Build a foundation of innovation in your enterprise

Today, CIOs stand at the forefront of change. Smart, quick decisions made throughout the pandemic have turned them into the trusted heroes of transformation. Now the aim is to keep embracing innovation, both to mitigate setbacks caused by the pandemic and boost competitiveness whatever the future holds.

But as organisations far and wide transition from recovery to rapid growth, transformation leads must learn to overcome not only tight budgets, but a lack of time.

Legacy systems and processes continue to hold back organisations, stopping them moving at the speed required to respond to disruption effectively, minimise downtime, and generally thrive in today’s increasingly competitive climates.

So how can CIOs start to evolve their ecosystems in a way that’s safe, sustainable, and achieves rapid time to value?

ServiceNow + Accenture. A foundation for innovation

Organisations can’t all start from scratch in their efforts to achieve digital transformation goals and meet the demands of the new world. Nor should they have to.

Although past investments aren’t always as flexible as those made today, by tackling big changes in small increments, bringing the right teams and departments together to sponsor change, while reducing operating expenditure and reinvesting in a virtuous cycle, you can start to really accelerate the transformation path.

Still, the difficulty is knowing where to begin. If you can’t see which traditional and legacy systems are delivering real business value, you can’t tell which are obsolete.

That’s where ServiceNow and Accenture come in. Working in partnership, we provide not only the platform to create clear visibility into how IT functions, but the expertise to guide any transformation with incremental steps—what Accenture calls the Living Systems approach. 

Where to start your journey

The Living Systems approach lets you evolve systems over time. By following a proven blueprint from a partnership like ServiceNow and Accenture, you gain greater understanding of the IT you already have, how it can be optimised, and the cost of change. Then you tackle the system challenges that stand in your way to becoming a 21^st century business, supported at every step by clear insight and expertise.

Here’s the five-step strategy for reaching that ideal state.

Step 1. Build a flexible core for continuous evolution

Legacy technology has earned a bad name over the past decade or so. But really the problem with legacy is that it becomes disconnected as the business develops, resulting in fragmented environments that are the enemy of speed.

Rather than continuing to build on top of an environment that no one truly understands, ServiceNow helps you see exactly how to integrate systems and connect departments, from HR to customer service and IT. This way, you gain the flexibility needed to find new efficiencies, boost productivity, and uncover significant cost savings—multiplying the value of systems and the data they hold.

Step 2. Get the right sponsorship and investments behind your growth strategy

Silos don’t just exist in data, but in leadership too. Poor visibility into the day-to-day of different teams and departments often results in duplicate work and investment.

Strong growth strategies depend on centralising data to create a single view across both business and technology. With the right sponsorship at the most senior levels, every leader can pull the business in the same direction, while new applications added to existing environments work in concert, multiplying the value of all.

Step 3. Empower teams to innovate and disrupt

IT teams spend most of their working hours fixing issues, answering questions, and working to reduce the risk of downtime. But what if they could instead focus on higher-value work, like advancing the customer experience and improving response times?

By consolidating data centres into single portals, teams can easily access the information they need, when they need it. With the support of machines, you empower your people to make the best of their precious time—meaning new efficiencies, greater productivity, and a higher standard of performance.

Step 4. Advance agility with a solid foundation

In today’s competitive climate, standing still is the same as moving backwards. But even if leaders know where opportunities lie, without an end-to-end view of what’s happening internally, strategic plans can’t take off.

To shift and pivot with evolving customer demands and market dynamics, you need to create a single data foundation that places the configuration management database (CMDB) at the heart of your IT. This way, you standardise terms and categories across services, so that your entire organisation starts to speak the same language.

Step 5. Place technology at the heart of the business

Tight budgets mean every investment counts. Organisations are increasingly in need of constant monitoring to keep control of upfront costs, as well as the costs of running, maintaining, and fixing applications over time.

It’s a question of visibility. Creating a single view enables smarter, transparent decisions that realign technology to business goals. And with technology able to take on work that keeps the lights on, your people are free to focus on initiatives that keep them agile, competitive, and sustainable in the long term.

In this time of constant change, adopting an incremental, Living Systems approach to transformation paves the way to becoming an agile, 21^st century enterprise.

Together with leading experts at Accenture, we’re here to help you build a foundation for innovation and achieve revenue growth, with one single view that hands you control over your present and future.

Discover more: visit ServiceNow transformation landing page.