.
- Ownership Gaps: No clear roles for "Digital Portfolio Owner" in many organizations.
- Create Ownership Roles - define who owns products, portfolios, capabilities, and give them a stake in the outcome.
- Lack of Buy-in: Business stakeholders may not see immediate value, especially if DPM is seen as "another IT inventory."
- Frame activation of DMP as "Making smart investment decisions together" instead of an IT inventory project.
Want to know more?
Digital Portfolio Management - Mastering DPM
Digital Portfolio Management - Product Architecture Blueprint
Digital Portfolio Management - Process Workshop Presentation
Service Portfolio Management - Process Workshop
Service Portfolio Management - Process Guide
Platform Analytics ITSM Dashboards
Introduction
Platform Analytics ITSM Dashboards are out-of-the-box dashboards built using Performance Analytics and presented in the Platform Analytics Workspace providing ServiceNow’s unified analytics experience.
These dashboards focus on core ITSM processes (Incident, Problem, Change, Request) and provide interactive, role-based visualizations that blend operational metrics with historical and predictive insights.
Unlike the traditional PA dashboards found in the legacy dashboards module, these are built in the Next UI and provide a richer, more dynamic user experience.
Value
- OOTB value: Pre-built with best-practice metrics and breakdowns, so no need to build from scratch.
- Fast decision-making: Helps managers and team leads quickly spot issues, bottlenecks, and SLA risks.
- Consistency: Standardized KPIs across organizations aligned with ITIL and ServiceNow benchmarks.
- Actionable: Drill into records and trends directly for operational follow-up.
- Accessible via Next UI: Easy to use in Service Operations Workspace or a dedicated analytics area.
Architecture
- Performance Analytics – Provides indicators, breakdowns, and time series
- Next Experience UI - Presents dashboards in a responsive, user-friendly format
- Indicator Sources – Pull data from live and historical records
- PA Jobs - Scheduled jobs collect snapshots (daily, hourly, etc.)
- Data Model - Tied into ITSM tables
- Dashboards composition - Widgets with KPIs, Breakdown filters, Scorecards and historical trend charts, Targets and thresholds (if configured)
Barriers
- Misunderstanding: Confusion between this and other reporting/analytics tools (like legacy reports or Success Dashboards, Success Dashboards, Classic Reporting).
- Prepare the demo for PA ITSM Dashboards including historical data to show in action how new generation of PA ITSM Dashboards work. Before the demo ask for a coupe of real-life use cases (what analytical/reporting challenges are users/business owners facing).
- Neglected PA data jobs: If PA isn’t set up properly (snapshots, indicators), dashboards are empty or stale.
- Have a team capable setup PA ITSM Dashboard properly, validate PA jobs, make sure snapshots are running and populating data (including historical data)
- No training: Analysts or team leads might not know how to interpret or drill into the widgets.
- Provide hands-on training especially to team leads and process owners, and show them how to filter, drill, and act. Drive the adoption once activated, encourage teams to use the dashboards actively in operational reviews.
Want to know more?
Platform Analytics ITSM Dashboards
Platform Analytics - Workshop Presentation
Conclusion
Organizations invest heavily in the ServiceNow platform and ITSM solution with the expectation of streamlined operations, better visibility, and measurable outcomes. Yet, as we've seen with Service Operations Workspace, Digital Portfolio Management, and Platform Analytics ITSM Dashboards even powerful features included in the ITSL (Pro) licensing tier are often left underutilized.
These capabilities are not just nice-to-haves, they are strategic enablers that deliver real-time control, data-driven insights, and long-term alignment between IT operations and business goals. Here are the key triggers that could shift the perspective on whether they are truly needed:
- Service Operations Workspace can transform day-to-day ITSM work with a unified, intelligent interface.
- Digital Portfolio Management bridges IT and strategic planning, turning a catalog of services and applications into a live, rationalized portfolio.
- Platform Analytics ITSM Dashboards offer instant access to performance metrics that help teams stay ahead of SLAs and spot bottlenecks.
The value is already there. You're likely already paying for it. The question is: Are you using it to its full potential?
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