1. #4: Baseline and track performance, usage KPIs, and metrics
Success Pillar: State and measure your business goals

2. Success Pillars – Structure
State and measure your business goals
Actively lead the transformation
Get your ServiceNow foundations right
Create excitement, drive adoption 1
State your transformation vision and outcomes 5
Engage executive sponsor to drive change and remove roadblocks 11
Manage to
“Out-of-the Box” 15
Design an engaging self-service employee & customer experience 2
Build your business case 6
Find, manage, and coordinate capable, certified partners 12
Discover and map your service assets 16
Design an optimal agent and rep experience 3
Build a phased
program plan, identify quick win 7
Build dedicated, dynamic governance process, policies & team 13
Plan your architecture, instances, integrations and data flows 17
Create change management plan 4
Baseline and track performance, usage KPIs and metrics 8
Reimagine how you want work processes to flow 14
Plan for upgrades at least once a year 18
Build internal team of ServiceNow experts & train users 9
Define and map out your business services 19
Build a community of champions 10
Manage platform demand

3. Baseline and track performance, usage KPIs and metrics
Metrics are an essential method of measuring progress towards set outcomes. When you baseline and track the right metrics to measure ServiceNow performance and adoption, as well as the amount of value ServiceNow delivers to your business, you are able to assess whether you are getting what you expected from your deployment and to course correct as needed. Metrics also help prove that your ServiceNow deployment is supporting business objectives, providing insight into where ServiceNow is generating immediate value to the business and where you expect to deliver future value.
Insight:  Baseline and track performance
There are three things you must get right upfront to effectively baseline and track performance:
Understand your objectives and vision for implementing ServiceNow in your organization. Without knowing what end-goal you are trying to measure progress against, investments in metrics will not deliver useful information.   
Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that tell you if your ServiceNow implementation is on track and delivering value to the business
Define diagnostic metrics that you and your team can use to predict and diagnose KPI performance, and inform course-corrections as needed 
Once you’ve defined a set of workable KPIs and metrics, your use of metrics should be treated as a program - one that is updated and refined as your business goals and ServiceNow implementation evolve. 
Key Implementation Steps
Start
Improve
Optimize
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage

4. Step 1: Understand business objectives
The end goal to baselining and tracking performance is to assess whether you are on or off track with delivering expected business outcomes. To do this well, it’s important to first understand your organization’s vision for ServiceNow, the business outcomes you expect to deliver, and the plan for delivering these outcomes over time. This makes it possible to define a credible set of KPIs that, when used together, can directly measure progress and indicate whether you are on the path to value. 
Review your ServiceNow vision, business case, and phased program plan to understand what you will need to measure to reliably track progress towards achieving business value
Review your documented ServiceNow vision, considering:  
What value are you trying to deliver to the business using ServiceNow? For example, it might be modernize service management to increase the speed of IT. 
What is the most important thing you need to measure to assess if you are supporting the vision? For example, it might be changes in IT speed.
Review your ServiceNow business case, considering: 
What business outcomes were promised in the business case? This lets you know the degree of improvement needed, such as10% increase in IT speed.
When does the business case promise outcomes by? This provides a rough sense of the amount of time you need to measure value. For example, a 10% increase in IT speed in 18 months.
Review the ServiceNow phased project plan, considering: 
What solutions will be implemented to deliver the business value promised in the business case for ServiceNow? This lets you know what specific capabilities you need to measure to be able to comprehensively track progress towards delivering value. For example, you might implement incident management and change management on ServiceNow to increase how quickly you are able to manage IT operations.
When will the solutions be implemented by? In what order? This provides insight into what is most important to measure first. For example, you might start by implementing incident management, then change management. If so, you should focus first on measuring incident management implementation and performance.
Practitioner Insight: Technical experts often jump directly into defining KPIs that measure how well their systems perform. While system-level KPIs are an important part of measuring the value that ServiceNow can deliver, they do not speak directly to business value and overlook the potential for ServiceNow to be a strategic platform. Take the time upfront to understand business objectives and to apply your understanding to define a comprehensive set of KPIs that both inform technical decisions and measure the value you're delivering to your business users. 
Steps
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage

