ServiceNow implementation best practices

ServiceNow implementation best practices: 17 lessons learned from ServiceNow case studies

These 17 best practices will help you drive your digital transformation’s Organizational Change Management planning, improving Employee Experience and Adoption.

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Introduction: the ServiceNow implementation best practices

For many organizations, a ServiceNow program may be the first digital transformation they’ve implemented. It can be overwhelming to think of all the work—both technical and organizational—that goes into making a digital transformation a success. In addition to finding experienced partners to guide an implementation, teams should also look to ServiceNow implementation best practices from other companies who have already found success.

Some of the implementation gaps many teams stumble across are around what we call the Transformation Triangle: organizational change management (OCM), employee experience, and overall adoption. ServiceNow implementations are often intended to be transformational, but many teams overlook crucial aspects of changing an organization such as culture, priorities, and engagement:

This article outlines 17 ServiceNow implementation best practices that can help organizations effectively deliver on their SaaS solutions, including examples of the best practices in action and specific recommendations of how to apply them. You can also use our free ServiceNow adoption activity planner to understand the activities that will help your organization adopt different ServiceNow applications.

These best practices are pulled straight from 18 ServiceNow case studies representing 10 industries (see Appendix for details).

Click on a ServiceNow implementation best practice to go straight to that section.

Organizational change management best practices
Best practice #1: drive culture changes
Best practice #2: tackle process early
Best practice #3: don’t underestimate the cost and effort required for organizational change
Best practice #4: plan the pacing of organizational change
Best practice #5: make a long-term organizational change roadmap
Best practice #6: communicate early
Best practice #7: leverage cascades to spread awareness and key messages

Employee experience best practices
Best practice #8: design the solution with stakeholder use in mind
Best practice #9: actively engage stakeholders
Best practice #10: offer ongoing meaningful training
Best practice #11: leverage change champions & super users

Adoption best practices
Best practice #12: identify areas of lowest resistance and quick wins to tackle first
Best practice #13: keep leadership engaged
Best practice #14: be creative about adoption strategies
Best practice #15: address areas of organizational resistance
Best practice #16: have an active sustainment plan post-deployment

Conclusion: get the support your organization needs for success
Best practice #17: ensure you have an Adoption Partner as well as an Implementation Partner

Appendix

Organizational change management best practices

Investing in organizational change management (OCM) yields a strong return on investment (ROI) by ensuring smoother transitions, improved employee engagement, and enhanced overall efficiency.

Unfortunately, organizational change management is a significant gap in the market for ServiceNow Partners. ServiceNow is a powerful platform that can transform the way organizations work, but it requires a significant organizational shift to be successful.

Organizations need to be prepared to change their processes and workflows to take full advantage of the platform–and ServiceNow Partners need to be ready to support this effort.

It’s therefore critical for organizations to find a Partner who can explain the value of OCM and demonstrate how they deliver on it. The following 7 lessons learned focus explicitly on how effective OCM planning supports ServiceNow implementation success:

Best practice #1: drive culture changes

Changing a culture can take much longer than adopting a new tool, and the results may not be immediately visible. Nevertheless, culture will have a much more profound and lasting impact on the organization than technology, leading to increased productivity, higher employee satisfaction, and improved overall performance.

Case Study: Singapore Airlines (SIA) created new mindsets around digitization

Even if an overall culture doesn’t need to change, organizational mindsets may need to be adjusted as part of your ServiceNow deployment plan. As part of a series of digitization efforts, for example, Singapore Airlines (SIA) launched ServiceNow’s ITSM capabilities to streamline IT operations—which included shifting organizational culture.

George Wang, senior vice president of IT at Singapore Airlines, highlights the need his organization identified to “instill a digital culture across the organization, ensuring staff have the ‘right mindset’ when it comes to digitalization” to ensure their ServiceNow efforts are successful. At SIA, for example, this work around shifting mindsets has continued even after their ServiceNow implementation.

An effective OCM approach takes into consideration both the Range of Complexity associated with an initiative as well as the Depth of the Abstraction. The change plan needs to identify and drive cultural changes and mindset shifts (aka the behaviors and beliefs that underlie how an organization functions):

For organizations that need to implement significant culture changes to realize the full value of ServiceNow, it’s critical to develop appropriate organizational change management strategies.

Case Study: DNB Bank recognizes culture changes can’t be forced

DNB, Norway’s largest financial services group, implemented a series of new processes to drive internal innovation leveraging ServiceNow. They recognized that guiding organizational change involves providing a framework and resources that enable individuals and teams to participate in the change process and adapt to the new environment. It values collaboration, communication, and flexibility to ensure that everyone is on the same page and committed to the change.

In contrast, forcing organizational change involves imposing the change without considering the needs and concerns of individuals and teams, which can lead to resistance, frustration, and disengagement.

