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Banking & Financial Services · Banking Operations

Executive Investment Portal on ServiceNow for an Italian Bank

Anonymised engagement
Client
Retail and commercial bank · Italy · part of a European banking group, €30-40M internal investment portfolio
Industry
Banking & Financial Services
Department
Finance & Accounting
Region
Italy · Europe

€30-40 million of internal investments, and no single place where the CEO could see where the money went. The data sat in ServiceNow modules built for project teams, and every status update meant chasing a function for its own format. Now every initiative, its funding, state and progress sits on one executive page inside the bank's own ServiceNow.

A working model of the approach on sample data. It plays on its own and pauses when scrolled away; nothing here touches a live system.

The results

€30–40M
of internal investments tracked
Approximate portfolio size, from the delivery team. Scope, not a saving.
1
CEO view of every initiative
Funding, use of money, state and progress on one page per initiative.
0
new systems to keep in sync
Built on the bank's existing ServiceNow data.

The challenge

Our client is a major Italian retail and commercial bank, part of a European banking group. It runs a portfolio of internal investment initiatives worth around €30-40 million and manages those initiatives in ServiceNow.

The data was there. The executive view was not. ServiceNow held the projects, but in modules designed for the people running them, not for a CEO preparing for a board discussion.

What it was costing them

  • No single answer to "where did the money go". There was no one view of what each initiative was funded with, what it was spent on and where it stood.
  • Data built for operators. The records leadership needed sat behind operational forms no executive would open.
  • Status by chasing people. Progress was assembled by asking each function, and every answer came back in a different format.
  • Hard to explain upward. Without a clear page per initiative, leadership could not quickly explain an investment to the board or to regulators.
From scattered data to one executive page
  • ServiceNow project modules → One executive page
  • Operational forms → One executive page
  • Reports from each function → One executive page

The approach

We designed and built a custom executive portal inside the bank's own ServiceNow, for the CEO and other C-level executives: every internal investment initiative, its state and its progress, on the data the project teams already maintain.

What we built

  1. A custom solution on ServiceNow. Custom ServiceNow modules and a dedicated portal page built in AngularJS, so the portal sits on the platform where the data already lives.
  2. One page per initiative. Each investment explained simply: what it is, what was invested, where the money went and how the project is being managed.
  3. Progress at a glance. The state and progress of every initiative, in a navigation designed for executives rather than project managers.
  4. Reporting from the functions. Custom reporting provided by the bank's different functions, attached to the investments it relates to.
  5. No new system. Built directly on existing ServiceNow data, so nothing has to be re-entered, exported or kept in sync.
One page per investment initiative
  • What it is
  • How much was invested
  • Where the money went
  • State and progress
  • How it is managed

Designed for reading, not for data entry

An executive page has to answer four questions without a single click into an operational form: what is it, how much, where did the money go, and how is it going. The design work was in that reading experience: what to show, in what order, and what to leave in the operational modules for the teams who run the projects.

Technology

LayerWhat we used
PlatformServiceNow, the bank's existing platform
PortalCustom ServiceNow modules and portal page
Front endAngularJS
DataServiceNow data model for investment initiatives and projects
ReportingCustom reporting contributed by the bank's functions

The outcome

The CEO opens one portal and sees every internal investment initiative: what it is, what it cost, where the money went and how it is going.

BeforeAfter
Executive view of the portfolioNone, data spread across operational modulesOne portal for €30-40M of initiatives
Explaining one investmentPieced together from several sourcesOne page per initiative
Status from the functionsChased by hand, every format differentReported into the same portal
  • The CEO and C-level executives see around €30-40 million of internal investments in one place.
  • Each initiative's funding, use of money, state and management is visible and easy to explain.
  • Functions report into the same portal instead of separate files.
  • No extra system to maintain: the portal runs on the bank's own ServiceNow.

No time-saving or usage figures were recorded for this engagement; the figures above describe its scope.

The risk most teams miss

Executive dashboards fail when they become a second data source. Someone keeps a spreadsheet for the CEO, it drifts from the real project data, and the first board question exposes it. Building the portal directly on the records the project teams already maintain, and letting the functions add their reporting in the same place, keeps one version of the truth.

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