5. Step 2a: Define outcome KPIs
Defining outcome KPIs (indicators that measure the outcomes delivered by what you’ve implemented on ServiceNow) is an important step to be able to actually measure progress towards a high-level vision. Consider this – how do you measure the KPI 10% increase in IT speed?  Instead of trying to measure that more abstract goal directly, you need to define KPIs that act as proxies to help you measure the many components that you need to perform to reach that abstract goal. Combined with implementation KPIs that tell you if the technology itself is working well (defined in step 2b), outcome KPIs can help you assess if you are executing your vision for ServiceNow.
The ServiceNow platform owner should partner with relevant service owners and process owners to define outcome KPIs that measure how solutions implemented on ServiceNow are delivering value and enabling expected business outcomes (e.g. measuring improvements to incident management that are helping increase how fast incidents are resolved). 
Consider the following questions to identify what outcome indicators you need to measure:
How does each solution implemented on ServiceNow contribute to delivering business value, as promised in your business case for ServiceNow? 
For example, how does implementing incident management on ServiceNow help you modernize service management to increase IT speed by 10% in 18 months? One potential answer is that Incident management can be more automated and streamlined on ServiceNow, which means you can resolve incidents faster with fewer people directly involved in managing the process. 
What do I need to measure about the implemented solution, based on how that solution delivers business value? 
For example, to measure if successfully deploying incident management on ServiceNow helps deliver IT speed by reducing the amount of time needed to resolve incidents, you need to be able to measure the speed delivered by the deployed solution
Practitioner Insight: The set of outcome KPIs you need changes depending on what you’re implementing and what goals you have. What’s important is that you define outcome KPIs that actually measure the ‘outcome,’ or value, that’s being delivered by your implementation to meet you goal. To do this well, you need to first consider what value you need to deliver with each solution implemented on ServiceNow to support your vision, then figure what would need to happen to indicate that you are delivering the value needed with each solution, and finally define a well-articulated KPI that can provide evidence of whether or not that value is being delivered.
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage
Steps

6. Step 2a: Define outcome KPIs (continued)
Define 1-3 KPIs per implemented solution that measures how that solution supports a desired business outcome
Consider the key benefit that each implemented solution needs to deliver to enable your vision (e.g. speed, cost, quality, etc.).
Consider the indicators that you could measure that would tell you how much value the implemented solution is delivering and helping you enable your vision
Example: if you want to increase speed, you can measure reductions in the time it takes for a process to work end-to-end, how long each individual process sub step takes, or how long a critical step in the process takes
Define a KPI that will measure this indicator (e.g. “% reduction in the time it takes to resolve incidents” and/or “average time to complete each process sub step”)
Practitioner Insight: ServiceNow Performance Analytics offers over 500 different out-of-box KPIs that you can select to track. Once you have decided what you need to measure, consider how you can use Performance Analytics to quickly enable real-time performance tracking directly on the ServiceNow platform.
Practitioner Insight: Outcome KPIs should be directly linked to the business case that was created to justify your investment in ServiceNow. This business case is typically based on KPIs that provide measurable indicators that show if you are delivering business value. By tracking these KPIs you can track if you are realizing the value that was projected in the business case.
* See appendix for example outcome KPIs by business outcome
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage
Steps

7. Step 2b: Define implementation KPIs
Measuring and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) provides proof that you are making progress towards achieving the overall vision for your ServiceNow implementation. Outcome KPIs (defined in step 2a) are critical because they help directly measure business outcomes; but to comprehensively track progress you also need to define Implementation KPIs that help you measure if you’re setting the technology up correctly, are optimizing system performance, are seeing the usage and adoption you need, and if solutions are implemented well on the platform.
Work with the ServiceNow platform owner, relevant service owners and process owners to define implementation KPIs that measure platform performance, adoption, and solution deployment to indicate if the implementation is meeting its objectives (e.g. technical stability, adoption, etc.)
Define platform performance KPIs that will measure the quality and reliability of the ServiceNow Platform. Consider using the following KPIs:
“% uptime” – measures the percent of time when the ServiceNow platform is in operation, providing an indicator or how reliable your platform is
“Mean time to repair” (MTTR) – measures the average time it takes to repair the platform when it goes down, providing a basic measure of how maintainable and repairable your platform is
“% of incidents resolved within service-level agreement (SLA)” – measures how reliably you can restore services on the ServiceNow platform within the time limits you set with platform users in your SLAs
Define adoption KPIs that will measure how successfully ServiceNow is being adopted in your organization. Consider using the following KPIs:
“# of unique users migrated to platform” – measures how many users have started to use the Now Platform (adoption)
“# of processes migrated to platform” – measures how many processes have migrated to use the Now Platform (adoption) 
“Average # of daily uses” – measures how much the processes on the Now Platform are being used (usage)
Define solution implementation KPIs that can measure how well each process/service is implemented on ServiceNow. Consider the following:  
“Average time to complete the process (or to fulfill a request)” – measures process speed to track improvements in speed over time (e.g. improvements in how quickly you can resolve incidents)
“% process success rate” – measures the quality of your services by tracking how often your processes work as expected (e.g. change management success rates measure how often your change management process successfully enacts a change without incident)
“% process availability” – measures how available and reliable your process is for users
“# of users/fulfillers using the process” – measures adoption for specific services to track adoption increases or decreases over time
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage
Steps

