Save US$700k a year with one facilities portal

About the Project

In short: Dell ran facilities support on PlanOn, a separately licensed tool. I researched how employees and back-office teams actually used it, designed a new portal in ServiceNow's Horizon Design System, and supported the launch. It replaced PlanOn, saves US$700k a year in licences, and won Game Changer 5, Dell's top internal award.

Employees asking for facilities support, and the back-office teams answering them, worked in PlanOn. The goal was to move this service into ServiceNow, a platform Dell already used, as one portal for facilities requests.

Back-office teams didn't trust the change

The hardest part wasn't the interface. Back-office users were used to their tools and methods and were resistant to a new one.

Research: field observation first

• Interviews and field observation of how people used the current facilities tool, and what they expected from one

• Qualitative research with the back-office users of the current solution

• A Microsoft Forms survey on satisfaction with the current tool

• A review of existing research results about the current tool

I synthesised the findings with the Product Manager, using Microsoft Copilot to help consolidate them, then prioritised them together.

Back-office teams were re-typing cases into ServiceNow

Field observation showed back-office team members re-typing cases from PlanOn into ServiceNow, because the ticket lifecycle was already handled in the ServiceNow ticketing system. One portal in ServiceNow meant requests started where tickets were already managed.

Going deep in field research let me see the teams' habits and methods and solve problems beyond the obvious ones, so one portal could serve facilities as a whole.

Solution: one portal on ServiceNow's Horizon Design System

• Prototypes built in Figma following ServiceNow's Horizon Design System

• Prototypes tested with users

• I guided the engineering team building the portal from the prototype

Launch: adoption is part of the design

I created and ran an internal launch campaign so everyone involved knew the new portal was coming and how to use it. After launch, I followed up with the facilities support team on the main difficulties users and back-office teams ran into.

Impact: US$700k a year saved

• Replaced PlanOn with a single portal in ServiceNow

• US$700k a year saved in software licences

• Game Changer 5, Dell's top internal award