If you’re an IT director, you’re probably great at implementing technologies that improve customer or employee experience. Today, you are no longer just an account manager who calls on the finance department when you’re ready to ask for funding for your projects. You’re now part of the finance leadership team. So, if you are considering moving forward with an upgrade the size and scope of ServiceNow, you need to tie your proposed investment to the bottom line. Your finance team may be aware that ServiceNow can improve workflows and streamline processes across your business ecosystem.
To be successful, you must develop a business case that highlights the value of this platform in terms of its return on investment. When you present a cohesive, persuasive business case about ServiceNow’s value to your organization, you will attract the attention of your colleagues on the finance team—and the CFO in particular. Organizations implementing ServiceNow achieve an average ROI of 449% in five years, and reaches the break-even point in just 7.4 months, according to an independent IDC analysis commissioned for ServiceNow. In the first five years, the average organization realizes $36.8 million of discounted benefits. Here are four essential things you should be doing to ensure ServiceNow becomes your CFO’s new best friend:
- Clearly articulate the business need: CFOs care about solving financial challenges. They want to use every resource in the most cost-effective way possible. So, you need to articulate your organization’s business need for ServiceNow. This process involves more than just summarizing the features and benefits of ServiceNow. Align ServiceNow’s capabilities with what problems your organization is already working to solve. For example, a business problem could be a backlog created by an outdated paper invoicing system or an inefficient a supply chain that hinders operational efficiency. When you link a specific challenge to a specific ServiceNow capability, you’re offering the type of analysis that will solve a problem for your CFO.
- Calculate ServiceNow’s estimated ROI for your organization: All organizations have competing priorities, and your CFO is going to rank all of these priorities according to financial outcomes. To show the ServiceNow financial benefits, Crossfuze will calculate ServiceNow’s ROI for your organization. Crossfuze will give you a detailed business case for calculating ROI for its customers made up of at least four parts: productivity gains among its IT staff, productivity gains among line-of-business employees, savings associated with less downtime and streamlining of resources, and reduced costs for IT infrastructure.
- Flesh out a narrative that outlines both risks and opportunities: Your business case for ServiceNow involves much more than just rehashing ServiceNow’s own marketing materials. You will want to build a thorough, well-researched narrative that outlines strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) associated with ServiceNow implementation. If you don’t discuss potential risks and weaknesses, you will lose credibility with your CFO—because your CFO is thinking about these risks anyway and is going to ask you about them. If you can proactively answer these questions, you can emphasize to your CFO how you’ll overcome these risks and threats and influence the conversation.
- Identify your beneficiaries and stakeholders: As you assemble your business case for ServiceNow, you tend to focus on a primary group of users who are your target beneficiaries of the ServiceNow system. But there are many other stakeholders who will be affected by ServiceNow who can serve as important allies and partners for you during your implementation journey. To earn their buy-in for your project and build a groundswell of support for your project, think thoroughly through all of the potential issues, challenges, and risks that your stakeholders could face. You can collaborate with them on solutions, which you can then fold into the business case you’ll make to your CFO.
When evaluating whether to green-light ServiceNow implementation, your CFO isn’t interested in a long, drawn-out briefing on the technical abilities of ServiceNow. Come prepared to make a convincing, custom-tailored business case for the value that ServiceNow will bring to your organization. To ensure ServiceNow moves to the top of your CFO’s priority list, clearly articulate your organization’s business need for ServiceNow, calculate its estimated ROI for your organization, outline both opportunities and risks of ServiceNow implementation, and identify all of the beneficiaries and stakeholders associated with this project. Thank you for reading this post. Please consider sharing it if you found it to be insightful. To dive deeper into this topic, please contact us with any questions at LetsTalk@crossfuze.com.
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