Anne Kristine Næss, ServiceNow enterprise architect at DNB Bank writes, “Perhaps the biggest lesson we have taken away from our experience is that this sort of ‘cultural change’ is not something that can be imposed or enforced. It has to be a collaboration between teams.”

Learn more about DNB Bank’s success here.

Changing a company’s culture requires teamwork between the experts helping with the change (Adoption Partners) and the company itself (clients). Imagine a puzzle where both sides have different pieces that fit together perfectly. The experts know how to make changes work well, and the company knows all about its history and how things work.

What to do:

Understand any culture changes that may need to happen for your company to adopt ServiceNow as a solution.
Develop a deep partnership with your Adoption Partner to ensure new tech supports the organization’s vision and future goals.

Best practice #2: tackle process early

ServiceNow is a powerful process and workflow tool that can help drive culture changes through simplified and streamlined process design. By designing processes that encourage and reward behaviors supporting the desired culture, such as transparency, collaboration, and innovation, organizations can create a work environment which is more productive, efficient, and satisfying for employees.

Case Study: JG Summit Holdings drives culture changes through process

CommonSpirit Health launched ServiceNow’s HR Service Delivery in the beginning of the pandemic—a time marked by chaos and confusion. By engaging actively with users post-deployment, they were able to fine tune their solution to fit users’ needs in a critical time. Christopher Burns, system director at CommonSpirit Health, writes:

“The responses from workers following implementation really surprised me. I thought I knew what people wanted—after all, I interact with them all the time. We launched a survey to capture feedback and received 10 times more responses than I expected, all filled with great insights.”

Read more about what CommonSpirit did post-deployment.

A process is simply how people interact with each other. It’s far less likely that you’ll reach success if you try to implement a workflow solution before determining how your organization’s employees need to change their ways of working.

What to do:

Design business processes before designing technical solutions.
Start to identify change impacts during process design so you understand the holistic changes required of the organization.
Ensure program communications focus on process changes as well as UI / technical changes.

Best practice #3: don’t underestimate the cost and effort required for organizational change

Too often, activities that will support adoption and success such as organizational change management, training, and communications are either excluded from program budgets entirely or are the first things to get cut. Programs that don’t prioritize OCM activities and ensure there is a plan in place to deliver are less likely to realize value from their investments.

Case Study: City of Copenhagen understands the organizational “lift” required to implement real change

When the City of Copenhagen implemented a central enterprise service management portal using ServiceNow HR Service Delivery for its 450,000 employees, it tackled the organizational “lift” of change head-on.

Susanne Hansen, Head of Digitalization and Development in GroupServices, writes, “When scoping out a project, avoid a ‘Big Bang’, comprehensive solution. Take a step-by-step approach instead, governed by a clearly focused business case. Start with simple and well-defined areas that can benefit from optimization.

“A stepwise approach also allows you to more easily observe how employees use a new solution and gather their feedback to continuously improve their experiences.

“Organizations often underestimate the change management required to adopt a new system, or the amount of resources needed. At one point, the City of Copenhagen, was using 10% of our human resources on new implementation. In the long term, however, this level of focus paid off.”

Many organizations underestimate the time, cost, and resources needed to drive organizational change. In fact, some estimate the OCM portion of the total project budget should be at least 15%–so for a $200k implementation, an organization should anticipate spending about $30k (which is more than made up for in ROI for organization-wide adoption).

What to do:

Include planning, build, and sustainment support in resource planning for major transformations—this should include training, Change Champion network activities, etc.
Ensure appropriate planning and resources goes into OCM, training, and communications.
Reserve 10-15% of the overall budget for OCM activities.

Best practice #4: plan the pacing of organizational change

While quick wins are important, planning the overall organizational change mindfully is critical to long-term success. Most organizations find phased rollouts are critical to both achieving value as quickly as possible as well as easing the organization into the new ways of working.

Case Study: ATN paces their ServiceNow rollout

It is crucial to consider the rate of organizational change absorption when planning ServiceNow implementation roadmaps. Organizational culture plays a significant role in determining how quickly change can be adopted. A culture that is resistant to change may require more time and effort to adapt to new software systems, while a culture that is more agile and adaptable may be able to adopt changes more quickly.

When ATN, a telecom company, launched ServiceNow to support their integrated risk management (IRM) program, they were careful to pace the timing of their rollout. Nitin Chopra, vice president of information technology at ATN, notes that “there’s a lot to the Now Platform and [he] recommends not pushing too fast with an IRM implementation.”

Read more about ATN’s rollout here.

The organization’s readiness to absorb change significantly influences the pace of software deployment. A thorough assessment of the organization’s current state and its ability to adapt is crucial. Adequate training, communication, and support must be provided to ensure a smooth transition, which might extend the deployment timeline but ultimately leads to a more successful and sustainable implementation.

