Often, few organizations use ServiceNow PPM to prioritize and choose from submitted projects rather than evaluating which projects will help achieve strategic objectives. Organizations are more focused on which project can give a great return; rather, the first step would be determining whether this project moves the organization in the direction of vision or not.
ServiceNow PPM helps you from managing the organization’s strategy to project delivery- It helps to distribute funds to the organisation's ‘Business Strategy’. It helps you to do fund the business units based on strategic goals. Without proper strategic goals, driving projects is like 'Headless Chicken'.
Let's take a look at chronology :
- Executive leadership defines strategic goals from the vision of the organization.
- Business units are set up to achieve those strategic goals
- Each business units have one or more portfolios
- Each portfolio have one or more Programs or Projects
- Each Program have one or more projects
Investment Funding, a ServiceNow application, empowers you to align investments with the organization's strategic goals. You can use this application to create entities, request and allocate funds for these entities. It contains information about Funds, Costs, Benefits, Business cases, and strategic goals. You can allocate funds to entities like portfolios, Projects, Demands, epics, users, and much more.
Funding approaches :
- Top-down funding - You distribute funds to investments based on business goals or as part of a business strategy.
- Bottom-up funding - You request funds for your investments from one or more funding sources.
Initial setup :
- Plugin : Activate the Investment Funding plugin (com.snc.investment_planning)
- Fiscal calendar setup: Fiscal calendar is used with funding cycles based on your business requirements
- Investment entities: You can receive or allocate funds through them
- User roles: Assign roles to individual users or groups who can request or allocate funds
- Preferences: Set them up as per your business requirements.
- Business case definitions: Add or modify fields you want to include in your business case definition.
More details at the link: Click Here
Important roles :
- investment_admin: Creates investment entities and sets up preferences and fiscal calendar.
- investment_planner: Manages top investment, investment entities, and records associated with investment entities.
- investment_user: Manages investments and funds.
Use Case :
As a director, my job is to ensure all my investments are aligned with business priorities. A few of my priorities are Revenue, Customer service score, Employee experience score, etc. I can see reports of business priorities 'actual values' v's 'target values' YoY. I noticed almost all my graphs show 'actual values' are exceeding the 'targets values'. However, for the customer service score, I noticed 'actual values' are decreasing YoY with 'target values'. This is a matter of concern, now its high time for me to focus and invest in customer service score
How to create investment entities
- Required role: investment_admin
- Steps : Navigate to Investment Funding > Setup > Investment Entities.
How to request funds for investment entities
- Required role : investment_user
- Steps : Navigate to Investment Funding > My Funds > Allocate Funds tab > Add
How to plan funds for investment entities
- Required role : investment_user
- Steps : Navigate to Investment Funding > My Funds> Allocate Funds tab > select the incoming requests > Plan
How to allocate funds for investment entities
- Required role : investment_user
- Steps : Navigate to Investment Funding > My Funds> Allocate Funds grid > Select incoming request > Fund
How to view past funding details
- Required role : investment_user
- Steps: Navigate to Investment Funding > My Funds> Allocate Funds tab > Right-click on a column on the grid > select view Past Funding Details.
Benefits:
- Mature growth in business by aligning investments with business outcomes.
- Gain high success rates in meeting leadership expectations.
- Collaborate and evaluate investments.
- Support every project delivery model.
- Good visibility on Return of investments and revenue potential.
- Good project performance when funding aligns with strategic goals.
- Easy to capture other types of costs like - unplanned, operational, or user cost.
- Flexibility to have continuous funding and multiple funding sources.
