Background
Formed in 2000, this UK managed service provider offers end-to-end managed technology solutions, spanning consultancy, support, enterprise business applications, cloud services and cybersecurity. With three offices on two continents the company employs a staff of over 500 to service more than 850 client organisations and tens of thousands of end users.
Main challenges
Changing working practices to enable growth
The company continues to enjoy significant growth. To support its scaling, the company decided to evaluate its position as a leading service provider with three objectives in mind:
- Its vision for the next leap in their customer service
- Recognition that the current Autotask solution could not provide a platform for scale
- Driving process automation into client contracts.
Greater automation would enable the company to serve its clients’ customer requests more effectively through a more structured process. However, its business management tool, Autotask, had restrictions on workflow that made it unsuitable. A structured evaluation of processes and tools would have to address a number of crucial challenges:
- Project management – the customer delivers complex client projects, not simply technology. The project module falls outside the core in the current system, making it impossible to link ITIL automatically to projects;
- Resource management – the client needed to embed resource planning and forecasting with clear reports, integrations and portal access;
- Asset and configuration management – a lack of information on asset and CI relationships and how to visualise them in real time has implications for changes which are not wholly understood;
- Knowledge management – currently outside the toolset, which hampers adoption along with a desire to build up, contribute and consume;
- A new client portal – need to improve service between departments and optimise contact with external customers;
- Security and auditing – the current solution lacks controls around asset management which means it cannot apply governance to best practice.
The managing director said: “We needed a step change in how this business is run, to manage more clients and to be more efficient.”
“We needed a step change in how this business is run, to manage more clients and to be more efficient.”
Managing Director
What did we solve?
Transforming services to meet business goals
The most important requirement for the company was to deliver service excellence so that it could make informed decisions. The chief operating officer said: “We have to change the way we work through having a single system which will provide information at our fingertips. Currently the performance degradation of our current solution inhibits the incorporation of true customer service within our workflow.”
The company wanted to partner with a technology vendor that could demonstrate innovation to help it improve its strategic offer continuously through state-of-the-art technology. The director of business systems and process, added: “Initial observations pointed to an over-reliance on email and multiple processes for the same thing.”
Following a formal RFP and proof of concept, the company engaged Devoteam to implement ServiceNow, the leading cloud-based service management solution, for its clear ability to fulfil quickly the company’s requirements as well as strengths such as ease of use, comprehensive reporting, and a highly available performant SaaS platform.
In three phases, Devoteam implemented the ServiceNow IT Service Management platform to support a wide variety of ITIL processes including incident, problem, change, release, configuration and knowledge management.
In the next phase we installed ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management, a new customer-facing portal offering a multi-channel experience for external and internal customers engaging with support analysts and other customer support teams.
The final phase saw installation of ServiceNow’s IT Business Management module for project and portfolio management, along with the ability to manage resources across both project and non-project activities.
Main benefits
A new benchmark for Service delivery
The company has already seen a number of improvements that will transform its business to allow for growth:
- Phase one of this project with complex integrations delivered on time and within budget;
- The ITSM transformation has improved resource management, asset & configuration management, knowledge management, client portal & multi-tenancy, security & auditing, projects and scalability;
- Excellent feedback from the company Board has paved the way for further projects.
The company’s COO concluded: “ServiceNow is fast becoming the benchmark of professional service delivery organisations.”
“ServiceNow is fast becoming the benchmark of professional service delivery organisations.”
COO
For more information on this case please contact us at uk.info@devoteam.com.
