What’s New in New York for Service Portfolio Management

[David Thigpen]

Service Portfolio Management (SPM) and the Service Owner Workspace (SOW) provide organizations advanced ways to document, understand, and monitor the services they provide to their customers. It provides the ability to organize and group IT services according to those personsthat are accountable for them, as well as keeping those parties informed regarding service performance.

With the New York release, we’ve made some major changes that make SPM and SOW much more powerful:

Define Multiple Portfolios

SPM now has the ability to define multiple IT service portfolios, each with its own unique taxonomy structure.  Expanded service and service offering data is available to fully document the expectations and designs of the services. Services and service offerings are then associated with specific Portfolios,which givescontext of how the services are managed together. Each portfolio can be designated with unique ownership and performance metrics definitions and expectations.

 

Define Unique Portfolio Taxonomies

Each portfolio can have a unique categorization taxonomy. Using a basic tree diagram structure, similar services can be grouped together in the taxonomy to reflect the realities of differing ownership and cost structures that manage the IT services. The number of layers and branches within the tree structure, as well as the name of each, is completely customizable.

 

A Unique Performance Model for each Portfolio

Service Owner Workspace* (SOW) allows creation of a flexible performance model that tracks metrics at the service offering level, while also normalizingand aggregatingperformance throughout a portfolio. The base configuration includes 5 metrics: Stability, Catalog Activity, Availability, CSAT, and SLA Breaches. These metrics can be disabled if needed, and additional metrics can be defined using Performance Analytics indicators. These same metrics can then be leveraged as needed by each portfolio, sothat the service characteristics most important to target consumers are measured and tracked.

Track Service Offering Estimated Spend*

The service offering estimated spend can be tracked by service owners using a simple fixed or per-unit cost model, or by using the pre-built allocation methods available with the Financial Management for SPM included in the Service Owner Workspace. The full power of the Financial Management engine is available to define and allocate spend to each defined offering.   

 

The Service Owner Workspace*

Finally, the new Service Owner Workspace in New York brings together all the information a service owner needs to maintain a full awareness of their services.  Spend, performance, and impactful events tracked within ServiceNow are all displayed, along with support team contact information and base service and service offering information.  The performance metrics for a service offering can be viewed over time, revealing trends that may alert the service owner to needed action on their part. 

The Service Owner Workspace gives the service owner the tools needed to quickly evaluate their services, and gain confidence that they are performing at an expected level.

 

A Quantum Leap in Capabilities

Service Portfolio Management and the Service Owner Workspace provide ServiceNow customers with sophisticated new capabilities to understand and manage their IT services from a more business-orientedperspective.  Service Ownership requires being able to explain to business stakeholders how a service meets their particular needs.  The ability to do so via the new metrics performance model, then maintaining and displaying that awareness over time will give service owners confidence as they interact with their customers and stakeholder.

There are other enhancements and changes made to SPM and SOW for New York release that are not covered here, so please check out the docs site here and here for complete details.

*Service Owner Workspace includes full Performance Analytics and Financial Management for SPM capabilities as part of the ITSM Professional subscription.

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