welcome to engage your service now executive sponsor part of our best practices series in this video you'll learn about the importance of an executive sponsor and the best practice steps to engage one you'll leave this video armed with a list of resources and steps you should take to put this into practice let's start by discussing why you need an executive sponsor for service now an engaged executive sponsor is critical to your success because they will evangelize ServiceNow align service now activities to business strategy and use their clout to drive consensus and faster decision-making ServiceNow recommends four steps to engage your executive sponsor start by defining the role and responsibilities next prepare your executive sponsor and create an action plan and lastly partner with your executive sponsor to expand adoption of service now let's dig into each of these starting with step 1 the executive sponsor provides strategic oversight of the platform team and engages executive peers to communicate ServiceNow value and clear obstacles to implementation and support your executive sponsor needs authority and influence to execute on their responsibilities so the best sponsors tend to be c-level leaders you'll need to maximize their time commitment so make sure that they have the right information to make decisions and understand their implications steps 2 & 3 cover how to do that the second step is about preparation first help your executive sponsor prepare for their responsibilities this includes aligning unroll expectations especially their role in setting strategy and shaping the ServiceNow roadmap but it goes beyond that preparation should also include education about ServiceNow and an understanding of how you'll realize business outcomes with ServiceNow your executive sponsor needs to understand both the big picture and tactical implementation details to be effective with initial preparation completed provide your executive sponsor with an action plan so they have everything they need to know and do to streamline decision-making a good action plan provides the framework for regular collaboration and keeps your executive sponsor engaged by maintaining focus on critical decisions issues and actions finally collaborate with your executive sponsor to expand ServiceNow adoption across your organization work with your executive sponsor to identify other groups in the organization that can benefit from ServiceNow then provide your executive sponsor with data and messaging they can use to evangelize the value of ServiceNow to generate support for expanding ServiceNow to new use cases there are three insights we want you to remember from this video first define your executive sponsors responsibilities so they are clear on what's required of the role second invest in early communication and education and set up regular meetings to keep them informed and third create a plan that informs what actions your executive sponsor should take so what should you do next first review the resources we have on the customer success center these will provide more details on how to engage your executive sponsor next discuss the executive sponsor role with your platform owner convey why it's important to invest in engaging with your executive sponsor lastly create a plan to identify and engage your executive sponsor at your organization if you already have an executive sponsor consider how you can involve the relationship for more information or advice contact your service now team thank you for watching