Launching exciting features before getting foundations in place
Written by Naïma Ait Oulahiane on 21/03/2025
Learn about the importance of getting the foundations of a ServiceNow employee experience project right before moving onto more advanced functionality.
Embarking on an Employee Experience project with ServiceNow is exciting and promises to enhance employee interactions and streamline processes. However, before diving into the more visible and engaging aspects like designing user-friendly interfaces or automating workflows, it’s crucial to establish a solid foundation. Getting the foundations right before moving onto more advanced functionality will underpin the success and adoption of the platform and provides the basis for HR Services moving forward.
From our experience the most successful implementations and adoptions of the technology are where HR teams have a clear vision for employee experience, have spent time to ensure the platform is future proof.
Dream big, but be realistic
After months planning, potentially a Request for Proposal process, and amazing demonstrations of the software platform's potential, the dream of transforming your employee, manager, and HR experiences feels within reach. But, first, you need to refine your vision and outline a clear roadmap including:
- Understanding where you currently stand.
- Defining where you want to go.
- Drafting and validating your roadmap.
During this phase, you may often hear your advisory or implementation partner say, "not yet" or "later," which can be frustrating at first. However, over time, you'll come to appreciate these steps as laying the critical foundations to the project’s long-term success.
How this looks in real life: A Story of Shattered Dreams and Picking Up the Pieces
We can see how this worked in one real life example with a customer in Belgium who was already ServiceNow for ITSM and CSM, and HR was about to join. With excitement from both the customer and Fujitsu, the kick-off meeting to initiate the first phase of the HRSD project started.
“Let's discuss the key success factors of an HRSD project,” we said.
Our customer was already excited about the digitization of their onboarding processes. Using ServiceNow for their HR processes would mean they could connect the ServiceNow platform to their external Payroll and Administration service provider. So many manual, cumbersome tasks could be streamlined, and HR could focus on what truly matters.
“We are not going to start with complex processes such as onboarding", we said.
And with that one sentence, we brought the customer back down to earth with a bump!
Fortunately, our customer didn't push back and insist we started with onboarding. This was a crucial decision and a change in their mindset. They embraced this feedback as an opportunity to focus on the foundation first. In doing so they ensured their employees could find the information they required with a knowledge base; a portal was created as the central place where employees could find what they needed, but also be guided to external platforms. A basic set of forms to request HR services was implemented, so that both the employees and HR could get used to the platform and benefit from it right from the start.
Due to this solid foundation, our customer quickly moved to a second phase and connected with their HR services provider. Soon a third phase with the desired onboarding and offboarding process will start. Managing the change in this sequential way ensures that the HR team and employees are brought along on the journey to ensure the project’s success. Sometimes you need to slow down to go faster.
The Journey Begins…
With your vision and roadmap in place, the journey begins, and unsurprisingly, you need to start with the basics. The image below shows a maturity model that helps you make the first steps:
Usually, you’ll start with:
- HR Data: Essential to identify your employees.
- Employee Center: A ‘one-stop-shop' so employees know where to go.
- HR Case Management: For effective communication and issue resolution.
- Knowledge Management: To provide easy access to information.
- HR Services: The services that your employees can request. E.g. Reimbursements for computer glasses, training, or parental leave.
- HR-triggered requests such as promotions or changes in job functions.
It’s important to prioritise where you start and focus on the decisions and action that will have the most impact. Your advisory or implementation partner should be able to help you work through this prioritisation exercise.
Some examples include:
- Deciding which processes to select and redesign first. For example, sometimes a process is very complex because of manual steps. For one customer, we had over 12 steps, of which 4 steps required signatures. We were able to redesign and simplify the process with half the steps and only one step requiring a signature.
- Figuring out how to launch a complete service offering with only half of the processes implemented.
- Change management and communication during the transition period when HR needs to work in ServiceNow alongside their previous systems.
Continue the Journey
Once your foundational elements are in place, you can begin to explore further automation opportunities:
- Launch lifecycles/journeys like onboarding, offboarding, and parental leave.
- Leverage generative AI to summarize HR cases or enhance Virtual Agent capabilities.
These enhancements will allow your organization to shift from reactive to proactive approaches, elevating the overall employee experience.
Written by
Naïma Ait Oulahiane
ServiceNow Employee Experience Lead at Fujitsu
Naïma Ait Oulahiane is a seasoned HR professional who has decided to share her passion & knowledge for the function and accompany others to take the tech journey and get the best out of it. Her career spans more than 15 years across a range of industries, leveraging ServiceNow to streamline HR processes. She's adept at designing and deploying ServiceNow solutions, improving efficiency and employee experience.
