Strategic Spend Tracking for PPM dashboard

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Strategic Spend Tracking for PPM dashboard

    The Strategic Spend Tracking for PPM dashboard in ServiceNow offers business planners a detailed visualization of planned costs, actual costs, and benefits for projects aligned with organizational goals and strategies. This dashboard enables a clear understanding of financial performance over time, helping organizations track how resources are allocated and the impact on strategic objectives. Available starting from version 1.1.0 in the Next experience UI Framework, it provides an interactive analytics interface to explore total expenses and drill down into contributing factors such as department and business unit spending.

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    End User and Roles

    The primary users are business planners who require visibility into project and demand alignment with organizational strategies and goals. Access requires the businessplanner role.

    Key Indicators

    The dashboard tracks key indicators for both strategies and goals, comparing projects that are aligned versus unaligned in several financial and project metrics:

    • Projects: Counts of aligned and unaligned projects.
    • Planned Cost: Total planned costs for aligned and unaligned projects.
    • Total Benefit: Total benefit amounts for aligned and unaligned projects.
    • Actuals: Total actual costs for aligned and unaligned projects.

    These indicators help planners evaluate how well projects support strategic objectives and manage financial outcomes accordingly.

    Breakdowns and Visualizations

    The dashboard offers breakdowns by strategy, goal, project, cost, benefit, and actuals. Visual data representations include:

    • Bar charts showing planned versus actual costs and benefits grouped by fiscal period for both strategies and goals.
    • Pie charts illustrating distributions of projects, planned costs, and planned benefits by strategy or goal.

    These visualizations facilitate easy identification of spending patterns, project alignment, and benefit realization across organizational priorities.

    Practical Benefits

    ServiceNow customers can leverage this dashboard to:

    • Gain actionable insights into financial performance tied to strategic initiatives.
    • Identify areas where projects are not aligned with goals, enabling corrective actions.
    • Analyze cost and benefit trends over time to support better planning and budget management.
    • Understand departmental and business unit spending contributions for informed governance.

    The Strategic Spend Tracking for PPM dashboard provides comprehensive visualization to the business planners to help them understand how the planned costs, actual costs, and benefits for projects aligned to the organization's goals and strategies trend over time. It helps you to accurately understand the financial performance of your organization.

    Note:
    Starting with version 1.1.0, the Strategic Spend Tracking for PPM dashboard is available in the Next experience UI Framework which can be accessed by navigating to All > Strategic Spend Tracking for PPM > Analytics.

    You can analyze the total expenses, and drill down to what is contributing to the cost, and which departments and business units are spending.

    Figure 1. Strategy Overview tab
    The Strategy Overview tab
    Figure 2. Strategy Detail tab
    The Strategy Detail tab
    Figure 3. Goal Overview tab
    The Goal Overview tab
    Figure 4. Goal Detail tab
    The Goal Detail tab

    End user and roles

    End user and goal Required role
    Business Planner: Needs visibility into strategies and goals for projects and demands in the organization. business_planner

    Indicators

    The dashboard contains the following indicators for strategies:
    Projects
    Comparison of aligned and unaligned projects for strategies.
    Aligned Projects
    Count of the projects aligned to strategies.
    Unaligned Projects
    Count of the projects not aligned to strategies.
    Planned Cost
    Comparison of aligned and unaligned planned cost for strategies.
    Planned Cost - Aligned Projects
    Total planned cost for all projects aligned to strategies.
    Planned Cost - Unaligned Projects
    Total planned cost for all projects not aligned to strategies.
    Total Benefit
    Comparison of aligned and unaligned benefit amount for strategies.
    Total Benefit - Aligned Projects
    Total benefit amount for all projects aligned to strategies.
    Total Benefit - Unaligned Projects
    Total benefit amount for all projects not aligned to strategies.
    Actuals
    Comparison of aligned and unaligned actual cost for strategies.
    Actuals - Aligned Projects
    Total actual cost for all projects aligned to strategies.
    Actuals - Unaligned Projects
    Total actual cost for all projects not aligned to strategies.
    The dashboard contains the following indicators for goals:
    Projects
    Comparison of aligned and unaligned projects for goals.
    Aligned Projects
    Count of the projects aligned to goals.
    Unaligned Projects
    Count of the projects not aligned to goals.
    Planned Cost
    Comparison of aligned and unaligned planned cost for goals.
    Planned Cost - Aligned Projects
    Total planned cost for all projects aligned to goals.
    Planned Cost - Unaligned Projects
    Total planned cost for all projects not aligned to goals.
    Total Benefit
    Comparison of aligned and unaligned benefit amount for goals.
    Total Benefit - Aligned Projects
    Total benefit amount for all projects aligned to goals.
    Total Benefit - Unaligned Projects
    Total benefit amount for all projects not aligned to goals.
    Actuals
    Comparison of aligned and unaligned actual cost for goals.
    Actuals - Aligned Projects
    Total actual cost for all projects aligned to goals.
    Actuals - Unaligned Projects
    Total actual cost for all projects not aligned to goals.

    Breakdowns

    The dashboard includes the following breakdowns:
    • Strategy
    • Goal
    • Project Cost
    • Project Benefit
    • Actuals

    Data visualizations

    The dashboard includes the following visualizations for strategies:
    Title Type Description
    Project Cost Bar chart Bar chart Comparison of total planned and actual costs for all projects grouped by fiscal period for strategies.
    Project Benefit Bar chart Bar chart Comparison of total planned and actual benefits for all projects grouped by fiscal period for strategies.
    Project Distribution Pie chartPie chart Breakdown of the distribution of projects by strategy.
    Planned Cost Distribution Pie chartPie chart Breakdown of the distribution of planned cost of projects by strategy.
    Planned Benefit Distribution Pie chartPie chart Breakdown of the distribution of planned benefit of projects by strategy.
    The dashboard includes the following visualizations for goals:
    Title Type Description
    Project Cost Bar chart Bar chart Comparison of total planned and actual costs for all projects grouped by fiscal period for goals.
    Project Benefit Bar chart Bar chart Comparison of total planned and actual benefits for all projects grouped by fiscal period for goals.
    Project Distribution Pie chartPie chart Breakdown of the distribution of projects by goals.
    Planned Cost Distribution Pie chartPie chart Breakdown of the distribution of planned cost of projects by goals.
    Planned Benefit Distribution Pie chartPie chart Breakdown of the distribution of planned benefit of projects by goals.