Case Study: Microsoft pilots ServiceNow to get stakeholder buy-in

Microsoft understood the importance of stakeholder buy-in for implementing predictive AI for their internal ServiceNow success. Jessa Anderson, lead user experience researcher for the AI Platform team at ServiceNow, writes:

“It was critical for [the ServiceNow] team to get buy-in from key stakeholders at Microsoft. Rather than taking a big bang approach, [Ryan Yee, a senior product manager at Microsoft,] started by getting approval for a pilot program at Microsoft’s global help desk to demonstrate the potential for broader adoption in other lines of business.”

Read more about Microsoft’s ServiceNow pilot here.

A well-structured and gradual deployment allows for proper adaptation, minimizes disruption, and facilitates effective user onboarding. Rushing the process can lead to resistance, errors, and decreased employee morale, underscoring the significance of a thoughtfully paced implementation strategy.

What to do:

Assess how much change you’re expecting the organization to absorb at once, evaluating for potential change saturation across the company.
Include an organizational perspective in project scoping.

Best practice #5: make a long-term organizational change roadmap

Effective change planning involves pre-emptively identifying potential impacts on processes, people, and culture, devising strategies to ensure seamless integration and adoption. By considering the broader context, we can mitigate resistance, promote user buy-in, and achieve sustainable, long-term success in the ever-evolving landscape of technological transformation.

For an example of a long-term change plan, check out our downloadable OCM Implementation Roadmap.

Case Study: GEA achieves success through holistic change planning

Düsseldorf-based GEA thoughtfully planned their rollout to support organizational adoption. Detlef Krause, vice president of ServiceNow EMEA Central, writes:

“The secret to success has been GEA’s willingness to drive change across the whole business—from employees all the way up to senior management. ‘This comprehensive buy-in is a fundamental requirement in ensuring that any new process or IT solution is properly introduced and used,’ Niederhagemann, [group CIO], says.”

ServiceNow teams will often make the mistake of waiting to communicate with end users until just before go-live, forgetting how critical stakeholder engagement is throughout the lifecycle of a project. Engaging the right folks at the right time can not only improve adoption and minimize the impact of organizational change at the time of go-live, it will actually improve the overall product developed and minimize the cost of change orders throughout the project timeline.

Case Study: BT starts getting buy-in at the top

BT, a global Telecom company, decided to leverage ServiceNow to completely transform its business services during the pandemic. Faisal Parvez, vice president, product and digital strategy, writes:

“Bold, purpose-driven ideas lead to real change. Don’t make decisions just to cut costs or boost efficiency. Think instead how the change will affect your people and your customers.

“A good way to streamline change management is to get buy-in from the top—the very top. A passionate C-level executive will have a lot of influence over the rest of your employees. Then, take a step down and get a senior decision-maker to help set common, achievable goals. This will give your project the clarity to keep it on track.”

Learn more about BT’s engagement efforts here.

Engaging senior leadership and getting buy-in and support increases the chances of frontline employees having a strong “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me).

What to do:

Identify the What’s In It For Me for all impacted stakeholders—from leadership to boots on the ground.
Confirm long-term communication needs to walk stakeholders towards commitment.
Make program roadmap information available to organizations so they can find out when they will be impacted by major initiatives.

Best practice #6: communicate early

Communication planning, development and delivery is one of the critical ways organizational change management supports successful engagements. Traditionally, project managers played the role of identifying key stakeholders and driving appropriate communications throughout a project lifecycle.

Unfortunately, Agile teams replace the PM with a more tactically-focused scrum master, which results in communications often falling by the wayside.

Case Study: Alcon Laboratories started communication early

Alcon Laboratories, a global leader in eye care, consolidated a number of business IT operational processes into their ServiceNow solution—which included a strong focus on early communication:

“The Alcon and Edgile teams found that strong communication and awareness early in the project was vital to its ultimate success and keeping multiple stakeholders and agendas aligned.”

Read more about how communications fit into Alcon Laboratories’ ServiceNow success.

It’s critical to have a shared communication plan throughout the program to ensure all key stakeholders are kept abreast of program impacts to their areas and other key program updates.

What to do:

Perform a stakeholder analysis during planning to understand stakeholders’ perspectives and concerns.
Begin engaging appropriate stakeholders early in a deployment once you have appropriate and accurate information to share—the day before go-live is too late.

Best practice #7: leverage cascades to spread awareness and key messages

A good communication plan takes into consideration key stakeholders, what they need, and who they receive information from. This may include leadership as well as critical support roles like Help Desk staff.

Case Study: Microsoft Leverages Help Desk to drive buy-In throughout the engagement

Microsoft leveraged ServiceNow and AI to modernize their customer support processes.