8. Step 2c: Set KPI performance goals
Once you’ve defined the KPIs you need to report on, you need to set performance goals for each KPI that you can track across each phase of your ServiceNow project plan. It’s also important that you consider how often you need to collect data to update KPI measurements in order to inform the groups that use KPIs to guide day-to-day work and decision-making. 
Set baseline metrics and goal metrics for all defined KPIs
Gather historic data (when possible) showing relevant past performance measurements to compare with your new KPI measurements. For example, your current state may be 10 touch points to manage incidents.
Set goal values for each newly defined KPI, with a set timeframe for when you want to achieve those goals. So if your desired end state is 6 touch points to manage incidents within 18 months, it results in a 40% reduction in touch points to manage incidents. 
Document these goals so that you can refer to them when presenting on KPI performance in the future
Set intermediate KPI target goals for each phase of your program plan
Review your ServiceNow phased project plan 
Define target KPI performance goals for the end of each ‘phase’ in your project plan. For example, set goals for ServiceNow adoption at 1,000 unique ServiceNow users by end of phase 1 (6 months) then for 2,500 unique ServiceNow users by end of phase 2 (12 months) and so on.
Focus first on setting goals for phase 1 for all defined KPIs
Record when KPI performance goals are met/missed over time
Define what your KPIs enable and how often measurements are needed
Identify the specific actions/decisions that each KPI informs (e.g. budget adjustments, work prioritization, investment decisions, etc.)
Consider how often each KPI will be used to inform those actions/decisions (e.g. the KPI “# of tickets in backlog” informs an administrator's day-to-day work and should be provided frequently, whereas KPIs measuring platform adoption rates might only needed to inform actions/decisions during monthly leadership meetings)
Schedule when KPI performance will be measured and recorded based on how frequently the KPI is used to inform actions/decisions
Display KPI results in a dashboard, either using ServiceNow Performance Analytics dashboarding capabilities or your own format
Practitioner Insight: Consider how different groups (service fulfillers, the executive steering board, governance bodies, service owners, etc.) can use KPI performance to guide where they need to focus their work. Use this insight to provide only relevant KPIs results to each separate group, and to potentially guide custom dashboard design for each group. 
Steps
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage

9. Step 3: Define diagnostic metrics
KPIs are important performance indicators, best used to report out on progress and prompt decisions at the leadership level. However, they don’t necessarily provide the ServiceNow implementation and management team enough detailed information to know that they’re doing the right things on a daily basis and when something goes wrong in time to course correct. To fill this gap, you also need to define ‘diagnostic metrics’ (metrics that report on the performance of various processes or activities that together contribute to achieving KPI goals) that you and your team can track to be able to predict and understand more granularly what is happening with KPI performance. These metrics should help you be able to diagnose KPI performance trends so that you know how to re-prioritize work and adjust project plans to resolve roadblocks that could jeopardize your ability to achieve business outcomes. 
Define diagnostic metrics that help you and your team understand KPI results and inform how you can influence them
Review each of the KPIs you defined in step 2
Determine if you are able to influence the performance of each KPI directly in a daily or weekly timeframe. If not, consider defining and tracking other related metrics that you know how to influence and could be used predict how that KPI will perform longer term
For example, # of unique users migrated to platform is difficult to influence short term, so tracking something more manageable like % of fulfillers trained on ServiceNow provides you with a metric you know how to influence – by training fulfillers. And it can be used to predict if you will meet your user adoption KPI goals, because it’s more likely that users will migrated to the platform if fulfillers are trained on using the platform
Define if each KPI provides enough information for you to know how to course correct if performance is poor. If not, consider what other related metrics you can measure that will help inform project plan adjustments to steer KPI results positively
For example, % reduction in the time it takes to resolve incidents measures changes in how long it takes the incident management process to flow from end-to-end, but what do you do if this time isn’t going down? Defining diagnostic metrics like reduction in number of touch points to manage incidents or average amount of time spent at each touch point provides easily measurable indicators that can inform what is preventing expected KPI performance 
Define diagnostic metrics for each KPI as needed, depending on your assessment above. Ensure that your ServiceNow Platform Team is aware of these metrics and build a dashboard to track these metrics so the team can diagnose performance trends and predict whether their work is on or off course.
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage
Steps
Steps
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage

