ServiceNow is and has been the backbone of General Electric’s IT processes and requests. From small service operations to complete infrastructure redesigns, ServiceNow is one of the most important tools within the company. On a daily basis there are up to 15,000 users servicing tickets and fulfilling requests across the globe.
For many years, this tool was taken for granted and it missed a lot of critical updates, which left the company vulnerable to cyber-attacks and other risks. These issues stem from over customization throughout the years. We could no longer support all the processes created and could not meet the demands from our users to upgrade to the latest version. It was imperative that we modernize the tool and simplify everything by keeping the system operating as close as “out of the box” as possible. This would eventually allow us to reduce technical debt and make upgrades a lot quicker. By this point it was taking us close to 6 to 8 months to make a single system update and we were behind 2 to 3 years’ worth of upgrades.
To solve the challenge we were facing, we first needed to gather user feedback. We interviewed users across multiple GE businesses to understand how they interacted with ServiceNow. We collected quantitative feedback via online surveys. We collected qualitative feedback via recording sessions in which we asked the users to walk us through their daily operations. As a result from our research, we grouped our users into personas so we could catalog the type of work they did and issues they were facing.
To track our feedback and keep our users engaged, we created a tool called Bright Ideas. This collection site allowed us to not only have a repository of all our feedback but it allowed us to hear first-hand what the users wanted and what they didn’t via a voting system.
One of the early challenges we faced was fixing the navigation. Users didn’t seem to know where processes were housed and the search function was not helpful to them. As we worked on improving the overall navigation, we started to work on developing a new look that would align better with GE’s branding. During this phase I developed a mix of low-fi wireframes, mock-ups and prototypes. We tested different ideas with the users to arrive to what eventually be the final solution. With the help of our development team, we made decisions on which type of navigation would be the best suited to meet our goals as well as satisfy user needs.
Eventually we found a compromise between what the users needed and what our development team could do without over customization.
Once we made changes to the platform and released them to the public, we tried to build rapport with our users. In order to do so, we leveraged a platform named BrightIdea. This platform allowed us to receive feature suggestions directly from the users. Users then would vote the ideas they felt were the most important to them.
Using agile methodology, we worked in 2 week sprints to implement the best ideas. We iterated the user interface as we discovered pain points and opportunities. To this day, there is an ongoing process to make the tool better and to be able to automate certain aspects. During our research we also discovered that there were knowledge gaps that our user base had regarding the capabilities of ServiceNow.To solve this, I developed more than 50 videos of training materials to reduce the learning curve of this robust tool.
The ServiceNow upgrade and redesign has been a success in many ways. We have been able to cut upgrading time to a new instance from 6-8 months to 2-3 weeks.
Adding features can be done within one or two sprints instead of months. Visually, ServiceNow looks a lot more polished and the users have adopted the new UI very well. We kept open channels of communication with our user base to adjust on the system on the fly.