“The global help desk team saw the potential value and helped [the ServiceNow team] move to the next stage. ‘Getting your customer onboard is essential,’” according to Ryan Yee, a senior product manager at Microsoft. “We’re a solutions team, so our job is to solve our customers’ problems. Having the support of the global help desk team gave us the credibility and impetus we needed to get broader organizational buy-in.’”

Read more about Microsoft’s stakeholder engagement efforts here.

(Read about the importance of leveraging key stakeholders as Change Champions in Best Practice #11 below.)

Project teams often want to wait to start communications until they know “the whole truth” about a project. This is too late to give stakeholders time to absorb and prepare for upcoming changes.

By starting communications with senior leadership early in a deployment about the things you do know (e.g. the end vision, a rough timeline, overall value of the deployment), you can drastically improve adoption of the solution because they’re ready to support their teams in using the new tool.

Case Study: Bupa uses targeted messaging to gain buy-in

Bupa is a global health insurance provider leveraging ServiceNow for its cybersecurity operations. Jonathan Milton, head of Bupa cybersecurity, writes, “Getting buy-in from senior leaders as early as possible and using a phased approach to change is really valuable. Teams will quickly start seeing how the project benefits them, which will progressively simplify change management.

“It’s important to work with stakeholders from C-level to the front line and use messaging that resonates with them. Explain how you’re going to make life easier for each group and which tasks you can automate or streamline.”

Read more about Bupa’s rollout here.

Communications that target specific stakeholders’ concerns throughout the project lifecycle increases the chances of engagement and support from those stakeholders. These communications should take the form of the channels those stakeholders prefer to receive information.

What to do:

Perform a channel analysis during planning to ensure you know the best modes of communication for stakeholders.
Include channels other than emails in your communication plan. Understand how information flows in an organization and spread information via those channels (whether formal or informal).

Employee experience best practices

One of the biggest challenges organizations face when implementing ServiceNow, is creating a positive employee experience. ServiceNow is designed to improve workflows and automate processes, but it can also be a significant change for employees who are used to working with traditional tools and processes.

Employee experience is impacted by many non-technical areas such as organizational culture, trust, leadership alignment, and employee recognition and rewards. While ServiceNow implementation teams need to consider these areas during planning and build, many consultants tend to focus explicitly on technical design and data.

To address this gap, clients must prioritize employee experience by focusing on user-centered design, training, and support. ServiceNow Partners should work with their clients to develop functional processes & create a tailored user interface that meets the needs of their employees. They can also provide training and support to help employees understand how to use the platform effectively and efficiently, including the following 4 best practices:

Best practice #8: design the solution with stakeholder use in mind

One of the critical mindset shifts many technical teams need to make is around approaching every part of an engagement with the employee experience in mind. Building a tool that doesn’t have a clear path to usage and adoption is doomed to failure. This means teams need to adopt a stakeholder perspective from planning to design to testing to deployment.

Case Study: T-Systems moves from flexibility to standardization

T-Systems, a Germany-based global IT services and consulting company, launched ServiceNow’s Project Portfolio Management capabilities and found that standardizing usage of the tool can simplify user adoption and engagement. Christian Dietrich, VP of global project services, explains:

“The next challenge is to decide how best to make consistent use of the different features and functionality within the Now Platform®. Flexibility is great, but we’re conscious that flexibility can sometimes be the enemy of standardization.”

Learn more about T-Systems’ move to standardization here.

T-Systems discovered that while giving stakeholders choices and options can be a great way to make them feel engaged in the tool, too much flexibility can actually hinder adoption because it can bring confusion. Clarity and simplicity are important when it comes to getting successful adoption and improving the employee experience. Designing with this in mind can improve the overall product quality.

What to do:

Understand inputs and outputs of processes so you know how the new solution will fit into the day-to-day work of stakeholders.
Engage subject matter experts during design and testing.
During UAT, don’t just confirm the system works “as designed.” Ensure the solution works for the organization.
Identify and track change impacts throughout Build and Test so you can address them during deployment.
Don’t tell users ten ways to solve a single problem. Instead, recommend the easiest way. Super users will discover their own ways of working naturally.

Best practice #9: actively engage stakeholders

Stakeholder engagement plays a crucial role in SaaS rollouts as it ensures all parties involved, from users to decision-makers, are on the same page regarding the new software. By involving stakeholders early and addressing their concerns, the implementation process becomes smoother and user adoption improves. This approach also enables valuable feedback loops, enhancing ServiceNow’s functionality and overall success.

Case Study: Lamb Weston Meijer Tackled a People-First Transformation

Lamb Weston Meijer—the food supplier that implemented ServiceNow agile development—acknowledged the need to support people through their transformation.

Ton Maltha, Services leader at Lamb Weston Meijer, writes, “The first step was to engage with people –we wanted to share our vision and get them involved in shaping it. We wanted to find out everything.

“We put people and the experience first and it was only after this significant investment that we moved onto tools and processes.”

