In another post, we explore some of the benefits of ServiceNow’s Employee Center and how it differs from a Service Portal and the Employee Service Center. Depending on your current implementation, you may need to migrate your current solution to take advantage of the Employee Center. In addition, certain features require additional licensing. Can this new version of Employee Center act as an employee intranet? And what, if anything, do you need to do to begin taking advantage of it?
Is Employee Center an intranet?
If you are following ServiceNow’s marketing content, you might think the Employee Center can be an intranet. At this point – based on the features in the platform – it’s unlikely that most companies will adopt ServiceNow as their entire intranet. Many basic intranet features for corporate communicators are simply not included within the Employee Center.
Instead, think of Employee Center as one of the tentacles of your digital workplace that is linked to an intranet. It is more likely that the Employee Center will be the hub for a unified service portal – managing and enabling an actionable service delivery experience.
Do current implementations need to migrate to the Employee Center?
While you don’t need to migrate to the Employee Center, we think it’s worth it (and here’s why). Migrating from the Employee Service Center to the Employee Center requires some effort, but not too much. The underlying technology for the two platforms is basically the same. You may need to integrate new widgets offered in the latest release of the Employee Center, but they should work on existing implementations. If you’re looking to unify your HR and IT service portals, you’ll need to take a more holistic approach that includes redesigning the navigation, topics and overall page layout, so plan your resources and effort accordingly.
Does a move from the Service Portal require migration?
If you’re currently using the Service Portal, you will absolutely need to migrate to the Employee Center to leverage the new capabilities. And depending on your current Service Portal customizations, this migration may require quite a bit of effort.
Content design and organizational structure have changed with the Employee Center, so you’ll need to develop an enterprise taxonomy that looks at both content and the service catalog from a new topic-driven perspective. Also, new widgets replace the manual page design and links on previous implementations of the Service Portal.
Many of these differences are explored in this ServiceNow video, How does the Employee Center differ from the Service Portal?
Can you just start from scratch?
Yes! And it’s likely this is what many organizations will do. ServiceNow has introduced new features, such as AI-enabled search and the virtual agent, that take advantage of the topic and content design within the Employee Center. Older implementations built on the Service Portal were not designed with these use cases in mind so they’ll benefit from a rethink to the service catalog and content structure.
If I have ITSM licensing only, will I get all Employee Center features?
To some degree. You'll get all the Employee Center features, but ServiceNow has also introduced Employee Center Pro, which is included with HRSD licensing and comes with additional features you may or may not have, depending on your licensing. Employee Center Pro includes capabilities such as:
- A news and communication widget
- Content management capabilities
- A corporate application launcher
- A video widget
Ready to learn more?
ServiceNow has a rich community site with resources to help you understand the capabilities of the Employee Center. Here are two resources we’d recommend as a start:
We can also help you gain more personalized insight into how the Employee Center can support your self-service strategy and employee experience with a preliminary migration or build assessment. For a small investment, we’ll audit your existing service portal and advice on the best way to move to Employee Center. We will also outline the new features and benefits you’ll be gaining so you can bring along critical stakeholders. We always love to hear what you’re working on, so get in touch.
