Seeds of Change: Transforming Portfolio Management with ServiceNow

Modern agricultural producers face unprecedented challenges due to climate change, rapid technological advancement, and regulated sustainability practices. One global agricultural company is seeking to combat these issues and give farmers the tools they need to feed the world through cutting-edge farming innovations, high-touch customer engagement experiences, and operational execution.

By relying on a unique distribution strategy and diverse combination of agricultural solutions, digital products, and customer services, the company is committed to maximizing productivity for farmers and enriching the lives of producers and consumers. With technical implementation from Thirdera, the company successfully launched a Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) solution to advance its mission and values well into the future.

Key Challenges

	This global agriculture company lacked a centralized IT project and backlog management repository. This resulted in limited oversight and reporting capabilities for upcoming business priorities and tech initiatives.
	Capacity of resources for upcoming projects were unknown, making it difficult to forecast future resource demands. Current resource assignments were also not visible within a centralized reporting system.
	The company had no existing demand intake processes, creating a disconnect between IT and other business units. Project value estimation did not exist, and the company’s project return on investment (ROI) reporting was minimal.
	From an administrative perspective, vendor invoicing processes were disjointed and not connected to the overarching project management process.

Seeking sustainable and practical solutions, leaders across the organization were eager to undergo a critical digital transformation that would allow the business to continually serve populations and protect food supplies around the world.

Our Solution

Through strong partnership and collaboration with Thirdera, the agricultural company introduced ServiceNow’s Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) suite to tackle this multifaceted business case. From the foundational “Crawl” phase to the advanced “Walk” phase of the project, Thirdera implemented several applications for the company, including:

• Project Portfolio Management – Providing visibility into demand and resources, this application helps improve forecasting and long-term business value.
• Demand Management – With the IT demand management application, requests are now centralized at the enterprise level.
• Resource Management – Consolidating resources into one holistic view helps maximize investments and visualize how time is invested throughout the entire business portfolio.

In this case, Demand Management was used to accurately track incoming IT demands across multiple business units. Generating new work items, including new projects from approved demands, became centralized and productive. Better demand prioritization and scoring processes also allowed leaders to quickly rank the highest priority initiatives based on overall value and expected benefit. 

The company’s IT team gained more oversight and visibility into important resource allocations by taking advantage of dashboards and reports. With the ServiceNow solutions implemented by Thirdera, teams gained the ability to import resource management data and share it among users and resource groups. Skill sets were also aligned to resources, enhancing the resourcing utilization analysis.

Even issues that were less pressing in the short term, like vendor invoicing, benefited from a total automation makeover. By revamping the process and connecting timecards and expense processing, IT Managers built confidence in backend processes that allow the business side to run smoothly.

The Result

These metrics and clear wins provide a reason to think optimistically about the future. And as an organization that exists to improve work for millions of producers and consumers around the globe, these long-term gains mean more hope through innovation for everyone.

About Thirdera

As the largest global pure-play ServiceNow partner, Thirdera is a trusted Elite ServiceNow partner focused solely on improving and innovating the way our customers leverage the ServiceNow platform. Our experts possess authoritative capabilities and skillsets spanning the entire Now Platform. This extensive platform expertise allows us to understand our customers’ needs and deliver tailored solutions that solve business challenges.

Contact us today to discuss your next project, and enter a new era of ServiceNow partner experience.