By tackling digital transformation as a people-first initiative, Lamb Weston Meijer achieved successful adoption of their new vision.

Lamb Weston Meijer knew that waiting to engage stakeholders until the project was already underway was a recipe for disaster. Stakeholders can – and should – have the most influence on the project early on when the cost of changes is still low because nothing is yet “built.”

To illustrate this, the below chart outlines the influence stakeholders can (and should) have on project planning and execution throughout the project timeline.

Getting feedback and involvement from stakeholders earlier in the project minimizes the costs of any changes or new requirements that crop up throughout the course of the engagement. It also minimizes organizational resistance to new ways of working.

Case Study: CommonSpirit Health Engages Users Post-Deployment

Being willing and able to incorporate stakeholder feedback throughout the project lifecycle is critical to developing a solution and a rollout approach that will meet users’ needs (and is therefore considered a success).

What to do:

Identify and engage key stakeholders early in the engagement to be sure your plans will meet organizational needs.
Include feedback loops to gather information from stakeholders.
Incorporate stakeholder perspectives in both technical design and change planning. Don’t wait until it’s too late to adjust your approach based on what your users tell you.

Best practice #10: offer ongoing meaningful training

While many Partners offer Admin training or knowledge transfer to their clients, few offer meaningful training for fulfillers or end users. Meaningful training describes training that is customized to reflect the client’s processes, role expectations, and UI. It’s important for clients to clarify what Partners mean when they include “training” in a Statement of Work (SOW).

Case Study: ATN offers ongoing role-based training

ATN, the telecom company leveraging ServiceNow for its integrated Risk Management program, developed role-based training to drive the organizational ability to use the new tool.

“Nitin Chopra, vice president of information technology at ATN, emphasizes ‘this type of implementation requires ongoing training. The ATN team used screenshots of the final build to create training materials for end users and program managers.’”

Read more about the ATN rollout here.

By customizing training (and offering multiple rounds as needed), ServiceNow teams can drastically increase the impact of training programs. Customized training can provide support for specific industries, specific sectors, specific tool functionality, and specific understanding of how the tool fits into overall organization goals. These customizations have a huge impact on the organization’s understanding and ability to use ServiceNow, improving adoption.

Case Study: LEO Pharmacy uses training to gather feedback long-term

LEO Pharmacy launched ServiceNow’s HR Service Delivery module in 2017, leveraging training opportunities as a chance to engage with stakeholders throughout adoption. Manos Katantonakis, Director of HR Technology and Processes at LEO Pharma, writes:

“Our global training programme made sure every employee could take advantage of the full capabilities of the new AskHR service, even if that meant committing to multiple rounds of training for each of our global offices.

“It provided an invaluable channel for people to make suggestions and to engage with our team about how they would like to see the platform evolve. Moreover, this was a service focused on the employee experience, so letting our workforce take a degree of ownership of the platform rather than feeling like it was simply being imposed on them, was really important.”

Read more about LEO’s HR Experience deployment here.

By using training not only as a learning tool but as an opportunity to engage with the organization, ServiceNow teams can improve relationships cross-functionally and improve the overall employee experience. This approach also increases stakeholder commitment and buy-in by allowing users to submit requests for future functionality, helping them feel like “owners” of the tool.

What to do:

Offer role-based training (not just Admin training) to ensure all key stakeholders are trained on solutions.
Treat training as two-way engagement and not just one-way information sharing.
Design training with adult learning in mind to shorten the time for the organization to learn new processes and tools.

Best practice #11: leverage change champions & super users

One of the most influential ways to drive organizational change is one that is often missed: launching a Change Agent Network leveraging change champions and / or super users. Building a strong change network ensures system design and solution implementation takes into consideration organizational realities and meets various stakeholder needs.

Case Study: Microsoft expands implementation teams into Champions

When Microsoft adopted predictive AI and ServiceNow, they deliberately incorporated data and reporting to build a network of support across the organization. Jessa Anderson, lead user experience researcher for the AI Platform team at ServiceNow, writes:

“Leverage your initial implementation to create champions and back up your success with hard data. A key part is making sure your solution includes metrics and reports to build confidence and prove value.”

Read more about Microsoft’s change champion network here.

Change Champions play a pivotal role during the hypercare phase of a software launch by serving as dedicated advocates for the new system and new ways of working within the organization. Their role involves not only driving adoption but also identifying and addressing early user concerns and issues. Their expertise and enthusiasm can significantly contribute to a smoother transition and the successful integration of the new software into the business processes.

Case Study: Telia organized “ambassadors” to help with adoption

Telia Company is a telecom provider that consolidated internal employee experience processes across functional areas into a single ServiceNow portal. They recognized early on that this change needed to start with people and not technology.

