SoftwareOne case study

Energy company sets up ServiceNow for IT asset insights

An energy company set up ServiceNow in 9 months, gained full visibility into its IT assets and automated time-consuming processes using SoftwareOne’s IT Asset Management Services.

An energy company that was created when its larger parent organisation split into two found itself essentially starting from scratch regarding IT infrastructure management. Operating across North America, the company was beginning its new business life with large volumes of data, but no centralised system or processes for managing that information or its hardware and software. Because the parent company had been a SoftwareOne customer for several years, the spun-out business asked SoftwareOne to help with a solution, which included deploying ServiceNow for IT Service Management (ITSM).

9 months
to implement ServiceNow, ITSM, ITOM and ITAM
24–48 hours
for onboarding, compared to 4 weeks previously
Full visibility
into software consumption and costs

Client: Energy company
Industry: Energy
Services: IT Asset Management (ITAM) Services including ITAM Assessment Services, ITAM Managed Services, ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) deployment

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Decentralised business seeks centralised ITSM

The energy company had a tight deadline for rolling out a solution: six months to build the foundations for ServiceNow discovery, IT Asset Management and Software Asset Management (SAM), with sound practices across all of those areas established three months later.

The decentralised nature of the business created special challenges for the project. The company’s workforce includes many contractors who are often onboarded and offboarded in large numbers. Workloads were also difficult to manage: many people are responsible for large numbers of processes and applications – for example, one person regularly handles more than 160 different applications. And bringing in new hires was a largely manual task, with key information for each person recorded first on paper before being entered by hand into the company’s systems. This also made it difficult to comply with the industry’s strict regulatory and reporting requirements.

Other IT processes were also manual, with IT support requests having to be physically made at the IT department. This made support time-consuming: requests could take a week or two to fulfill, and the IT team had no straightforward system to track progress or search previous service tickets.

A group of light bulbs hanging from a string.

Setting up ServiceNow and automating processes

Because the energy company had already segregated its intellectual property from that of its parent organisation, SoftwareOne was able to scan the company’s networks to identify the data needed to populate a ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This was an automated process that enabled SoftwareOne to implement ServiceNow, and also a centralised platform for managing all of the company’s discovery and ITSM processes.

In addition to setting up the foundation for ServiceNow, SoftwareOne also worked with the company to create a knowledge base for users, a system for software asset management and a base ITSM system.

At the same time, SoftwareOne provided advisory services to help the company develop a three-year roadmap for transformation. This was based on requirements and goals identified during conversations with key members of the company’s executive team and various business units. SoftwareOne’s advisory team also helped with building an IT strategy and processes, setting up a service desk and establishing work processes for onboarding and offboarding.

To help reduce workloads on employees with multiple responsibilities and roles, SoftwareOne looked for opportunities to automate processes wherever possible. It integrated ServiceNow with the company’s other key data systems – such as Active Directory – to provide controlled management of user groups, locations, departments and more. And integration with HR onboarding and offboarding eliminated the need for paper-based processes.

Organisational change management and training was another critical part of the solution, and a SoftwareOne team worked on-site with the company for the duration of the project to lead training sessions and work with key process owners and contributors to ensure that everyone was prepared for the transformation taking place. Remote training was also provided for contractors who worked in multiple locations, and messaging was further supported through internal training videos and SharePoint presentations.

SoftwareOne has been an integral partner to us, leading, collaborating and executing with a high level of integrity, focus and quality. They have met and exceeded the overall ServiceNow delivery and integration points. Their expertise, insight and knowledge have enabled us to position ServiceNow as a strategic toolset for our business.

– CIO, energy company

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Among the business benefits delivered:

Enhanced user experience: Streamlined operations and decreased Mean Time To Resolve (MTTR) through automation.
Value-based roadmap development: Continuous execution to drive ongoing digital transformation.
Established a process and governance framework: Streamlined and scalable framework for IT Operations.
Software licence cost avoidance: Through implementation of software asset management.
Increased visibility of IT landscape: Including improved insights into IT asset costs.

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Faster processes, lower risk and maturing ITSM

Working with SoftwareOne, the company met its deadlines and had a functioning ServiceNow platform in place – including discovery, SAM Pro and IT service manager – within 9 months of starting the project. It has also significantly reduced many manual tasks through automation. For example, the processes for onboarding, offboarding and setting up access to IT for new hires are now fully automated – onboarding processes that once took as long as four weeks to complete are now done within 24–48 hours. Times to resolve incidents and support requests are also significantly faster, and the company has a centralised platform for automatically tracking the history of such processes – something it couldn’t do before. This ensures that it has full tracking for software vendor audits, Security Operations Center (SOC) compliance and other requirements.

Today, SoftwareOne supports the company’s ServiceNow platform as its managed service provider for day-to-day needs. That includes handling tasks such as adding more software publishers into SAM Pro, enhancing catalogs, performing patches and upgrades and working to build the company ITSM maturity over time.

The company also continues to work with SoftwareOne to add new capabilities – such as Hardware Asset Management (HAM) – and to further modernise its systems, with plans to move more of its infrastructure from on-premises to the cloud. And it has recently gone live with certificate management to automatically identify expiring certificates and enable renewals to reduce the risk of service outages and security breaches. The companies meet at least twice a week to stay on top of new needs and issues.

The improvements are also apparent in the company’s IT costs. Before, it had regularly deployed hundreds of dollars’ worth of software that it wasn’t using and faced unexpected true-up costs for other applications. Now, every time it purchases new software, it’s assured of automatically knowing the accurate true-up costs.