As predicted, January did what January always does. The bold declarations have quieted down. The roadmaps have survived their first real tests. And the phrase “this is the year we really transform” has been gently folded back into a drawer for safe keeping.
This is a good thing. Real progress on ServiceNow doesn’t come from calendar-driven urgency. It comes from clear-eyed decisions made once the noise settles. From teams who stop dreaming about what should be possible and start asking what’s sustainable.
So instead of dramatic resolutions or platform-wide reinventions, here’s a more grounded way to think about the rest of 2026. A set of intentions that are ambitious without being exhausting. Practical without being small. And far more likely to stick.
If there’s one thing most experienced ServiceNow teams eventually learn, it’s that excitement is overrated, and trust is everything.
Take the CMDB as an example. When it’s working, no one talks about it. When it isn’t, everything else becomes harder than it needs to be. Reports get questioned, and teams stop believing what the system tells them.
A healthy resolution for 2026 isn’t to make your CMDB impressive. It’s to make it dependable, and also boring in the best possible way. The kind of boring that lets leaders move faster because they’re not second-guessing the data underneath them.
And, not for anything, but a healthy CMDB is the foundation you need if you plan on incorporating more AI into the mix for ’26.
(Speaking of which…)
AI is everywhere right now within ServiceNow. That’s extremely exciting, and also a little dangerous if not handled correctly.
The instinct is to treat AI like a destination rather than a capability. To bolt it onto workflows that aren’t ready and expect it to compensate for underlying friction. That rarely ends well.
A more sustainable approach is to let AI earn its place. Use it where it reduces cognitive load. Where it speeds up resolution. Where it helps humans do better work instead of just different work.
Organizations that get the most value from ServiceNow’s AI investments aren’t chasing novelty. They’re building on workflows that already make sense.
For many organizations, operational technology has lived just outside the core ServiceNow conversation. Close enough to matter. Far enough away to stay complicated.
That separation is getting harder to justify. Recent shifts across the ServiceNow ecosystem have made it clear that OT isn’t a niche concern anymore. It’s tied directly to risk, uptime, safety, and enterprise resilience. Treating it as a parallel universe only increases blind spots.
The goal for 2026 doesn’t need to be full OT mastery. It can simply be integration. Visibility. A shared understanding that plant-floor reality belongs in the same system of action as the rest of the business.
One of the least glamorous but most valuable resolutions is this: pause before adding anything new. Most organizations already own more ServiceNow capability than they fully use. Old workflows linger long after they stop serving a purpose. Complexity creeps in quietly, one well-meaning enhancement at a time.
In these cases, optimization is about asking better questions:
Those answers are rarely flashy, but they compound faster than any new module ever will.
Governance has a reputation problem, and it’s not entirely undeserved. When it feels heavy-handed, teams work around it. When it’s unclear, it gets ignored. But when it’s done well, governance becomes invisible support; the reason things move faster instead of slower.
A healthy 2026 resolution is to rethink governance as a service to the organization. Clear ownership and standards. Fewer surprises. Less rework. Good governance doesn’t say “no” more often as much as it makes “yes” safer.
It’s easy to talk about ServiceNow success in terms of deployments and milestones. It’s harder (and far more meaningful) to talk about outcomes:
Did employees get answers faster? Did leaders gain clarity? Did risk become visible before it became urgent?
In 2026, the most mature ServiceNow teams will frame progress in terms that people outside the platform care about. The technology matters. The change it enables matters more.
There’s a quiet confidence in asking for help early. Organizations often wait until they’re stuck or overwhelmed before bringing in an outside perspective. But the biggest gains usually come from small course corrections made while things are still working.
That belief sits at the center of how CoreX approaches long-term success on ServiceNow. Sustainable progress doesn’t come from heroics. It comes from alignment, clarity, and knowing when a second set of eyes can save you six months later.
If there’s a single idea worth carrying through the rest of the year, it’s that you don’t need a transformational moment, especially at the expense of steady progress.
This is a perfectly reasonable place to start. Yes, a month or so later.