Mikaela Linden, head of service catalog and customer integrations, writes: “We assembled a team of seven, supported by a wider network of 30 stakeholders, to make sure we could get the system right for everyone. We interviewed users and primed ambassadors to help with user adoption upon rollout but, most importantly, we never lost sight of the user experience.”

Read more about Telia’s focus on people.

By engaging Change Champions from the project’s inception, organizations can establish a sense of ownership and buy-in among these advocates, making them more effective in driving user adoption when the software is eventually deployed. This collaborative approach also encourages open communication between different stakeholders and promotes a culture of continuous improvement, leading to a more successful and user-friendly software solution.

What to do:

Before identifying Champions, develop a Change Champion role description to be sure you understand the skills and experiences that will set the team up for success.
Partner with business leadership to ensure Change Champions will be available for project activities.
Consider including Change Champion activities in annual goals to ensure folks are both motivated and rewarded for their support

Adoption best practices

There is a serious adoption gap in the ServiceNow market. Even after an organization has invested in ServiceNow, employees are often not ready to use it at go-live.

Adoption and business value are intrinsically connected—the more usage an organization can get from a solution, the greater the chance of the solution providing its intended business value.

To increase adoption, Adoption Partners need to work with organizations to identify the root causes of low adoption rates. This can involve conducting user surveys, focus groups, and other research methods to gain insight into why employees are not using the platform. Once the causes are identified, Partners can develop a customized adoption plan addressing these issues and encouraging employee buy-in, including:

Best practice #12: identify areas of lowest resistance and quick wins to tackle first

There’s a delicate balance to providing value quickly for an organization. From an adoption perspective, it’s wise to think of areas that will provide value to the organization without large amounts of organizational resistance. By delivering value early, program teams can build credibility in organizations and improve engagement and adoption.

Taking small areas of scope, working with them efficiently, and remaining open to stakeholder feedback can improve the overall outcomes for customers. Delivering quick wins builds trust and confidence.

Case Study: Lamb Weston Meijer aligns new mindsets with new offerings

Lamb Weston Meijer is a food supplier that implemented a new agile approach to digitizing processes leveraging ServiceNow worldwide. This required organizational adoption of new tools.

Driving organizational buy-in for changes can be achieved by delivering immediate value through quick wins and small successes that demonstrate the benefits of the proposed changes. This can help build momentum and support for the change initiative, as well as increase engagement and participation from stakeholders. Effective communication and collaboration with key stakeholders can also help to ensure that everyone is aligned and committed to achieving the desired outcomes.

Ton Maltha, Services Leader for Lamb Weston Meijer, observes, “This new ‘services mindset’ and the speed and quality of support has been very well received by our internal customers and senior stakeholders. The drive to expand this initiative and make many more shared services and business processes digitally fit has never been greater.”

Learn more about the Lamb Weston Meijer lessons learned here.

Lamb Weston Meijer understood quick wins in a project are small organizational victories that happen fast. They show people the changes being made are actually working and making a positive difference. When others see these quick wins, they become more open to the bigger changes happening in the organization. This helps the process of managing the changes go more smoothly.

What to do:

When roadmap planning, consider focusing on “easier” business areas first.
Scope appropriately to be able to deliver quickly on value.

Best practice #13: keep leadership engaged

Identifying and understanding key stakeholders is critical to driving adoption of solutions in organizations. One of the most important stakeholder groups to understand is departmental leadership because people care about what their bosses care about. Engaging with leaders throughout the project not only fosters better communication and collaboration across the organization, but also allows for strategic alignment of project goals with the organization’s vision, objectives, and priorities.

Case Study: Bupa prioritized senior leaders to drive progress

Engaging leadership from the outset of a project ensures key decision-makers are aware of and aligned with the project’s goals and strategies, fostering a shared vision from the beginning. Additionally, early involvement of leadership facilitates smoother decision-making processes later in the project, as potential challenges and opportunities can be addressed proactively. Having leadership support from the start also enhances overall project credibility, inspiring confidence among team members and stakeholders, and setting a positive tone for the project’s trajectory.

Case Study: LEO Pharmacy delivers quick wins to leadership.

LEO Pharmacy is a global pharmaceutical that depoloyed ServiceNow HRSD to over 60,000 employees. Manos Katantonakis, Director of HR Technology and Processes at LEO Pharma, writes:

“[It was important to get] the buy in from senior levels. Although they had initially seen ServiceNow as ‘just a ticketing system’, we were quickly able to show them the value of the efficiency and automation potential of the HR platform.”

Read more about how LEO Pharmacy integrated leadership engagement with their deployment here.

By understanding leaders’ perspectives and concerns, teams can tailor implementation activities to deliver immediate benefits or improvements that resonate with organizational goals. Regularly communicate progress and highlight the positive impact of the project on areas that matter to leadership, ensuring continuous engagement and support throughout the project lifecycle.

