ServiceNow Adoption Trends: Tenure and Team Composition

ServiceNow Customer Tenure

The tenure of a ServiceNow customer often reflects the platform’s level of integration within an organization. Our findings show that:

41%

of respondents have been ServiceNow customers for 3-5 years, a clear indication that many organizations are in the mid-adoption phase.

27%

of respondents have used ServiceNow for over 10 years, signaling deep platform integration and a high likelihood of advanced usage and custom development.

Operational Profile

Deployment & Instance Management

75%

65%

◇

of respondents use two development instances.

use documents like spreadsheets to manage deployments.

Organizations with 4+ development instances show higher deployment frequencies but more varied management approaches

23%

◇

deploy weekly or more frequently.

Medium-sized teams (6-15 developers) show the highest deployment frequencies, particularly during early platform adoption

63%

◇

clone quarterly.

Retail and Manufacturing show the highest reliance on manual processes

Early Stage (0-2 years, 22% of respondents)

(3-5 years, 41% of respondents)

Typically operate with smaller development teams, often consisting of just 1-5 developers.

Fifty-three percent of respondents operate with medium sized ServiceNow platform teams, consisting of 6-15 members.

Sixty-seven percent perform frequent clone-downs from every month to once per quarter—seventy-three percent frequently or occasionally experience extended developer downtime.

Eighty-six percent develop in 2 or more instances.

67% / 73%

86%

53%

Growth Stage

Loyal Stage (6+ years, 38% of respondents)

93%

Ninety-three percent of respondents have platform teams of six or more members. This intimates a response to growing business demand resulting from broader adoption across the enterprise. Compared to over a quarter of Growth Stage companies, only 14% of this cohort have no plans to expand their ServiceNow footprint within the next twelve months.

50%

Fifty percent of respondents in this cohort deploy to production frequently—daily or weekly. Fourteen percent deploy to production daily, and the other thirty-six percent deploy weekly. Twenty-nine percent deploy to production bi-weekly.

57%

Fifty-seven percent of this cohort use Commercial Off-The-Self (COTS) tools for their deployment efforts. This starkly contrasts the Growth Stage cohort, where only 13% use COTS tools.

ServiceNow Team Size

Team size also plays a pivotal role in how effectively organizations manage their ServiceNow instances:

50%

Approximately fifty percent of respondents have medium-sized platform teams consisting of 6 to 15 members.

66%

In Financial Services, larger teams are the norm, with sixty-six percent of respondents managing teams of 16 or more members.

100%

Interestingly, in Retail, all respondents reported medium-sized teams, reflecting a more streamlined approach to platform management.

The data suggests that longer-tenured customers often manage larger teams, which could be attributed to the growing complexity of maintaining and expanding ServiceNow instances over time.

Small Team Size

Platform teams consisting of 1 to 5 members

0%

No respondents with 6-10 years on ServiceNow have small platform teams, but interestingly, 13% of those with 10+ years do.

75%

Develop in 2 instances. The other 25% develop in one instance.

1 in 4

Developers maintain admin privileges to all instances, including production. However, 50% say their developers maintain admin privileges to ONLY development instances.

88%

cite update set complexity as their biggest challenge. However, half of this cohort have been ServiceNow customers for less than two years, suggesting this issue is partly due to growing pains.

50%

have no plans to implement any of ServiceNow's GenAI innovations within the next twelve months.

25%

use the App Engine Management Center for deployments, and none use a homegrown-built solution.

Medium Team Size

Platform teams consisting of 6 to 15 members

56%

say they release new features or updates to production every week.

72%

Develop in 2 instances. Six percent develop in 3 and 17% develop in four or more instances.

67%

upgrade ServiceNow only once a year, indicating a preference for staying one version behind (N-1) rather than keeping pace with ServiceNow’s semi-annual release cycle.

56%

of respondents rank both Customization vs. Standardization and Governance and Compliance as their top challenge.

17%

have no plans to implement any of ServiceNow's GenAI innovations within the next twelve months. This is a significant drop when compared to small teams.

72%

use a homegrown-built solution for deployment with a fifth using AEMC.

Large Team Size

Platform teams consisting of 16 or more members

55%

say they develop in 4 or more instances.

64%

have been ServieNow customers for at least six years.

73%

upgrade ServiceNow only twice a year, indicating a preference for keeping up with ServiceNow’s semi-annual release cycle.

55%

of respondents rank Customization vs. Standardization their top challenge and 45% ranked Testing and Quality Assurance as their top challenge.

82%

plan to implement ServiceNow's GenAI capabilities within the next twelve months.

64%

use a COTS tool for deployments.