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Europe’s largest home improvement retailer transforms service

Devoteam helped Europe’s largest home improvement retailer simplify its service management system to match the company’s way of working through a globally streamlined set of processes for a uniform toolset on a single service management platform that offers transparency for international operations.

This organisation is Europe’s largest home improvement retailer, with 1,150 stores in ten countries, 79,000 employees and nearly six million customers. It holds a number of household brands across Europe.

Main challenges

Making sense of a complex implementation

The current companies in the group operated in silos across Europe. With the size of its operation and without a self-service portal, the service desk was overrun with requests by email and phone from corporate users reporting failure of equipment such as point-of-sale tills, scanners or phones.

Their Global IT Service Delivery Manager said: “We needed to simplify our system to match the company’s way of working. Our challenge was to bring it closer to the standard ServiceNow product without removing any of its good functions.”

In addition, there was no reporting of service desk activities to give management a view of effectively IT was serving the business.

As part of what they termed Phase II of their ServiceNow implementation, the client’s global strategy was to roll out an aligned set of ITIL processes, such as incident management and the logging and categorising of issues, across Central Europe.

What did we solve?

Steamlining processes for unified service

The client chose Devoteam for help with a European roll-out to France, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Russia. Devoteam’s international presence met key project criteria such as the ability to work with multiple teams internationally using experts with local language skills as well as its experience of delivering service excellence in all relevant countries through ServiceNow.

This assignment, the Central European Rollout, was divided into two phases. The first was a review of the current customised solution and with guidance on a return, where possible, to an out-of-the-box solution. The second involved a series of workshops in the UK and France, with representatives from all regions, to align processes and revise functionality.

Devoteam’s experience of engaging with different cultures and their respective ways of working was brought to bear on occasions.

Their Head of IT Service Delivery added: “Devoteam’s experience of engaging with different cultures and their respective ways of working was brought to bear on occasions. A preference for fault resolution in one country might not be equally appreciated in another; one location might prefer to pick up the phone while another would resort to email. With its experience of cross-border project governance Devoteam was able to bring together ways of working to serve the greater good.”

With the aim of building an effective employee self-service (ESS) portal for use across Europe, Devoteam’s consultants conducted extensive business analysis and process re-engineering across borders to enable an appropriate deployment of ServiceNow that would work to the advantage of all in the business. This would reduce emails and calls to the service desk and improve customer satisfaction.

Devoteam decided that its RAPID method, a flexible eight-stage approach for the deployment of ServiceNow modules, would be the best fit for implementation. RAPID is a product of the Devoteam ServiceNow Centre of Excellence, which has evolved from over 20 years’ experience in the ITSM industry across 17 countries. The approach is based on agile and scrum methods, providing best practice principles through a series of weekly sprints, utilising ServiceNow’s out-of-the-box functionality.

Main benefits

Service through digital transformation

Devoteam delivered a globally streamlined set of processes for a uniform toolset on a single service management platform that offers transparency for international operations, with the following benefits:

  • A single view by the CIO of the global system permits true analysis of the whole IT operation’s improved performance
  • A consolidated toolset has reduced operating costs and avoided costly integrations
  • Easy cross-charging of effort across Central Europe has enabled planning of new services for its customers
  • Quicker resolution of issues has ensured SLAs are met
  • Improved service experience by system users and the internal customers they serve has improved customer satisfaction.

The client is reaping the reward of its investment in the digital transformation of its service. Their Head of IT Service Delivery concludes: “Working with Devoteam has seen a turnaround in our global operation and a favourable perception of our IT. We look forward to working together over the coming years.”

“Working with Devoteam has seen a turnaround in our global operation and a favourable perception of our IT. We look forward to working together over the coming years.”