Our client is a leading international legal practice operating on all continents with expertise in a range of industry sectors and a solid reputation in mergers & acquisitions. With almost 4,000 lawyers and annual revenue of $2 billion, the firm sits in the Top 10 both in the UK and worldwide.
Devoteam, Europe’s No.1 ICT consultancy, was engaged to implement a service management solution from ServiceNow, the leading provider of cloud-based technology solutions, which would help streamline the firm’s operation and boost productivity across the globe.
Main challenges
Critical operation across continents
Like most law firms, our client depends on a number of critical business applications dedicated to the Legal sector around CRM, case management, cost recovery, voice technology, document assembly and management, HR and email security. Reliable operation of these across time zones contributes to the effectiveness of the overall practice. Its IT worldwide plays a critical role with the firm relying on its expertise to resolve issues quickly. Two issues stood out:
- obtaining reporting metrics (e.g., Service Level Agreements, ageing tickets reports) across multiple service desks was proving difficult due to the different tools and processes in place;
- a variety of helpdesks across the globe working independently of each other was inhibiting an efficient service and was thought to affect business productivity.
The firm’s group change manager for the client confirmed this: “We immediately saw a need to operate on a single platform worldwide as well as provide better information about our IT operation. This would only be achieved by bringing all data together and unifying processes so that service level agreements (SLAs) could be met.”
In particular, the service desk in some countries can treat incidents differently from those in other territories, with inevitable impact for response levels.
For example, the practice in Australia might offer a two-hour SLA for resolution of a high-priority incident, while the UK might offer a four-hour fix for the same issue. However, a call logged in Australia for such an incident might depend on expertise in the UK team. Disparate service management platforms holding heterogeneous data only add complexity.
In addition, the client saw a need to manage globally its IT assets, especially the servers, and maintain records in the CMDB.
What did we solve?
New service standards for excellence
The firm considered it was in a less mature position within ITSM than it would prefer to be. ITIL features prominently in the UK but not elsewhere. An assessment of services examined their impact on the business and unearthed a requirement to support the most commonly adopted ITIL v2 disciplines, of incident, problem, service level, and change management; combined with the ITIL v3 service catalogue management process, and asset and configuration management.
Noting the importance of applying this standard the client selected ServiceNow’s leading ITIL-based ITSM solution, which offers IT management over the Internet through the Software as a Service (SaaS) model with a forms-based workflow system for IT service automation, resource management and shared services. Other compelling features for our client include ease of use, functional integration across the ITIL suite, constant availability, comprehensive reporting and asset management.
In its role as overall project manager, ServiceNow UK immediately engaged Devoteam, over its other partners, to undertake the implementation due to our renowned international expertise in service management. “Devoteam enjoys unique standing as an organisation with depth of knowledge in a large number of service management technologies,” explains Paul Kelsall, Solution Architecture Manager for Devoteam UK. “As the primary Centre of Excellence for ServiceNow in EMEA and with 700 dedicated ITSM specialists, we focus on our unique ability to integrate leading service management platforms, by combining our knowledge of industries and our pragmatic methods with a profound understanding of both source and Target ITSM solutions.“
In six weeks, Devoteam built a fully working solution for use by offices in the UK, South Africa, Australia and Canada. Australia and South Africa went into production first with Canada and the UK following soon after.
In six weeks, Devoteam built a fully working solution for use by offices in the UK, South Africa, Australia and Canada. Australia and South Africa went into production first with Canada and the UK following soon after.
Main benefits
IT propels the business
ServiceNow proved ideal for the client in a number of ways:
- 27% increase in the number of incidents resolved first time.
- Consolidation of disparate service tools brought a more joined-up and efficient approach to internal customer service.
- Simplified and clear reporting.Costly integrations between countries was avoided.
- Shared knowledge of solutions to incidents and problems across continents.
- Tighter management of assets.
- IT operating costs were reduced by 15%.
The Group Change Manager at the client commented: “I would like to extend a special thanks to Devoteam who have been amazing and worked very hard on the system with us to ensure that, not only do we have a system to meet our requirements, but also that we have the required knowledge to manage the tool from now on. I would happily work with Devoteam again.”
The Group Change Manager at the client:
“I would like to thank Devoteam who have been amazing. I would happily work with them again.”