10. Step 3: Define diagnostic metrics (continued)
Use diagnostic metrics to inform course corrections in project plans
Review KPI performance at least monthly
Involve your team in investigating where KPI performance is trending to miss target goals (set in step 2c), using diagnostic metrics as indicators
Document why you think KPI performance was abnormal, citing diagnostic metrics that support your analysis
Revise project plans (deadlines, project sequencing, planned deployments/updates, etc.) based on findings
Practitioner Insight: You likely won’t need to define diagnostic metrics for each of your defined KPIs – for example, many implementation KPIs might speak for themselves. But you will need diagnostic metrics that help you figure out what is happening with some of your KPIs (especially for outcome KPIs) if you want to understand the root cause of KPI performance and to actually influence them.
Practitioner Insight: Implementation KPIs can also provide useful insight as “diagnostic metrics” to diagnose the cause for trends in outcome KPI performance (e.g. if operations teams are not adopting incident management on ServiceNow at the rate you expected, it’s unlikely that you will realize expected cost decreases associated with implementation of that capability) 
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage
Steps
Steps
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage

11. Step 4: Continually improve metrics tracking
Once you’ve defined a useful set of KPIs and diagnostic metrics, it’s time to consider how you will make sure that your efforts to measure performance continue to deliver what they are intended to deliver over time. Treating performance measurement and tracking as a one-time project is a mistake. Instead, you should continue to invest to ensure that metrics are defined as well as is possible, updated when needed, and shared with the right people. 
Define accountability for ongoing metrics management
The ServiceNow Platform owner should partner with their Executive Sponsor to assign one or more metrics managers with responsibility and accountability for ongoing metrics management, including responsibility and accountability for:  
Finding and maintaining data sources needed to report on defined KPIs -- this is critical because ServiceNow may be connecting to and consolidating multiple data sources across many systems to generate reports 
Re-visiting your ServiceNow vision, business case, and project plan documents every six months to see if any changes have been made that would require KPI re-definition
Periodic review (at least monthly and always after when new business and/or ServiceNow visions and objectives are set) of what KPIs need to be tracked, removing existing KPIs are no longer relevant and identifying when new metrics are needed 
Redefining KPIs in collaboration with process/service owners as needed
Sharing KPI dashboards with roles & groups that need them to inform decisions
Assessing if diagnostic metrics are helping the ServiceNow team diagnose issues and make course corrections, suggesting re-definition or new metrics as needed. 
Map new KPI management responsibilities and authorities with responsibilities and authorities of other existing roles (if you maintain an organizational ‘RACI’ chart that documents role responsibilities and accountabilities, add ‘KPI manager(s)’ to the chart)
Identify where KPI management responsibilities and accountabilities may overlap with existing roles and verify that these overlaps will not cause confusion
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage
Steps
Steps
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage

12. Step 4: Continually improve metrics tracking (continued)
Have the role(s) assigned accountability for metric tracking conduct a quarterly review of existing metrics and how they are measured and tracked
During metrics reviews, have the metrics manager(s) ask: 
Are the KPIs defined still a useful set of performance indicators?
Are your KPI data sources consistent and secure? Has data quality improved or deteriorated? 
Are you still tracking the most up to date KPIs? Have any objectives been fulfilled, meaning relevant KPIs no longer need to be tracked? Have there been any changes in strategic vision or your ServiceNow roadmap that might impact what you need to measure? Have there been any product changes from ServiceNow that impact what you need to measure?
Are your stakeholder groups still getting the information they need from dashboards? Are the KPIs actually informing the decisions they need to make? Would they suggest any improvements, redefinitions or new KPIs? 
Are your diagnostic metrics helping you predict KPI performance, diagnose issues, and influence positive results?  
Benchmark against peers (including companies in the same industry, of similar size in terms of revenue, number of employees, and competitors) every six to 12 months to source new ideas for how to measure and track performance, considering: 
Are they using similar KPIs if their objectives are consistent?
How are they performing? Are we ahead or behind?
Are there opportunities to learn from what peers are doing? For example, are they measuring cleverly defined KPIs that we aren’t using?
Where can we increase our KPI performance goals to leapfrog peers?
Practitioner Insight: Many organizations hire consulting or advisory companies to help them benchmark against other companies. While these services can provide extensive comparisons, they can be costly and time-consuming engagements. Alternatively, you can try partnering with peers at other companies to ‘talk shop’ and compare results (although you should be careful about partnering this way with peers working at direct competitor companies). ServiceNow Community forums, user groups, and events are all opportunities to meet others that might be interested in this kind of informal benchmarking. If that’s not enough, ServiceNow Benchmarks and Data Insights can help you compare your service management performance to the industry averages of your peers.
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage
Steps
Steps
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage

