Business Planning Portal

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Business Planning Portal

    The Business Planning Portal in ServiceNow enables business planners to manage key business planning entities such as goals, business units, capabilities, capability maps, enterprise strategies, and business unit strategies. It supports the alignment and execution of business goals through structured planning and entity management.

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    Access to the portal requires activation of the Business Planner plugin (com.snc.apm.businessplanner), which installs automatically with other Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) plugins. The portal is designed exclusively for planning and managing business entities, not for handling underlying business applications or technologies.

    Key Features

    • Business Entities Management: View, create, and update business goals, business units, capabilities, and strategies within a unified interface.
    • Capability Map Integration: If Enterprise Architecture (formerly APM) is installed, planners can use the capability map to visualize and plan business capabilities effectively.
    • Strategies Hierarchy: Create and assign enterprise strategies (higher level) and business unit strategies (lower level) to goals, enabling structured strategic alignment.
    • Goal Management: Relate goals to multiple enterprise and business unit strategies, update goal statuses, and assign tasks to support goal achievement.
    • Recent Activity Tracking: Monitor recently created goals, strategic objectives, and business units to stay updated on planning progress.

    Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers

    ServiceNow customers can leverage the Business Planning Portal to establish clear business goals and strategically plan across different business units and capabilities. By organizing strategies hierarchically and linking them to goals, you can ensure alignment across your enterprise. The portal facilitates ongoing tracking and updating of planning entities, which helps in maintaining focus and accountability in business planning activities.

    Enabling this functionality requires the Business Planner plugin, which integrates seamlessly with existing Strategic Portfolio Management solutions. Utilizing the capability map feature further enhances planning precision by visualizing how capabilities support your business strategy.

    A business plan includes a business goal and a plan to achieve that goal. Business planning involves various entities of a business such as goals, business units, business capabilities, capability map, enterprise strategies, and business unit strategies. As a business planner you can manage these entities from the business planning portal.

    To access the business planning portal, the Business Planner (com.snc.apm.business_planner) plugin must be activated. This plugin is installed only when any one of the other Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) plugins is already installed.

    Access the business planning entities, goals, business units, enterprise strategy, business unit strategy, capabilities, and capability in the Business Planner module.

    Business planning portal for the business planner

    As a business planner, you can do various tasks from the business planning portal such as view, create, and update the business entities to achieve business goals. In addition, the Business Planner can . Use capability map for planning - Legacy.

    Note:
    The role of a business planner involves only planning and managing the entities to achieve the business goal. It doesn't deal with the business applications or technologies that support the business.
    Figure 1. Business planning portal
    Business planning home page for a business planner

    The business planning portal helps the business planner to view and create goals, business unit, capabilities, and strategies.

    Number of capabilities
    Displays the number of capabilities that have been created. Click to view the list of capabilities defined for the business enterprise. Create business capability and relate to application-Legacy if the existing capabilities don't conform to your business plan.

    If you have installed Enterprise Architecture (formerly APM), then the Map link is available. Click Map to launch the capability map.

    Strategies
    Displays the number of objectives that have been created. Click to view the list of strategic objectives that align with your business plans. Click to create a business unit strategy or an enterprise strategy to fulfill a new business plan. You can also assign strategies to a goal.
    • Enterprise strategy is at a higher level and business unit strategies can be assigned at its child level.
    • Business unit strategy is at a lower level and an enterprise strategy or a business unit strategy can be assigned as a parent strategy.
    Business Units
    A business unit is a segment of an enterprise that represents a business function. View the existing number of business units in your organization. Click to create a business unit to define its functions.
    No. of goals
    View the number of goals created to achieve a business plan. You can relate goals to many enterprise and business unit strategies. Similarly, more than one enterprise and business unit strategies can be related to more than one goal. Click a goal from the list to update its status and assign a task to it. You can also create a goal for an application strategy.
    Recent Activity
    View the recent goals, strategic objectives, and business units that you had created.