Protecting Your ServiceNow Investment: Why Platform Ownership Is Non-Negotiable

I often feel like I have this conversation weekly with new customers—usually on behalf of our sellers. I’ve also written other articles on similar topics. So why am I writing another one, you ask?

Because we’re still running into this issue with alarming frequency.

So… let me set the stage.

Your company has decided to invest in ServiceNow as your platform of choice. YAY! You’ve made a great decision. ServiceNow (without sounding too culty) can truly transform your business and the way you work each day. It improves not only your fulfillers’ experiences, but your end users’ as well, while also delivering solid ROI for your executives.

BUT… (there’s always a “but,” right?)

• What are your plans to ensure the platform continues meeting the needs of your users and end users?
• How does your platform align to the goals your C-suite has set for the next year? The next five?
• How do we know we’re working on the right things at the right time?
• What’s coming in the next release that could help our business, keep us compliant, or reduce technical debt?

These are critical questions for any platform investment—but especially one as powerful and expansive as ServiceNow.

After spending over 10 years in the implementation space and another five on the customer side, I’ve seen what “good” looks like—and I’ve also seen what a lack of governance can do to a platform. Below are two common pitfalls I see repeatedly, and how introducing a true platform owner (with governance) can help organizations avoid falling into them.

Where Are We Going?

Many organizations don’t know what they don’t know—and that’s completely fair for any new platform implementation. The challenge is getting past “we don’t know what we don’t know” and moving toward:

This platform meets our needs, delivers strong ROI, delights our customers, demonstrates value to executives, and gives us a clear path forward—with the ability to pivot when needed.

A platform owner is one of the best places to start.

Whether they’ve been in those shoes before or are willing to roll up their sleeves and deeply understand the business, a strong platform owner brings clarity and vision to what the organization is trying to accomplish. Here’s how that shows up in practice:

Clear, defined roadmap

This should be driven by strategic initiatives and outcomes set by the C-suite. What applications and modules do we need to get the organization where leadership wants it to go?

And importantly—this is not a “set it and forget it” exercise. Roadmaps are living documents. They should be revisited regularly to ensure continued alignment from the top down as priorities, budgets, and business needs evolve.

Proactive budget asks

As an SVP, no one dreads budget season quite like me 😉 It’s long. It’s sometimes painful. But it’s also necessary.

With a clear vision and roadmap, you already know what you need to ask for. Are we planning to introduce ITOM next spring? That’s new licensing that should be accounted for before the budget is finalized.

Nothing makes leaders happier than not having to horse-trade after the fact for investments that could have been anticipated with better planning.

Demand generation and prioritization

As a former platform owner, admin, and wearer of all the hats, I can say this with complete confidence: if your implementation is done well, demand will explode.

Suddenly, other areas of the business want in. That’s great news—but it also creates tension and competing priorities across departments.

A platform owner helps translate that demand into a prioritized backlog based on business drivers—or escalates decisions to key stakeholders when tradeoffs need to be made. Without this role, that demand quickly turns into infighting and stalled momentum.

No Return on Investment

If you don’t understand what the platform is capable of—or what outcomes your organization is trying to drive—you will struggle to recognize (and communicate) your return on investment.

This is a big one.

ServiceNow is a significant investment, and because of that, it receives a lot of scrutiny. Without a clear owner ensuring value realization, you run the risk of leadership questioning the spend—or worse, wanting to rip and replace the platform with a “cheaper” solution.

So how do we ensure leadership sees the value?

License usage

Many customers I work with are not fully using the licenses they already own—leaving money on the table month after month.

Understanding what’s included in your entitlements is critical. Using ITSM Standard as a simple example, I frequently see the following capabilities owned but unused:

• Major Incident Management
• Walk-Up Experience
• Release Management
• Virtual Agent (lite)
• Digital Portfolio Management
• Asset Management (not HAM/SAM)

Customers generally fall into one of three buckets:

1. They’re not using it at all
2. They custom-built something that does the same thing
3. They shoved the functionality into another module where it doesn’t belong

All three scenarios dilute ROI and create unnecessary complexity.

Release notes

Along the same lines, many organizations aren’t paying attention to enhancements delivered in new releases—enhancements that are already included in their existing licensing.

I’ve seen customers custom-build solutions that were introduced in a previous release simply because no one took the time to review what changed or what was newly included. The result? Technical debt, added implementation and maintenance costs, and frustrated executives when they’re told additional App Engine licensing is required—when it actually wasn’t.

CSAT / ESAT

If your implementation didn’t fully consider customer and employee experience—or if you didn’t invest in organizational change management (OCM)—your CSAT and ESAT will suffer.

When people don’t understand why the platform exists or how to use it efficiently, they’ll avoid it—or use it begrudgingly. On the flip side, when you invest in proper OCM, training, and feedback loops every time new features or modules are introduced, adoption improves, sentiment improves, and you get real buy-in from the people doing the work. While this isn’t completely a monetary metric, it’s still a key metric that executives look at to ensure we’re using our platform to the fullest.

An investment in any platform should include an investment in its proper care and feeding.

Platform owners provide the vision, alignment, governance, and communication required to ensure your ServiceNow platform continues to grow with your business—and consistently delivers on the outcomes your organization expects.