13. Step 5: Extend metrics usage
Unless you invest in enabling others to view and use your measurements, metrics only offer evidence of how ServiceNow is supporting business outcomes to you, your team and the senior leaders you report to. To fully realize the value of tracking ServiceNow metrics, you need all groups using ServiceNow in your organization to use metrics to tell them how they do work and make decisions. Excellent results are most likely when employees understand how to inform their work using past performance measurement.
Provide groups that can benefit from informing their work with ServiceNow KPI performance (e.g. fulfillers, operations teams, leadership, governance committees, etc.) with KPI measurements that are relevant to their work
List the different stakeholder groups that you think could benefit by using KPI performance to inform their work – for example, business leaders from each of the business areas you support with ServiceNow, governance boards, fulfillers, IT operations teams, partners & vendors.
Work with someone from each of the groups on your list to discuss the types of information that would be most helpful to them, then help them select 2-5 KPIs (from those defined in step 2) that will most closely provide the information they need
If no pre-defined KPIs will provide the information they need, consider where new KPIs can be defined
Based on your conversation with someone from each group, build a custom dashboard for each group that presents up-to-date results for the KPIs you helped them select (and explore how ServiceNow Performance Analytics can support this). 
Meet with someone from each metrics user group every 6 months to make sure that the KPIs on their dashboard are still relevant to the work they do
During these meetings, collect examples of how their group used metrics to inform their work and decisions – looking for success stories that can be shared with leaders and members from other groups 
Practitioner insight: ServiceNow Performance Analytics offers a number of pre-built, out-of-box dashboards already designed to inform different stakeholder groups that you can quickly turn on and share using the Platform.
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage
Steps
Steps
1. Understand business objectives
2. Define KPIs
3. Define diagnostic metrics
4. Continually improve metrics tracking
5. Extend metrics usage

14. KPIs and Stakeholders Key Performance Indicators Essential KPIs
# of defined KPIs
% of KPIs with associated diagnostic metrics
# of project plan adjustments (associated with metrics performance)
# of groups using KPI measurements to inform work
‘Nice to Have’
% KPIs that have been re-defined in current year
% change of total defined KPIs in current year
Stakeholder Map
Responsible/Accountable
ServiceNow Platform Owner
ServiceNow Executive Sponsor
Service owners
Process owners
CIO/ Senior IT Leadership
Consulted/Informed
Enterprise architecture
Business engagement teams
IT staff (especially help desk)
Vendors and partners
Business leaders (in areas where ServiceNow is implemented)

15. Appendix: Example Outcome KPIs by business outcome
Modernize IT Service Management
Take control of applications, projects, and financials
Eliminate service outages
Resolve real time security threats fast
Consumerize the employee service experience
Resolve customer issues fast
Optimize performance with real-time analytics
Outcome KPIs
Reduction in incidents caused by changes
Reduction in number of touch points to manage incidents or requests
Improved delivery of requests
Reduction/ rationalization of applications under management
Reduction in demand cycle time
Reduced cycle time for budget/ project portfolio planning
Reduced project cycle time
Reduction in incidents related to changes
Reduction in change planning time
Decrease in incidents
Decrease in outage MTTR
Decrease in major outages
Decrease in time to prioritize and resolve incidents
Reduction in backlog of security incidents and vulnerabilities
Reduction of business risk through visibility into critical services
Reduced time spent on enrichment tasks through automation and threat intelligence
Decrease in case resolution times
Improvements in employee satisfaction
Decreased cycle time in request process
Increased adoption of self-service
Increase in cases deflected through knowledge
Reduced time spent resolving cases
Improved first call resolution
Reduced average case handling time
Improved customer and agent satisfaction
Improved NPS
Improved customer retention
Reduction in customer effort
Reduction in number of reporting tools
Improvements in data accuracy
Improvements in employee productivity
Improvements in operational efficiency for services