Why ServiceNow ROI Stalls — and How to Spot the Early Warning Signs

Summary

This article explores the subtle warning signs that indicate a ServiceNow investment may be underperforming. It identifies five early symptoms—ranging from rising costs and adoption resistance to data distrust and technical debt—and shows how these issues can quietly erode ROI. Readers gain actionable ways to recognize and reverse these patterns before platform credibility and business alignment suffer.

You invested in ServiceNow to streamline operations, improve service delivery, and connect enterprise functions. But somewhere along the way, the returns stopped adding up. Costs increased, but business outcomes didn’t follow. The platform became harder to defend.

This slow erosion of ROI isn’t always easy to spot. It usually begins subtly: roadmap drift, delivery misalignment, lagging adoption. But if left unaddressed, these cracks expand into deep credibility gaps—both for the platform and the teams managing it.

Early Warning Signs Your ServiceNow ROI Is at Risk

Here are five early indicators your ServiceNow investment may be off-track—symptoms that often precede budget scrutiny, stakeholder skepticism, and platform underperformance.

These warning signs are detectable early, and most are reversible.

Rising Costs with Unclear Outcomes

If your ServiceNow spend is going up but you can’t clearly point to what the business is getting in return, it’s time to ask harder questions. Too often, your team’s justification for the platform focuses on what it could do, not what it has done.

This usually means your team is dealing with disconnected value streams, scattered reporting, or vague definitions of success. It’s not a technology problem; it’s a visibility and alignment problem.

Datavail worked with a healthcare organization who had experienced increase of its ServiceNow spend by 30% over two years, yet internal reporting still relied heavily on spreadsheets and email. Leadership struggled to identify any measurable improvements in ticket resolution times or employee experience, which raised questions about whether the investment was delivering value.

What to look for:

• Justifications framed around platform features instead of business results
• Difficulty linking quarterly spend to measurable improvements
• Updates focused on “what’s been built” instead of “what’s been achieved”
• Heavy reliance on slide decks to prove impact that should be obvious

Ask yourself: Can your ServiceNow lead walk into your next meeting and name three measurable business wins tied to last quarter’s investment?

Business Resistance to Adoption

Pay close attention to how your teams actually use the platform. What they do, not just what they say. If they are building workarounds, or defaulting to old habits, the platform isn’t delivering what they need. That’s not always about training. Sometimes, it’s about relevance.

For example, a global manufacturing client, despite a fully deployed self-service portal, found that over 50% of IT service requests were still submitted via direct emails to technicians. Many employees cited the portal as “too slow” or “hard to navigate,” leading departments to create their own trackers and bypass the platform entirely.

What to look for:

• Low adoption across departments
• Teams building shadow systems or separate trackers
• Feedback describing the platform as “slow,” “clunky,” or “confusing”

Ask yourself: Are your department leads voicing frustration about the platform in leadership meetings? Are business units quietly reverting to spreadsheets?

Platform Roadmap Drift

When your roadmap becomes a catalog of technical tasks instead of a blueprint for business value, it’s a sign that strategic priorities have drifted. You might still be moving, but not in the direction that matters most. When your teams are bogged down with technical debt and stakeholders are still waiting on simple updates, it’s a sign the strategy is off.

What to look for:

• Projects that don’t tie directly to business priorities
• Backlogs filled with tech debt instead of transformation
• Business teams circumventing ServiceNow to get work done faster

Ask yourself: Does your roadmap reflect the top three pain points your business leaders are talking about? Can your team explain why each initiative matters?

Data Trust Erosion

If your leaders are second-guessing the reports and your teams are double-checking dashboards with spreadsheets, trust in the platform’s data has started to erode. That’s a major red flag.

When this happens, decisions slow down, insights lose credibility, and the platform becomes a tool of last resort. Without trust, even accurate data can’t drive action.

What to look for:

• Executives asking for third-party validation of platform data
• Teams maintaining side systems “just in case”
• Dashboards that need context or disclaimers to be understood

Ask yourself: Are your business leaders confident enough in ServiceNow data to use it as a single source of truth? Or do they regularly seek validation from other systems?

Technical Debt Accumulation

You’ll know technical debt is piling up when delivery slows and maintenance grows. If your ServiceNow team is consumed with platform management instead of delivering new business capabilities, it’s a sign the platform is dragging instead of driving. Over time, patches, customizations, and workarounds stack up, slowing down innovation.

What to look for:

• Longer release cycles or skipped updates
• Teams focused on support and stability instead of forward progress
• Customizations that impede leveraging new ServiceNow capabilities

Ask yourself: Is your platform a launchpad for transformation, or has it become a maintenance project?

Take Action Before It’s Too Late

These warning signs don’t exist in isolation. They stack. Low adoption increases customization needs. Customizations create tech debt. Tech debt slows delivery. Delivery delays erode trust. And eventually, you’re spending more and getting less.

The good news is, the solution to these issues is not a platform overhaul—it’s visibility, alignment, and accountability. At Datavail, we help leaders like you stabilize and re-energize your ServiceNow investments with business-first strategies, pragmatic governance, and clear metrics.

Don’t wait for a budget review to raise the alarm. The earlier you spot these signals, the easier they are to fix. Download “7 Pitfalls That Limit ServiceNow ROI — and How to Fix Them” to learn more.