How ServiceNow Impact helps businesses accelerate time to value

The promise of software as a service (SaaS) has always been value-based pricing. Rather than owning a suite of products they might not need, customers can choose only the services they do need to drive specific outcomes for their businesses. From day one, SaaS was about value.

More often than not, products in the enterprise software space fail to live up to this ideal. In light of that, we came up with a crazy idea to help customers accelerate time to value.

The idea clearly struck a chord. In its first year of general availability, ServiceNow Impact™ attracted nearly 1,000 customers and became the fastest-growing product in company history. 

Connecting the dots

ServiceNow Impact combines AI‑powered recommendations, expert guidance, premium tech support, and tools—all delivered in a personalized digital experience. A centralized dashboard enables customers and partners alike to quickly and easily visualize and realize the value from their software investments.

A global financial services organization supporting more than 11,000 institutions worldwide used ServiceNow Impact to help overcome organizational complexity. This customer used a range of ServiceNow® products to work smarter, faster, and more securely, but the teams managing those products were based in three different countries.

As a result, the teams used the Now Platform® inconsistently and not to its full potential. The customer deployed Impact Squads to deliver targeted training to spread ServiceNow knowledge across the company. Right away, the customer reduced manual testing for upgrades from two weeks to three days. Less time upgrading meant more time deploying advanced platform features, such as Virtual Agent.

Maximizing effectiveness

I love seeing the human impact of ServiceNow Impact. Using the Now Platform, the state of Montana built a rental assistance app that distributes financial assistance as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. ServiceNow Impact helped the state maximize the app’s effectiveness, distributing critical funds that keep people in their homes.

With guidance from the ServiceNow Impact Squad, the state was able to “quickly digitize our emergency rental assistance program to serve more Montana citizens more efficiently,” says Cheryl Cohen, executive director of Montana Housing.

“The program disbursed $112.4 million to 12,721 households. With the technology, we also identified 2,600 potentially fraudulent applications requesting over $47 million in assistance. We know our rental assistance program has made a real impact on the lives of people in this state. I get teary-eyed thinking about it,” she adds.

Putting focus where it matters

Simply put, ServiceNow Impact helps customers get to value quickly so they can focus on larger strategic initiatives. “ServiceNow Impact takes a more proactive approach to instance health, addressing potential problems before they disrupt our business,” explains Thomas Bruss, director of enterprise services at Accenture. “This enables my team to focus more on strategic initiatives that drive true change.”

ServiceNow Impact also helps us realize our founding vision. Although our IT Service Management (ITSM) product was perhaps our first breakout success, founder Fred Luddy never saw ServiceNow as a point solution. He always saw the potential for ServiceNow to be a flexible, scalable platform that drives digital transformation. With its emphasis on value acceleration, ServiceNow Impact gets us closer to that vision.

Listening to customers

One reason ServiceNow Impact has been so successful is its foundation on customer feedback. The solution is part of our bold ambition to redefine the customer experience in SaaS. In our pursuit to be industry-defining, we started by listening. Customers told us value realization and speed to value matter most to them.

When we piloted ServiceNow Impact with 26 customers in 2021, we thought it important to charge for this unproven product in order to hold ourselves accountable. These initial customers were more than happy to pay for the pilot program, and all of them are still using ServiceNow Impact today.

Passing the torch

We can’t tell the story of ServiceNow Impact without mentioning Paul Fipps, one of its original leaders and champions. As the former chief experience officer at Under Armour, his outside-in perspective enabled him to see beyond the status quo to what SaaS could and should be.

Now that the ServiceNow Impact hypothesis has been validated, Paul has taken on other challenges within ServiceNow and passed the torch to a new leader for the next phase of ServiceNow Impact: Tony Colon, senior vice president of customer and partner excellence.

Tony has already built four $100 million businesses over the course of his career. He knows how to innovate in the service of customers. What excites me most about Tony is that his deep experience hasn’t diminished his disruptor’s vision. I know he’ll build the ServiceNow Impact business in a way that continuously expands the product’s founding vision.

Closing the customer value gap and accelerating and expanding value for all our customers are two of my highest priorities in 2023 and beyond. ServiceNow Impact will be one of the most important tools to help us accomplish those goals.

Find out more about how ServiceNow Impact helps accelerate time to value.

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