It is no surprise that in 2024, companies from pretty much every industry have considerable IT infrastructures. Whether it is shipping, healthcare, retail, hospitality, or banking, a robust IT setup makes a significant impact on operational efficiency and business growth. However, having an IT infrastructure is not sufficient as the capabilities need to be in sync with the company’s goals and objectives.
ServiceNow’s IT Business Management (ITBM) suite emerges as a powerful solution to these challenges, providing a comprehensive platform for managing IT resources effectively and aligning them with business goals. This platform eases the burden on CTOs, CIOs, and IT heads to manage complex IT portfolios and ensure seamless service delivery, while maintaining budgetary discipline. Read more about why more IT operations need to embrace ServiceNow’s ITBM.
Improved Portfolio Management
Large corporations with massive IT setups often have numerous projects in various stages of completion. Technology leaders need to be able to track each of these projects and make strategic decisions to ensure on-time delivery. This is where ServiceNow’s platform comes in handy.
The ITBM (IT Business Management) suite within ServiceNow platform offers robust project and portfolio management (PPM) capabilities that allow technology leaders to plan, prioritize, and execute IT projects in sync with their business strategies. The PPM feature provides a consolidated view of every IT project with real-time data on each, enabling leaders to make informed decisions about resource allocation, project timelines, and budgeting.
The ability to view each project and see real-time data on relevant operations goes a long way in helping to make informed decisions. Information like their status, allocated resources, timelines, and potential risks provides a bird’s eye view that is crucial for informed decision-making regarding project prioritization, resource allocation, and budget management.
In addition to making informed decisions, the PPM enables technology leaders to assess the potential return on investment of each project, ensuring that IT initiatives align with the business’s strategic goals and deliver maximum value. By streamlining project management processes, ITBM’s PPM capabilities free up technology leaders to focus on strategic planning and innovation.
Embracing Agile Development
In today’s fast-paced and rapidly evolving technological landscape, the ability to adopt agile methodologies can spell the difference between higher market share and a loss of customer base. This also needs to be in lockstep with changing business and operational needs. ServiceNow’s ITBM suite supports agile development, providing tools for managing and tracking the entire software development lifecycle.
ITBM’s Agile Development feature allows IT teams to manage backlogs, plan sprints, and track user stories and defects faster. It fosters collaboration between development teams and business stakeholders, ensuring that the final product meets business requirements and delivers value. By adopting agile practices, organizations can accelerate their software delivery, enhance product quality, and improve customer satisfaction. This lays the foundation for growth and also equips the organization to take on challenges wrought about by changes in market conditions.
Superior Resource Management and Allocation
Managing resources is one of the oldest and most common challenges for managers in every profession. Whether it is a hospital, a hotel, a financial services company, or a shipping corporation, the perennial tug-of-war between the need for resources and making the best out of existing ones is what every manager must deal with. The same holds true for IT management just as other departments.
ServiceNow’s ITBM suite offers Resource and Demand Management capabilities that provide real-time insights into resource utilization and availability. This feature allows CTOs, CIOs, and IT Heads to allocate resources more strategically, ensuring that the right resources are matched with the right projects, both in terms of quantity and duration. In addition to having an overview of all resources, this feature also provides insights into the utilization of every kind of resource. This allows the decision-makers to track performance better and identify potential bottlenecks sooner. All of these capabilities blend together to result in a better utilization of resources and streamline management.
Sound Financial Management
Money is the bottom line of every organization, irrespective of the country or industry. Companies must always manage the necessary costs with everyday expenses while remaining profitable. Senior management is answerable to the board as well as the investors and shareholders. The pressure to contain costs on IT departments is constant, alongside the pressure to deliver on time.
The financial management feature of ServiceNow’s ITBM suite provides real-time visibility into IT expenditure, enabling technology leaders to track, manage, and control IT costs effectively. CIOs and IT heads can create detailed budget plans, forecast costs, and track actual expenses against these plans. Furthermore, tools for cost allocation help organizations to understand the cost of each service and make more informed investment decisions.
Enhanced Application Portfolio Management
Large organizations often maintain a diverse array of applications for everyday operations. The larger a company gets, more the applications it is bound to have. Therefore, it makes sense for companies to have a way of consolidating all the decision-making activities for their apps. ServiceNow’s ITBM suite provides Application Portfolio Management capabilities that enable technology leaders to assess the business value and technical condition of each application. These insights help them in making strategic decisions about whether to invest in, maintain, retire, or replace applications.
The result is an immediate reduction in both the administrative as well as operational overhead. Not only is this beneficial for managing costs, but it also allows IT heads to invest in improving the operational efficiency of their departments in the long run.
Conclusion
ServiceNow’s ITBM suite offers a comprehensive set of tools that empower technology leaders to manage IT resources effectively, align IT services with business goals, and drive digital transformation. By adopting ServiceNow’s ITBM, CTOs, CIOs, and IT Heads can transform their IT departments from mere back-office functions into strategic business enablers that drive growth, irrespective of the industry.
