How to Get the Most Out of Impact Guided

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When Impact Guided is used intentionally, the difference is clear: faster time to value on new capabilities, reduced platform risk through proactive health monitoring, and stronger adoption across your organisation. The customers who get there don't have bigger budgets or simpler environments. They show up differently.

Having partnered with Impact Guided customers across Australia and New Zealand, I've seen first-hand what that looks like in practice, and that's what this blog post is about.

1. Understand what Impact Guided actually is (and isn't)

🚫 Impact Guided is not a managed or implementation service.

✅ It's a structured success program that gives you access to:

the Impact Portal (IDI) and/or Impact Store App, that includes;
Platform Health and observability features,
Technical Accelerators (which I've written about in detail here)
Enhanced NowSupport target response times/level of effort and
A Customer Success Manager to help you prioritise and move faster
And much more!

The value is real, but it's co-created: the more intentional you are as a customer, the more you get back.

If your team is looking for hands-on configuration support, an embedded platform architect, or a dedicated advisory relationship, a different Success Plan is likely a better fit and will get you closer to what you're after. Your Account Team can walk you through the options or check out our ServiceNow site.

2. Get clear on your goals from day one

🏆 Your CSM will want to build an Impact Customer Plan with you early. Don't treat this as a box-ticking exercise. Use it to genuinely articulate what success looks like for your organisation in the next 6 to 12 months.

✅ Ask yourself:

What business outcomes are we trying to achieve with ServiceNow?
Where are our biggest pain points right now?
What does good look like for our key stakeholders?

💻 Once you've had that conversation, take it a step further by logging your objectives and outcomes directly in the Impact Portal or Impact Store App. This keeps your goals visible, trackable, and connected to the work your CSM is doing with you throughout the year.

The Impact Customer Plan becomes the north star for how your CSM prioritises their time with you, which Technical Accelerators get recommended, and how your Quarterly Impact Reviews are structured.

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3. Use your Platform Health and Observability features

One of the things that sets Impact Guided apart is access to exclusive platform health and observability features. These give you visibility into how your instance is performing, where technical debt is building up, and where you're at risk of falling behind on best practices.

💻 To access these, log in to the Impact Portal or install the Impact Store App directly on your ServiceNow instance. If you haven't done either yet, check out here Impact Store App: What's In it For You and How To Get Started.

Once you're in, make use of your monthly health scans and monitoring dashboards. These give you a live picture of your instance health and help you get ahead of issues before they become problems.

✅ A lot of customers log in once and then forget to come back. The ones who get the most value make it a habit, checking in regularly and bringing the insights into conversations with their CSM. It becomes a powerful way to prioritise what needs attention before it escalates.

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4. Use your Technical Accelerators strategically

Technical Accelerators are one of the most underused benefits in Impact Guided. These are structured engagements delivered by ServiceNow experts, designed to help you deploy specific capabilities faster and with best practice guidance.

Common mistakes I see:

Saving them all up without a clear plan for when to use them,
Using them reactively on immediate fires rather than planned capability uplift, and
Not knowing which accelerator maps to which goal.

✅ Work with your CSM to build an accelerator roadmap that aligns to your broader platform roadmap. If you're rolling out NowAssist, there are accelerators specifically designed to support that. If you're implementing new platform capabilities, same deal. Don't just pick something because it sounds useful. Tie it to an outcome.

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5. Bring the right people to your engagements

Your CSM and the ServiceNow experts showing up to your accelerators and check-ins can only be as effective as the stakeholders you bring into the room.

If your platform administrator is the only person engaged, you're limiting the conversation to configuration. Bring in your process owners, IT leadership, or your business sponsor and the conversation shifts to outcomes and adoption. That's where the real value lives.

For Quarterly Impact Reviews especially, executive presence matters. It changes the nature of the conversation and the decisions that get made off the back of it.

✅ One practical step that often gets missed: make sure the right people have access. Your Impact Admin can provision access to the Impact Portal and Impact Store app, so the stakeholders who need visibility into your platform health, roadmap, and outcomes can log in and see it for themselves rather than relying on second-hand updates.

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6. Don't wait for your CSM to drive everything

Your CSM is a partner, not a project manager. The best relationships I've seen are ones where the customer is equally proactive: sharing internal updates, flagging risks early, looping in their CSM when new initiatives are kicking off.

✅ If something changes internally, tell your CSM. A restructure, a new CIO, a platform expansion, a budget freeze, upgrade schedule plans. The earlier they know, the earlier they can help you navigate it.

7. Track and communicate your wins

This one is easy to overlook. As things improve, it's tempting to just move onto the next problem. But capturing and communicating the value you've achieved is one of the most important things you can do as an Impact Guided customer.

💻 This is where the Impact Portal or Store App really comes into its own. Features like your:

Objectives and Outcomes
Initiative Roadmap
Capability Map
Product Adoption Roadmap, and
Value Insights

It gives you a structured way to track where you started, where you are now, and where you're headed. Together they build a compelling picture of progress that you can take to your executive sponsors, your leadership team, and your broader organisation.

✅ Ask your CSM to help you work through these features and build a value story around your outcomes. The Impact Portal gives you everything you need to tell that story with confidence.

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8. Give feedback openly

ServiceNow's Impact product and Impact Squad teams genuinely want to hear from customers about what's working and what isn't. If an accelerator didn't land the way you expected, say so. If you're seeing a gap in the offering, raise it. Your CSM can channel that feedback to the right teams, and the customers who speak up are often the ones who see improvements reflected in future releases and programme updates.

For customers who want to go further, ServiceNow offers the Impact Product Advisory Council (PAC), a strategic advisory board that gives customers a direct voice in Impact product strategy and roadmap development.

✅ If you're passionate about shaping the future of the programme, ask your CSM about how to get involved. It's one of the most meaningful ways an Impact Guided customer can contribute beyond their own organisation.

Final Thoughts

ServiceNow Impact Guided is designed to help you get faster time to value, stronger adoption, and a clearer path through the complexity of managing, maintaining, and continuously improving your ServiceNow platform. But it works best when you show up as an active participant, not just a recipient.

💻 The Impact Portal and Impact Store App are at the centre of that experience. Customers who log in regularly, explore what's available, and bring those insights into their conversations with their CSM consistently get more out of their engagement. It's one of the simplest habits you can build, and one of the most impactful.

Already on Impact Guided?

➡️ Start by logging into the Impact Portal or installing the Impact Store App Plugin today and reviewing your objectives and outcomes with your CSM at your next check-in.

If you're not sure whether you're getting the most out of your engagement, a candid conversation with your CSM about where you are versus where you want to be is often where the real value begins.