How a Financial Services Organization Centralized Portfolio Management with ServiceNow SPM

Results

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Centralized project and program management across the organization on a single platform
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Portfolio Planning Workspace enabled, giving leadership real-time visibility into the full project portfolio
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Historical project data successfully migrated into ServiceNow SPM
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Project completed under budget, with savings reinvested into expanded scope at no additional cost to the client

Applications

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THE CLIENT

A complex organization that needed project management to match.

This client is a national financial services organization managing a wide portfolio of programs across multiple business functions. At their scale, the inability to see project health, track risks, and align resources in real time was a strategic liability. Leadership needed a single source of truth. The project management function needed to stop running on spreadsheets and disconnected tools.

The Ondaro team we worked with is one of the best teams I've ever worked with. They are easy to work with, generous with their knowledge and expertise, collaborative and exceeded our expectations!"

— Client Representative

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THE CHALLENGE

No visibility and no centralization. 

 

Project and program management was fragmented across the organization, with no consistent way for leadership to see status, risks, or resource alignment in one place. Updates were largely manual. Reporting to leadership required significant effort to compile, and even then, the picture was incomplete.

Adding to the complexity: when the organization had originally scoped the project, they had scaled back their wish list based on budget assumptions. The organization left features like Portfolio Planning on the cutting room floor before the engagement even started.

They'd already tried to solve this problem once with a prior implementation partner, which ultimately didn't deliver. By the time Ondaro came in, the priorities became both technical competence and restoring confidence in the process entirely.

 

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THE SOLUTION

Prioritizing an out-of-the-box approach.

Ondaro implemented ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management with a disciplined out-of-box-first approach — configuring Project and Program Management foundations including waterfall, hybrid, and agile project types, status reporting, risk and issue tracking, and program-to-portfolio alignment. By resisting unnecessary customization, the team kept the build clean, upgrade-safe, and fast.

That efficiency created something the client hadn't anticipated: budget headroom. Rather than pocket the difference, Ondaro worked with the client to reinvest it. A change order was executed to expand the scope — adding the Portfolio Planning Workspace they'd originally cut, loading historical project data into ServiceNow so the organization could start with a complete picture, and extending hypercare by six full weeks with dedicated resource management training.

What was scoped as a solid SPM foundation became a significantly more capable platform, all at the same price.

 

THE PARTNER EXPERIENCE

A prepared client. A trusted team. And a roadmap worth looking forward to.

Part of what made this project work was that the client came ready. Their team had done their homework, their dedicated PM kept things moving, and their willingness to engage in the process directly contributed to an unusually low UAT defect rate and a clean path to go-live.

The Ondaro team matched that energy. Communication was effective throughout. When complexity surfaced, it was handled and did not escalated into a bottleneck. The result was a partnership that felt collaborative rather than transactional, which showed up clearly in the feedback.

The organization now has a clear ServiceNow SPM roadmap ahead: Demand and Intake, Timesheets and Time Tracking, and Collaborative Workspace are all on the horizon. The foundation is built. The confidence is there. And the relationship is one they'll build on.

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LET'S INNOVATE TOGETHER!
 

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