Use the questions in this table as the starting point for interviews to help you arrive at a measurable definition of your business objectives. You may need to analyze your stakeholders’ responses to the questions. Keep in mind that the root causes behind their problems or obstacles could be complex. So, when you discuss the implementation’s future state, you’ll probably also need to build consensus among stakeholders. Build an implementation plan based on desired business outcomes Even when your vision, desired business outcomes, known obstacles, and success criteria are clear, don’t move directly to implementation. Instead, define your next step on the ServiceNow journey based on: • An explicit analysis of business and IT capabilities to see where ServiceNow can deliver the earliest, greatest value to the organization • A clear, phased understanding of the steps required to implement or optimize those capabilities Work with your process owners, service managers, functional leaders, and executive sponsor to assess and prioritize ServiceNow capabilities for implementation based on the most critical IT and business-level gaps for your organization. Below are the steps to follow: 1. Identify critical IT and business gaps to resolve Start with a clear understanding of the business objectives you want to achieve and the business capabilities you would need to build over time to achieve your objectives. For example: Company A wants to reduce4and ideally eliminate4service outages on critical systems. To do so, it must: • Build capabilities for effective outage management and resolution • Reduce the impact of outages and improve resolution speed • Innovate to eliminate service outages 2. Map and assess ServiceNow capabilities that help resolve your business or IT gaps Next, you need to map ServiceNow capabilities that align with the business capabilities you want to build. For example: The company A must identify, and assess, ServiceNow capabilities that are essential for effective outage management and resolution. These include: • IT Service Management 3 Problem, change, and configuration (CMDB) management • IT Operations Management 3 Discovery, service mapping • Analytics 3 Reporting 9 © 2021 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.