Transitioning weekly reporting from PowerPoint to ServiceNow Dashboards

[Rob Greeley]

As managers, we've all spent countless hours preparing reports to be routed up to leadership.   We gather the data in excel, prepare charts, format it all into a PowerPoint slide with added commentary and highlights, then forward updated slides to someone who pulls it all together into a cross-departmental report.   Since we're using ServiceNow, can't this repeat work be avoided?

Most experienced ServiceNow practitioners will immediately jump to the answer:  Platform Analytics and Dashboards! 

But if it is that easy, why is PowerPoint still so enduring?

Why PowerPoint works (and why it doesn't):

Before discussing alternatives, we first must understand the strengths that make PowerPoint so ubiquitous:

Flexibility: as departments prepare their individual weekly reports, they can tailor each slide to highlight specific areas, add notes, and focus on the details that matter most in that week.

Departmental Independence:  PowerPoint requires minimal top-down definition and standardization.    Each department manager can define their own metrics and create their own reports with no ServiceNow developers required.

Familiarity and Ease of Use: PowerPoint is widely known and easy to navigate, requiring little training.

Simple, Established Process: It’s easy to consolidate company-wide presentations by having someone collect weekly slides from each department, and then pasting them together into a PowerPoint deck.

Distribution and Offline Access:  Reports in PowerPoint format can be distributed via email and read by executives while offline.

However, PowerPoint also has drawbacks:

Manual Updates: While the weekly process works for the senior leadership, it takes considerable weekly manual work across the organization to make it work.

Lack of Standardization:  All that flexibility comes with a price.  The lack of standardization makes it difficult to compare results across departments, to roll up standardized metrics at a corporate level, or to compare results week to week.

Static Information: Think of all the times that you have heard a department head in a meeting explain that today’s numbers are different than the numbers in the report because things have changed.

Limited Interactivity: If someone asks for more detailed information in a meeting, there is no way to drill in to see more details.

How is ServiceNow Better?  (and where is it not)

As an alternative to PowerPoint, ServiceNow dashboards offer powerful advantages for reporting:

Real-Time Data: Dashboards connect to live data, ensuring that reports are always up to date without manual updates.

Enhanced Interactivity: Users can drill down into data, explore trends, and interact with information in ways that PowerPoint can’t match.

Standardized Indicators for Metrics: Dashboards ensure that reports are consistent across the organization, with automation reducing errors and saving time.

Yet, dashboards, whether ServiceNow Interactive Dashboards, or ServiceNow’s new Platform Analytics Dashboards come with their own inherent challenges:

Inflexibility: Unlike PowerPoint, dashboards don’t allow for quick layout changes or customization on the fly. Their structure is relatively fixed, which can limit the ability to adjust focus areas week by week.

Lack of Commentary Features: Dashboards don’t natively support callouts, takeaways, explanatory notes, or highlights.  Managers can’t easily add context or emphasize specific points as they can in PowerPoint.

More Difficult Integration:  Until all departments are using a common ServiceNow dashboard, it’s difficult to pull the reports from all departments together into an executive view.

Distribution and Offline Access: Unfortunately, many executives still want information delivered to them in their email, in a way that can be read offline.

Deploying ServiceNow Dashboards

Successfully deploying ServiceNow Platform Analytics and Dashboards for weekly enterprise reporting requires accepting and using the strengths of each of the platforms.   Use ServiceNow as a single source of data.  Use ServiceNow Performance Analytics to define core metrics used across the company.  Use dashboards for quick reference while supporting.  Use PowerPoint for enhanced layout, commentary and email distribution.

Rather than seeing a competition between dashboards and PowerPoint, follow a set of core principles:

1. Successfully deploying ServiceNow Platform Analytics Dashboards is more of a Change Adoption project than a technical implementation project.
2. Defining and standardizing metrics into automated indicators is a top priority over specific reports or dashboards.
3. Use an iterative approach, rather than expecting a big-bang replacement.
4. ServiceNow Dashboards and PowerPoint will coexist as publishing mechanisms.  The goal is to use ServiceNow to automated indicators and visualizations, so that they can be easily incorporated into PowerPoint

Change Adoption is the most important part of the transition.

1. Incorporate Stakeholder Needs: Engage with middle managers early to understand what they value in their current reports. This will help in designing indicators, visualizations and dashboards that align more closely with their needs.

1. Provide Training and Support: Since managers may lack the technical skills to work with ServiceNow, provide training sessions and create templates that make dashboards easier to manage. Train individual team members in each department or hold office hours where report writers can get support from developers.

1. Leverage Leadership Support: When senior leaders use dashboards and expect data to be presented this way, adoption tends to increase. By making dashboards the preferred method of review, leaders can set an example that encourages broader acceptance.

1. Highlight Dashboard Advantages: Emphasize the benefits of real-time data, reduced manual effort, and enhanced accuracy. Explain how dashboards improve decision-making by providing access to the latest data without the need for manual updates.

1. Use a Phased Rollout: Start by introducing dashboards for specific teams or reports, allowing users to get comfortable with the new system before scaling up. Use these early successes as “Lighthouses” to show what success looks like.  This phased approach can help address concerns and build confidence as managers become familiar with the tool.

1. Support continued use of PowerPoint:  While it may seem counterintuitive, both PowerPoint and Dashboards will continue in parallel.  Provide training and examples of how users can incorporate standardized visualizations from ServiceNow into PowerPoint.  They’ll add commentary and email the PowerPoint reports, capturing the benefits of both platforms.

While PowerPoint offers flexibility and independence, ServiceNow Indicators, visualizations and dashboards provide a standardized, repeatable and efficient solution for weekly reporting. By focusing on Change adoption and Indicator standardization, you can leverage the power of ServiceNow to enhance reporting and drive data-driven decisions across your organization, regardless of the format in which the reports are eventually delivered.