PMO Operations Utilize Streamlined ServiceNow Reporting

The Customer

About a decade ago, a financial institution began its journey adopting ServiceNow as its core strategic platform. After launching the ServiceNow ITBM module, the company soon began to expand on ServiceNow’s out-of-the-box reporting packages and quickly ran into limitations.

The customer’s project management office (PMO) opted to use a third-party reporting tool, but encountered various frustrating challenges:

• The reporting experience was cumbersome and time-consuming
• Insight was shallow and didn’t empower educated decision-making
• Data wasn’t real-time resulting in obsolete reports that IT leadership couldn't trust

After using the third-party reporting tool for 6 months, the PMO determined they needed to find a better way.

After exploring VividCharts, the PMO saw the platform as the ideal solution to their challenges. The PMO was particularly excited that:

• VividCharts is built within ServiceNow
• VividCharts offers a range of engaging and customizable data visualizations
• VividCharts leverages current data directly from their ServiceNow instance

The Problem

As part of their Quality Control Plan, the PMO held Monthly Project Reviews where Project Managers (PMs) provided a read-out to Project Management leadership and key stakeholders on the status of their projects.

Before using VividCharts, the PMO developed a PowerPoint template for the PMs to insert their data, with the idea that this would establish consistency across Monthly Project Reviews and allow for streamlined discussion. However, this project came with several costs and disadvantages:

• Process cost PMs 1 to 1.5 hours per project per month just to screenshot, pull data, copy/paste, and build their presentation
• As information was extracted from Excel and PowerPoints were added to Sharepoint, information was siloed and not easily accessible
• Process was redundant as PMs were already inserting their data into ServiceNow
• Presentations lacked an engaging look, feel and professional consistency

The Solution

With VividCharts, the customer knew there was a better way to compile presentations for their Monthly Project Reviews. Within two weeks, the PMO team was able to build out a Monthly Project Review template using VividCharts Narratives.

VividCharts Narratives is a feature that groups dashboards together in a presentation- style format, similar to a slide deck. As VividCharts’ dashboards are generated using real-time data from ServiceNow, Narratives enables the user to configure a Narrative one time, then reuse the presentation on a periodic basis without starting from scratch.

With the Monthly Project Review template in hand, the PMO was able to relieve their project managers of the tedious administrative aspects of building their presentations.

Project managers, PMO leadership, and stakeholders could also independently access the Narrative on-demand via a URL, without relying on someone else to deliver the presentation or update the data. If someone needed to extract the Monthly Project Review from ServiceNow, they could immediately download the Narrative as a PDF or PPT.

The PMO was able to configure their Monthly Project Review Narrative to include everything they determined necessary, such as specific KPIs and project status, and could also design the Narrative to reflect company aesthetic and branding.

With VividCharts as part of their platform, the customer is now able to manage a more mature Project Management Office.

The Results

After collecting feedback from colleagues, the PMO rolled out the solution to Project Managers and immediately started realizing its benefits:

• Saved 60 hours per month in administrative, manual reporting – nearly half the time and cost of a full-time employee position
• Increased user adoption as the VividCharts solution incentivized PMs to adopt ServiceNow
• Created beautifully branded and standardized presentations powered by real-time data

In addition to improving the reporting experience, VividCharts enabled the company to realize the following big picture benefits:

Improved relationships with Project Managers

For most PMs, the administrative aspects of their role are not what brings them to work every day. By leveraging an innovative reporting solution like VividCharts, the PMO offers their Project Managers engaging and meaningful work.

Deeper insights into PMO impact

With VividCharts, the customer can present insights to leadership, rather than shallow data. PMs can also more clearly understand what area needs more attention, rather than having to comb through data to find what they are looking for.

PMs could focus on customers, not data collection

With VividCharts, the PMO created capacity for the PMs to invest more time to work with customers and not with PowerPoint.