Get the Answers You Need with Your Technical Review
(Part 1 of 4 of Creating Your Advisory Services Digital Transformation Roadmap)
Let’s get to the meat of the matter: When developing your ServiceNow Advisory Services Digital Transformation Roadmap, you’ve got to remember two things:
- You’re not just doing it for your internal departments to streamline tech support incidents, ease HR duties, or funnel leads into your sales pipeline—you’re doing it to interact and communicate with customers
- And you just can’t build a roadmap from thin air. You’ve got to have a plan, however tight or loose it is.
To Build Your Digital Transformation Roadmap, Start with the Technical Review
When I’m helping my clients build their Digital Transformation roadmap, I start with the Technical Review because you can see everything at a high level before you have to drill down into the details of your roadmap.
One of the first things we do is to go into an organization and see how much they may have diverged from “out-of-the-box” (OOTB). Why does this matter? ServiceNow, in general, recommends committing to out-of-the-box functionality. But to do so, many businesses need to modify their ServiceNow instances.
The challenge? The more you modify OOTB settings, the more problems you’re introducing into your ServiceNow environment, increasing the time and money you’ll need to spend fixing those problems.
When I’m invited to a company’s headquarters, my team performs a Technical Review that includes a System Walkthrough, a Review of your Platform/Product, and Assess how Much You’ve Deviated from OOTB:
1. System Walkthrough with Administrators
The reason I like to start with the System Walkthrough is that we can review the entire platform from the beginning. This way, we can detect potential challenges at the beginning and plan accordingly to address any issues head-on.
Doing a System Walkthrough also gives us the flexibility to meet the needs of what your organization is trying to accomplish, so we can provide you with a presentation on how healthy your ServiceNow instance is and what needs to be repaired.
2. Review of Your Platform/Products
But a single System Walkthrough doesn’t mean you’re beholden to our initial recommendations. We emphasize that although an initial plan has been formulated, it’s not rigid. You should always add on or adjust as needed in your space.
3. Assess How Much You’ve Actually Deviated from OOTB
Finally, a Technical Review allows us to see how much you may have diverged from OOTB and if your modifications have improved the health of your system or have had detrimental effects. While you probably have a rough idea of how much of a problem your customizations may be creating in your ServiceNow environment, it’s important to measure how far you’ve deviated from OOTB before making a plan to tackle it. By going through this process, you:
- Identify areas where you’ve deviated and where you may want to move back to the starting point
- Start a list of modifications you want to prioritize as you revert to OOTB
Are Your Customizations Un/Healthy For Your Digital Transformation Roadmap? Identify Potential Problems
After the initial walkthrough, we detail what we’ve found and make recommendations so that you can start your Digital Transformation Roadmap journey. There is a mix of assessments that may be helpful to your organization, so put more focus on what a particular customer might need.
For instance, if your OOTB instance is outdated or incompatible with the rest of your ServiceNow instance, we’ll want to see how much you may have impacted your environment. We ascertain what the needs of the customer are/aren’t and customize an assessment to look at different aspects of the implementation. Our ServiceNow Elite consultants can make recommendations on suggested applications and realignment opportunities.
One simple solution we use is to:
- Suggest applications that are more in line with your ServiceNow environment
- Review your ServiceNow Health Scan
- Review your ServiceNow subscriptions and how they are impacting your ServiceNow environment
- Realign any opportunities you may have identified
Take Advantage of the Built-in Flexibility When You Start with the Tech Review
When you start with the Technical Review, you can make the most of all kinds of different components depending on what it is that you choose to sign up for. For instance, you may say, “Oh, we don’t need a Technical Review. We just need you to assess our program and our resources and come back to us.”
With the Technical Review, there are different options in what Milestone provides to help your organization build its ServiceNow roadmap. As we’ve already mentioned, you don’t need to subscribe to the “full meal deal” of the Common Assessment Deliverables (Tech Review, Product Management, Program Development, or Roadmap). You can just do a portion.
This is one of the reasons why Milestone encourages organizations to start with the Technical Review—it gives you the flexibility to meet the needs of what your company is trying to do:
- We’ll review your full platform because that’s what you get from the Technical Review. For example, we can review the HR portion, SecOps, or your ServiceNow Extended Team Model (ETM)
- Within the Technical Review, you also wrap in other components of the Common Assessment Deliverables (Product Management, Program Development, or Roadmap)
Reap the Benefits of Your Technical Review
The Technical Review is just one part of developing your Digital Transformation Roadmap. When you partner with Milestone, we can help you build a distinct Product, Process, or Program Roadmap charted to the needs of your organization that aligns with your organization’s Leadership Objectives, Strategic Initiatives, and Operational Backlog.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll discuss how your Process Management helps you build a unique ServiceNow solution to meet your business needs.
And learn more about how to start your Advisory Services Digital Transformation Roadmap by connecting with the Milestone team or writing to servicenow@milestone.tech
