Medibank boosts business health with ServiceNow IT Service Management

Streamlining IT processes

Medibank insures millions of Australians and is also a telehealth services supplier that wants to revolutionize its IT service delivery
Medibank insures more than 3.8 million Australians. The business also operates Medibank Health Solutions, a telehealth services supplier with 600 clinicians interacting more than 2.5 million times per year with customers over the web, phone, and face to face. Medibank has 2,700 employees and generates annual revenues in excess of AUD$6.37 billion.

Following a rigorous tender process, including detailed analysis of service management vendors, Medibank selected ServiceNow to revolutionize the way it delivered information technology services to its businesses. Medibank started by deploying two ServiceNow modules—ServiceNow^® Incident Management and ServiceNow^® Problem Management.

Incident Management enabled the information technology function to capture incident notifications through a self-service portal, prioritize them based on service level targets, and route responsibility for resolution to the appropriate group. Problem Management created a way to investigate the root cause of incidents, and document solutions and workarounds in a knowledge base.

Improved access to IT support allows Medibank to move employees away from email to “single pane of glass” service delivery provided by ServiceNow
Accessibility for a distributed workforce: "Over the past two years, we have steadily increased uptake for information technology service and support as our teams have seen the benefits of ServiceNow," says Medibank Service Incident Manager Natalie McIntosh.  

"The portal functionality in particular has improved access to information technology support for our employees who are spread across five corporate offices. Being able to move people away from email and to the 'single pane of glass' provided by ServiceNow to get help from information technology has streamlined our service delivery process considerably."

The ServiceNow deployment has enabled Medibank to upgrade the catalogue of services that employees can access and develop a home page that maximizes the relevance of the portal to the business. “Our vision in information technology service management is to increase automation and use of workflows as much as possible within the next financial year,” says Natalie.

“Last year, 15% of services were requested through our service catalogue rather than over email and we plan to increase that to 70% in the next financial year. 

“We’re developing metrics on how to drive that greater uptake and have listened to stakeholders explain some of the pain points they have in dealing with information technology,” Natalie adds. “We’re talking about reducing the back-and-forth between employees and the service desk and making sure we route calls to the right teams every time to obtain the right outcomes.”

The business is also actively using ServiceNow^® Change and Release Management to minimise the cost and risk of technology changes across its operations.

Medibank is very process driven and stays as close to the ITIL framework as possible, making ServiceNow the right toolset for it to extend service management beyond IT into other areas
Implementing ServiceNow has enabled the Medibank information technology team to adhere to the ITIL framework that documents best practices in information technology service management. “We’re very process driven and we try to stay as close to the ITIL framework as possible, so in that way ServiceNow is very much the right toolset for us,” Natalie says. “Our approach and the toolset have made it natural for us to extend service management beyond information technology into areas such as facilities and payroll.”

Medibank has now implemented ServiceNow into HR Payroll to streamline a range of payroll tasks such as adding and modifying payroll records, bank accounts, and direct data, and ServiceNow^® Facilities Service Management to view, track, resolve, and report on facilities tasks. 

“We saw the way we managed a broken laptop could easily be ported to the way we managed a broken lightbulb,” Natalie says. “Our teams in payroll and facilities management were using spreadsheets, emails, and shared mailboxes—and because they deal with very similar priority matrices as we do in information technology service management, for minimal investment we could spin up a module to manage their processes.”

ServiceNow allows Medibank to remove single points of failure and envision its use beyond IT
Using ServiceNow allowed Medibank to start removing single points of failure and begin measuring the amount of requests teams were dealing with—from cab charge vouchers to lockers in the organization’s activity-based working environment. The business expects to obtain data over the next three to 12 months to understand the load and pain points that need to be addressed. “We have a longer-term vision to use the portal currently used exclusively for information technology service management for facilities and people services,” says Natalie.

She lauds the contribution of the ServiceNow account and professional services team to the business throughout the deployment as “great.”

“We touch base with the account team on a weekly basis and they provide insights into where we can head, present opportunities for us to review how other organizations are using ServiceNow, and discuss products that are on the horizon. It’s been a true partnership.”