ServiceNow just does Service Management, right? Wrong.  In recognizing ServiceNow IT Business Management (ITBM) as a leader in their latest Forrester Wave™: Strategic Portfolio Management Tools for Q3 2017 report, Forrester Research conclusively shatters this misconception.

According to Forrester, “Digital transformation challenges the way companies plan and deliver products and services to their customers. Speed is a prerequisite. Getting the most value while keeping waste to a minimum illustrates that companies need a portfolio-centered approach to both strategic planning and product delivery.”  This is one of the reasons why they state that “SPM (Strategic Portfolio Management) tools are essential in digital transformation.”

With Digital Transformation being a hot topic right now, here are my top takeaways on what our ServiceNow IT Business Management suite can mean for your transformation journey:

1. To eradicate working in silos, it is best to use a single platform

Forrester highlights the need to break down traditional silos, stating that companies “must get away from bottom-up, departmental, budget-based project planning, which enforces silos that impede true business agility.”

SPM covers a broad scope, providing insight across “various perspectives, including capabilities, products, programs, applications, and projects.”  According to Forrester, “In a world of digital transformation, the concept of project portfolio management (PPM) provides too narrow of a focus.”

IT Business Management (ITBM), represents a true paradigm shift.  Instead of perpetuating Project Portfolio Management (PPM), Financial Management, Agile Development and Application Portfolio Management as disconnected silos, ServiceNow has reimagined them as integral components of a single common platform supporting the end-to-end “idea to value” process.

2. Being able to support an organization’s shift to Agile is essential

One of the most eloquent statements I’ve heard on digital transformation comes from a user of ServiceNow ITBM, “We are transforming how we work, how we organize ourselves and how we serve our citizens. Our strategy is to deliver at pace and scale; to deliver meaningful change to the people who need it most, faster and more efficiently.”

This statement emphasizes the need for speed and to be able to target specific customer requirements faster.  Forrester calls out two common trends they are seeing as companies look to keep pace with this accelerating rate of change, namely that “planning disciplines are transitioning from annual to continuous” and that “organizations [are] increasingly embracing Agile planning and delivery methods.”

According to Forrester, “Vendors that can combine Agile and sequential planning capabilities in a highly collaborative fashion with a strong user experience will differentiate.”  ServiceNow uniquely provides that common view and management of all resources and work, irrespective of approach i.e. Agile, Waterfall, or Hybrid. Consequently, multi-disciplinary teams can work faster, smarter, and collaborate more effectively.

3. Make decisions faster and smarter

Forrester identify that “companies need a portfolio-centered approach to both strategic planning and product delivery” in order to realize the most value and keep waste to minimum.  The report calls out that companies “require technology that supports insights-driven planning that uses data to help them make smarter decisions in compressed planning cycles.”

Significant investment has been made in ITBM to deliver real-time insights across the end-to-end service delivery process through an array of interactive dashboards, reports, and portals.  Examples include:

• Portfolio Managers can plan and track their portfolios against defined budgetary and resource constraints, ensuring that their investments are aligned with strategy.
• Application Portfolio Management provides Enterprise Architects with insight into the full range of applications in use, and the ability to make better decisions on how to address gaps in capability, which rationalization opportunities to pursue and what to retire.
• Resource Managers and Team Leaders can take advantage of a common view and management of all resources and what they’re working on, proactively identifying potential bottlenecks.

At ServiceNow, we see the IT Business Management (ITBM) common platform approach as a true game changer.   What’s exciting for us, is this latest Forrester Wave report provides independent validation of our strategy.  There’s much more to come from ITBM, as we move forward to a future led by our intelligent automation vision.  Watch this space for more from me and the ServiceNow ITBM team in the weeks and months to come.

Read the full ServiceNow Forrester Wave SPM press release here.