What is ServiceNow?
ServiceNow makes work simpler using a workflow engine powered by AI. It provides solutions through workflows for IT, Employees, and Customers. On top of that, with the Now Platform, you can build your own enterprise workflows that you need.
ServiceNow reduces tons of manual work and redesigns them into simple automated tasks. This platform has capabilities that can make any organization’s process smoother. But, many organizations fail to realize these benefits due to low or poor adoption of the platform.
In this blog, we’re examining some of the most common ServiceNow challenges while implementing and fully adopting ServiceNow as an IT service management (ITSM) solution.
Here are the six common challenges faced during ServiceNow implementation:
- Internal Requests
- Over Customization
- Complicated Workflows and Outdated Processes
- Lack of Expertise
- Generic Training
- Resistance to Change
Internal Requests
When you implement ServiceNow for one of the modules in a department, other departments start raising requests for the implementation. Creating customized solutions for each department will delay your implementation.
The whole purpose of using ServiceNow is to maintain a seamless flow of information across the teams. If organizations start entertaining these requests and go off the track with their vision, it creates chaos and affects the whole implementation process.
Over Customization
Excessive customization can make your ServiceNow installation difficult and expensive to maintain. Customization often require the use of outside consultants, custom code. Customizations can make it challenging to expand ServiceNow to new departments or organizational units. Customization also make updates to your system more time and labor intensive as you have to ensure your custom code will work with the new version.
Complicated Workflows and Outdated Processes
The more complicated your workflows, the harder time you’ll have adopting an ITSM solution like ServiceNow. Users struggle to complete and understand complicated workflows and mapping them out in your software system is just as challenging. ServiceNow is designed to streamline your processes, but you can’t reap the benefits if you create an overly complicated workflow with redundant steps.
You’ll also need to make sure your processes are updated and integrated with all relevant data points. Without proper integration, the data flow across the teams could be affected. If one of the system is not integrated with the other, we might lose some valuable insights due to data silos.
Lack of Expertise
ServiceNow has a vast range of featured solutions available for each of its IT, Employee, and Customer workflows. If you don’t have the right knowledge and skills to accommodate those features, it might lead to poor execution. An organization’s resources may be limited or minimal due to the constraints on the activities it performs. While investing in the platform, companies should make sure they allocate the resources for training or outside consultants to ensure a smooth implementation without affecting the ongoing projects.
Generic Training
Generic training from a consultant or ServiceNow might not be tailored to your business and processes. Companies often make the mistake of training people on the software but it is more appropriate to prepare the relevant team on how they can leverage the software to their advantage. It doesn’t matter if you know how to use ServiceNow if you don’t know how your company uses it. Make sure your training fits how you’ll use the platform.
Resistance to Change
The implementation revamps the way a business operates.
- The transformation it brings to the IT experience,
- The automation it provides to the HR, and
- The acceleration to the security,
but the users are reluctant to change. Most of us can’t handle that much change in a shorter interval. In a survey of 3,000 executives, McKinsey and Company found that 70% of all organizational transformations fail and 70% of those failures can be attributed to the inertia of culture and mindsets.
Relevant Read: ServiceNow Change Management Guide
Overcoming Challenges to Adoption
One of the greatest misconceptions is that buying the latest technology will solve most of an organization’s problems. The reality is you have to implement and adopt the technology to see any benefit.
To overcome these challenges, a Digital Adoption Platform is quite helpful as it helps you to understand how the employees are using the application, which processes they are finding difficult to complete and how much time they spend within the platform while completing a particular task.
Here we have covered some of the most common challenges to adoption. In our next blog, we’ll take a look at some of the solutions to improving ServiceNow adoption
