Supporting the HR organization beyond implementation

As ServiceNow continues to mature, it has become the platform of choice for driving workflow across the enterprise.  This expansion enables organizations to deliver additional services and cross-functional support while providing a more consistent, streamlined employee experience.  On the other hand, it has also introduced the challenge of balancing the needs for continued development, support, and administration across a wider set of stakeholders.   

For HR organizations, it is particularly important to ensure that processes stay current, content published to employees is accurate and relevant, and sensitive information is kept private and secured.  Whether you are just planning for your initial implementation, getting ready to go live with HR Service Delivery (HRSD), or are already using ServiceNow, it is important to build the right team for ongoing sustainment.  This starts by understanding the differences between the roles of ServiceNow Developers, System Administrators, and HR Administrators. 

ServiceNow Developers

A ServiceNow Developer is not only responsible for configuring and implementing the initial HR solution but also for continued growth and changes after going live.  This often includes activities such as enhancing existing services, creating new services, configuring changes to flows, and configuring security policies as needs change.  Typically, this role is needed for any changes that follow a traditional development lifecycle where updates are created, migrated, and tested across each environment.  Developers supporting HRSD benefit the most from ServiceNow Fundamentals, HR Fundamentals, and HR Implementer training. 

System Administrators

A System Administrator is responsible for ongoing maintenance, health, and support of the ServiceNow platform.  This includes activities such as performing platform maintenance, managing patches, and upgrades, providing break/fix support, monitoring integrations with other systems, and managing groups and user access.  System Administrators typically support the entire platform and benefit the most from ServiceNow Fundamentals training, but HR Fundamentals training is also beneficial to provide a solid understanding of HRSD and how it is impacted by platform-level changes. 

HR Administrators

HR Administrator is a role unique to HRSD, which provides the ability to directly manage some common configurations, as well as access to data across HRSD which may be sensitive or restricted from other users including the System Administrator.  Some of the common activities they perform are managing access for HR agents, updating assignment and routing rules for cases and tasks, overriding approvals on cases, and managing reports and dashboards.  HR Administrators benefit most from HR Fundamentals training but should start with ServiceNow Fundamentals to establish a good base of platform knowledge. 

Centralized vs Distributed Team: What's Best for You?

Once these roles are understood, the next step is to determine whether to create a centralized or distributed team.  Many organizations start by implementing ServiceNow to support a single business area and grow the ServiceNow platform team from within.  This usually starts with IT, but it is increasingly common for HR to initiate the ServiceNow journey themselves as well.   

As additional business areas are onboarded, the team will need to grow accordingly in both skills and capacity.  This can be done within a single team, by adding resources and/or training the existing resources.  The advantage is the ability to ensure visibility into the demands and changes across all aspects of the platform.  The challenge is usually the depth of knowledge within each business area, requiring more engagement from and interaction with subject matter experts. 

The other option is to introduce a distributed model to keep HR-specific functions, such as HR Administration and HR Developers, within a separate team, such as HRIT.  The advantage to this model is that the HR organization can self-manage common items through the HR Administrator, and they can also maintain a separate, prioritized backlog of work for Developers that are trained and focused on HRSD.  The challenge with this model is maintaining consistency and alignment with the platform team and other distributed teams, however, this can be overcome with a well-defined and executed governance model and communication plan. 

Final Thoughts

Needless to say, ServiceNow is a remarkable platform that can offer staggering ROI… as long as best practices underpin it. Addressing your people and processes is the dirty part of the job that often gets neglected, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Technology always works out. But without clearly defined people and process programs, the platform can run amok. Rolling out an intuitive HRSD solution with ServiceNow is a feat that will surely increase ROI, productivity, and customer satisfaction – but these areas can be maximized and sustained with an appropriate support system. No matter where you are on your HRSD journey with ServiceNow, we are here to help. Reach out to find out how we can help you amplify your HRSD outcomes.