What to do:

Understand overall leadership priorities and how your engagement fits into them (or doesn’t
Include leadership groups in change planning, including communications.
Focus on delivering on areas leadership prioritizes.

Best practice #14: be creative about adoption strategies

Creative adoption strategies allow organizations to bridge cultural gaps between current and future state, fostering a stronger connection with diverse stakeholder groups. By tailoring communications, training, and other types of engagement to align with specific cultural values and preferences, companies demonstrate a genuine understanding and respect for the intricacies of their employees. This not only improves engagement but also ensures products and services are perceived as interesting, relevant and inclusive.

Case Study: Telia leverages social causes to boost engagement

Telia Company, the telecom provider that consolidated internal employee experience processes across functional areas into a single ServiceNow portal, boosted engagement by aligning program engagement with support for social and environmental causes.

Mikaela Linden, head of service catalog and customer integrations, writes: “To encourage user adoption, we implemented a solution called My Engagements, which promotes employee participation in social and environmental causes that align with our company vision. It uses elements of gamification where users can collect points and win badges based on these activities, and a leaderboard encourages healthy competition.”

By aligning a corporate technology program with external causes employees are passionate about, it encourages employees to bring that same level of passion and commitment to engaging with a program they might otherwise have little personal interest in.

Case Study: Scandinavian Airlines Systems gamifies its cybersecurity education

Another airline leveraging ServiceNow for IT operations—this time around cybersecurity—is Scandinavian Airlines Systems (SAS). SAS recognized the need to help people change to adopt new tools and mindsets.

Thomas Widen, chief information and security officer of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), writes, “We run competitions for office workers to identify and report phishing scams. We’re trying gamification techniques to encourage users to take part and using short video clips to educate teams. We’re even exploring biometric access for ground staff working in subzero temperatures (where it’s too cold to remove gloves and key in a passcode).”

Read more about Scandinavian Airlines System’s ServiceNow rollout here.

Adults learn best via a training approach relevant to real-life experience, has a problem-centric focus, and includes active participation. By making training more engaging through gamification or competition, it is more likely stakeholders will retain the information they need to in order for a change to be successful.

What to do:

Creatively engage the organization in ways that make sense culturally.
When possible, make communication and training fun to boost engagement and increase attention spans.

Best practice #15: address areas of organizational resistance

There’s a natural tendency to not engage with folks who challenge you—ServiceNow teams often think they can work around pockets of organizational resistance and still find success. Instead, identifying groups who need to be on board but aren’t yet is critical to smoothing the way for an effortless adoption across the organization.

Case Study: EPA Victoria uses Knowledge to win over the business

EPA Victoria’s science function was implementing ITSM and understood that the business had to support the implementation in order for it to be successful.

Chris Moon, chief information officer at EPA Victoria, says, “The knowledge base is really key, because [our scientists] are not [repeatedly] answering the same three or four questions.”

“The resistance from business units to the potential of something like ServiceNow has diminished, and that is where we are getting a backlog of … units wanting to onboard onto the ServiceNow platform.”

Read more about EPA Victoria’s ServiceNow rollout here.

By understanding what the business values and needs—in this case, timely answers to questions available on-demand via Knowledge Management—ServiceNow teams can move teams and leaders from a state of resistance to a state of support.

Case Study: JG Summit Holdings addresses concerns heads-on

When JG Summit Holdings (a conglomerate company) decided to implement ITSM, they encountered resistance to the cultural changes they were trying to make.

Carlos Santos, group CIO and corporate shared services leader, highlights the importance of changing how different groups interact before expecting a ServiceNow implementation to be successful: “The IT support team resisted the new process at first, fearing it would create a culture of blame. We explained that performance monitoring was part of the business growth strategy to identify customer experience improvement opportunities.”

Read more about the JG Summit Holdings organization design here.

Rather than focusing on changes as “ServiceNow UI” changes, it’s important to communicate how the changes will make the organization more efficient. Understanding what folks might be afraid of allows you to soothe concerns by showing change doesn’t always bring negative repercussions.

What to do:

Be honest about who might be resistant to the changes—either because they don’t understand the value, or they have different priorities.
Identify both passive and active resistance throughout the program.
Develop change plans to support getting buy-in from resistant groups.

Best practice #16: have an active sustainment plan post-deployment

When it comes to organizational adoption, the work doesn’t end when the system goes live and your Implementation Partner rolls off. Instead, it’s critical to have an active sustainment plan to continue to push acceptance and commitment to the solution post-deployment.

Case Study: The City of Copenhagen empowered “non-techy” Super Users

When the City of Copenhagen implemented a central enterprise service management portal using ServiceNow HR Service Delivery for its 450,000 employees, it built a network of Super Users to drive successful design and adoption.

Susanne Hansen, Head of Digitalization and Development in GroupServices, writes, “We are continuously investing in a network of ‘super users’ who specialize in a specific area; for example, using the ServiceNow HR solution within finance.

