Preparing for Your Reverse Demo: A Client's Guide
During the initial phases of your Service Portal / Employee Center implementation, one of the most valuable sessions you will participate in is the reverse demo. While most of the workshops I will work through with you will include me demonstrating features and functionalities to you, the reverse demo puts you, my client, in the driver’s seat, so you show me what you’re currently working with.
What Is a Reverse Demo?
A reverse demo is a requirements gathering session where you walk your implementation team through your existing systems, portals, and workflows. Instead of theoretical discussions about what you might need, it becomes a concrete exploration of your current reality. Ideally, I want you to help me establish your “Current State.” It’s easier for me to determine where you need to go, when I know where you’re starting.
This demo includes showing:
Your existing service portals (if any)
Intranet sites where employees find information
Ticketing systems and workflows
Content repositories and knowledge bases
Any other platforms where work gets done or information lives
The session becomes a guided tour through your organization's current digital landscape—an honest look at what's working, what's broken, and what's essential to preserve.
Why This Matters for You
The reverse demo ensures your implementation partner truly understands your world before we start designing solutions. When they see how you actually work—not just how you think you work—we can:
Identify requirements you might not have thought to mention
Understand your users' existing mental models and expectations
Spot integration points and technical dependencies
Right-size our recommendations to match your team's capacity
Preserve what's working while fixing what's broken
How to Prepare Effectively
Identify Your Pain Points and Change Drivers
Before the session, articulate why you're pursuing this change. What brought you to the implementation table? Understanding your own pain points clearly will help you communicate them effectively.
Consider questions like:
What daily frustrations do your users experience?
Where do workflows break down?
What prompted this implementation project?
What does success look like for your organization?
During the reverse demos related to Employee Center implementations, my colleagues and I are particularly looking to understand how we will use the Service Portal UI to help alleviate those pain points related to user behaviors, self-service, and request fulfillment.
Ensure System Access
You'll need to have access to multiple systems during the reverse demo, ready to show:
Service portals (ServiceNow or other platforms)
Intranet sites where employees find information
Content repositories and knowledge bases
Any systems that currently house information you want to migrate
Make sure you have login credentials ready and that any necessary permissions are in place before the session begins.
If you can give me access to your systems before we conduct workshops, even better! Early access lets me take a peak under the hood and get a better sense of areas I’d like to focus on or questions to raise.
Map Your Stakeholder Groups
Identify which departments will be major content contributors or users of the new portal:
IT
HR
Legal
Facilities
Finance
Any other departments with significant portal presence
Understanding who owns what content will be crucial during the discovery process.
Understand Your Governance Structure
Be prepared to explain how decisions get made in your organization:
Who approves content changes?
Who maintains different sections of your portals?
What's the approval hierarchy?
How do updates currently flow through the system?
This governance structure will directly impact how your new solution should be designed.
Assess Your Manpower and Maintenance Capacity
Be honest about your team's bandwidth. Implementation partners need to understand:
How many people maintain your current systems?
What technical skills does your team have?
How much time can be dedicated to ongoing maintenance?
Are you a two-person team or a full department?
This ensures your partner recommends solutions that are actually sustainable for your organization, not just technically impressive but operationally impossible to maintain. I’m not going to suggest features that need an entire team to maintain if your portal will only be upheld by a two-man team with other duties to attend to!
Think About User Perspectives
Consider the different types of users who interact with your systems:
New employees versus veteran staff
Remote workers versus on-site employees
Self-service users versus those who prefer submitting tickets
Department-specific user groups
You don't need formal user personas before the reverse demo, but being aware of these different perspectives will enrich the conversation and set the stage for deeper user experience work later. Think about how these different users work, and what problems they have that we can work toward solving.
Who Should Participate
The ideal reverse demo includes:
Implementation leaders who understand the project scope and goals
People with deep system knowledge who know why things work the way they do
Representatives from different user groups to provide varied perspectives
Sometimes this requires multiple people to ensure you have the complete picture of why things are the way they are. Usually I’ll suggest an initial walkthrough with your core team, then follow up with additional stakeholders if needed.
Making the Most of Your Session
During the reverse demo, be prepared to:
Walk through your most common workflows
Show both what works well and what causes problems
Explain the history behind certain design decisions
Discuss workarounds your team has created
Be honest about limitations and frustrations
Point out features that are essential to preserve
Remember, this isn't about showing a perfect system—it's about showing your real system. The problems and inefficiencies you reveal are exactly what I need to see to design a better solution.
What Happens Next
After your reverse demo, my team and I will:
Condense what we learned into concrete requirements (where we can)
Identify patterns and opportunities for improvement
Design solutions that address your real needs
Create recommendations that match your organizational capacity
The reverse demo isn't just another meeting—it's the foundation that ensures your new system actually solves your real problems and fits naturally into how your team works.
