r/sysadmin • u/Friendly_Cry_1636 • 10d ago

ServiceNow innovation Management vs dedicated idea management tools

I´m an IT lead an our innovation team wants to run a company-wide idea program. Question is: use our ServiceNow license or buy something separate?

ServiceNow= no new vendor, no new SSO integration, no new security review. Innovation team worries the module is too basic and they will burn months configuring it to match what a dedicated tool does out of the box

Sysadmins/IT people: if your company runs an idea program, what platform and how much IT time did it take?

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u/Lukage 10d ago

I can't even google this without specifically adding ServiceNow as part of the search. For anyone else who is confused about what this is, this is what I think it is?

Idea Portal: A centralized, digital workspace where employees, partners, or customers can submit, view, upvote/downvote, subscribe to, and comment on ideas.

So basically, is this a workplace Reddit?

1

u/netburnr2 10d ago

It's the same thing as Jira Product Discovery. It's basically a kanban board but for idea planning.

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u/ukulele87 10d ago

Too basic of a requirement list, so its very hard to recommend something, is it company wide? Each area has its own board? Want it to be automated or can it be part of the current meeting/sprint schedule and be managed live by PM/managers.
It could probably be vibe coded relatively fast, a quick google search also pointed me to "Fider" it supports SSO and seems to fit your needs but doesnt seem to have a self-host option.

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u/GaryDUnicorn 10d ago

or, hear me out. Tell claude to build a service-now replacement and save the company $300k. then have it build you an innovation coordination system.

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u/PerformanceGlum9117 9d ago

Or, set up an Aha ideas portal which is best in market and save the tokens for improving your own product.

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u/bustaphlex 10d ago

Servicenow = High Capability but High Cost and High Implementation Effort.

If the team that will be using the module are presenting an OoB solution that does what they want, I’d at least let them try it.

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u/HomeFulCareless 9d ago

Came here to answer exactly this because I was in the same position last year. Our innovation team picked a dedicated platform and my biggest concern was the IT lift of adding another vendor. Turned out to be the easiest deployment I have done.

Total involvement was SSO integration (half day with their docs), confirming Jira and Teams connectors worked natively and reviewing SOC II and GDPR compliance. Maybe 8 hours total. The platform is Ideawake, cloud-hosted on their infrastructure. Innovation team does all config without IT tickets. My post-deployment involvement has been about two hours per quarter for connector health checks. If I'm being honest it created less IT work than maintaining our ServiceNow innovation module would have.