“In practice, this means they help design and test, provide feedback and contribute new ideas. Once per year all our super users get together, usually in the run up to the next ServiceNow release, to learn more about new features and functions.

“Our super users also play a key role in amplifying projects across the organization, providing an informal support network to others in their business area. Their involvement has reduced the number of incidents logged on the system and widened our pool of new, innovative ideas.”

Read more about how the City of Copenhagen centered the Employee Experience.

Continuing to train, gather feedback, and elevate your organization will be the only way your ServiceNow implementation will be not only successful but continue to improve over time.

What to do:

Develop a communication plan for post-go live to continue to build awareness and acceptance of the solution.
Solicit ideas for enhancements to processes and systems to not only improve your solution but build trust and support across the organization.
Download our free ServiceNow adoption activity planner for ideas of how to plan your sustainment post go-live.

Conclusion: get the support your organization needs for success

While most ServiceNow Partners offer strong technical skills to develop ServiceNow solutions, the majority do not offer integrated people-focused activities. Those SN Partners who do offer training generally offer only a standard “fulfiller” training plan that doesn’t take into account requirements, stakeholder needs, or end user impacts. These Partners do not have the tools or skillsets to develop training for clients who request customized role-based training addressing changes to business processes.

Organizations requiring organizational change support for their ServiceNow rollouts can also consider bringing in an Adoption Partner like SkyPhi Studios. Learn more about how we work.

Best practice #17: ensure you have an Adoption Partner as well as an Implementation Partner

Implementation Partners aren’t Adoption Partners. Implementation Partners define success as the launch of a technical solution—not in its adoption and value realization. Because of this, Implementation Partners often make major mistakes significantly impacting client experience and success.

Organizations preparing to implement ServiceNow need to be sure they are equipped to support and guide their organizational change journey, from initiation all the way through hypercare and sustainment. ServiceNow recommends all organizations do the following “pre-work” to ensure they know what they need their Partners to provide:

Understanding the desired business outcomes;
Knowing what ServiceNow modules you plan to implement; and
Understanding the skills and capabilities of your internal folks to both implement and use ServiceNow.

Any ServiceNow implementation that plans to deliver significant value to its organization will create a large amount of change. Your Adoption Partner should be able to not only support your organization through this transformation but provide guidance and a holistic plan to navigate it.

Case Study: Covea Insurance recognized the importance of their Partner

Having the right Partners is critical to successfully implementing the technical solution. A Partner who doesn’t address all the needs of your organization will not be able to help your team be successful.

For example, Deborah Mulderrig, digital asset manager of Covéa Insurance (the UK arm of France’s top mutual insurance group), writes, “It’s really important to find a partner that’s the right fit for your business and understands your goals—and then has the skills, commitment, and dedication to see the job through under pressure.

Understanding your Implementation Partner’s maturity in the OCM space is critical to ensuring organizational acceptance of new solutions.

Download our free ServiceNow Partner Evaluation Decision Tree to ensure you have the right partner who is performing the right activities to set you up for success.

What to do:

Assess your organization’s OCM capabilities and identify critical gaps in which you need support.
During the RFP process, ask potential ServiceNow Partners about their experiences and approach to address the best practices included on this page.
Download our free ServiceNow adoption activity planner to ensure your SOW includes all recommended deliverables for the ServiceNow functionality you’re hiring your Partner to help implement.

Appendix

The following is a list of case studies presented in this article, including their industry, SN modules referenced, and related best practices. Click on a company name to view the original source, or click on a Best Practice number to view the related learning.

Industry	Organization	ServiceNow Module	Related Best Practice
Airlines	Singapore Airlines	ITSM	#1
Airlines	Scandinavian Airline Systems	Security Incident Response	#14
Banking	DNB Bank	ITSM, DevOps	#1
Conglomerate	JG Summit Holdings	ITSM	#2
Government	City of Copenhagen	HR Service Delivery	#3, #16
Government	EPA Victoria	ITSM, Enterprise Service Management	#15
Healthcare	CommonSpirit Health	HR Service Delivery	#9
Insurance	Bupa	Vulnerability Response, Security Incident Response	#7, #13
Insurance	Covea Insurance	ITSM	#17
Manufacturing	Lamb Weston Meijer	NOW Platform	#9, #12
Manufacturing	ATN	Integrated Risk Management, Security Operations	#4, #10
Manufacturing	GEA	ITSM	#5
Pharmaceuticals	Alcon	Data Classification	#6
Pharmaceuticals	LEO Pharmacy	HR Service Delivery	#10, #13
Technology	Microsoft	Predictive Intelligence	#4, #7, #11
Technology	T-Systems	Project Portfolio Management	#8
Telecommunications	Telia	Portal	#11, #14
Telecommunications	BT	n/a	#5