What's in this Success Playbook

This Success Playbook will help you create a persuasive business case to get approval and funding for your ServiceNow^® investment. You’ll learn to:

• Develop recommendations that align with your organization’s strategic objectives and business issues
• Create defensible financial justification with quantified cost and expected benefits using the best available data validated
• Communicate a cohesive, concise value-for-the-business story tailored to your audience

Key takeaways

The most important things to know

When you create a business case:

• The process of creating the business case is more important than the actual numbers in the business case. The process allows you to get agreement on the problem you’re trying to solve, identify and highlight a value gap, and then quantify it.
• The most persuasive business cases are cohesive stories that start with clear business objectives and challenges to resolve, are based on a comprehensive understanding of costs, and define credible measures of expected benefits and value. 
• Along with the investment approval committee members, the stakeholders for your ServiceNow business case should include process owners, service owners, service desk managers, functional leaders, and everyone else who is a critical decision-maker in implementing and adopting the ServiceNow capabilities you recommend.

The payoff of getting this right    

The business case provides justification for key business stakeholders and your investment approval committee to:

• First, approve funding for your ServiceNow relationship by showing that the investment provides a positive return
• Second, prioritize funding for ServiceNow relative to other projects by creating alignment with key strategic outcomes and building consensus with key stakeholders

A strong business case will help you expand your ServiceNow investment by building buy-in and enthusiasm among your key stakeholders and leaders. It also lays the foundation for measuring value realization to build credibility and buy-in for future expansion. 

Steps covered

Step 1: Identify key issues and business improvement areas

• Create your business case from the top down. Start with your vision for transformation and business objectives, and then define how ServiceNow can help you realize them.
• Discover your executive sponsor’s objectives to ensure your business case aligns with them.

Step 2: Develop recommendations    

• Collaborate with stakeholders to identify relevant ServiceNow products and capabilities to implement and define the level of support required for successful implementation.
• Ensure your recommendations reflect a phased approach to implementation. 

Step 3: Construct the business case    

• Tailor your presentation to focus on the key message relevant for your audience.
• Aim for defensible estimates for cost and benefits using the best available data validated by operators.
• Communicate a cohesive, concise value-for-the-business story. 

Step 4: Socialize, communicate, and finalize        

• Count your votes and solve for anticipated pushback before presenting your business case to the investment approval committee.

Step 5: Monitor and manage your value realization        

• Track and report metrics that help you demonstrate value early and enhance credibility.
• Capture the lessons learned to improve your business case creation process.