“The platform makes light work of monitoring and managing our 650
business applications, and digital workflows accelerate all our
processes so we can make sure the customer and employee experience is
not compromised.” says Phillip.
“The biggest waste of time is knowing something is broken, but not
knowing what it is. If we lose an app it can mean our engineers don’t
know where to go or what to actually do when they get there,” says
Philip. “With ServiceNow, we can very quickly identify the issue down
to the level of a specific database queue or even a single line of code.”
ServiceNow orchestration and digital workflows bring time and cost
savings
Thames Water estimates it is saving between £6
million to £10 million a year as a direct result of adopting
ServiceNow across areas spanning virtual machine and platform builds,
software asset management, and decommissioning.
The time taken for virtual machine builds has accelerated from 45
days to just three days, and the business can pop up microsites or
create and run fully automated scripts to build an entire platform in
only three hours.
The previously month-long decommissioning process has been reduced
to minutes and digital workflows have reduced software discovery on
servers and laptops from two weeks to three minutes.
A modern, seamless employee experience keeps the business
moving
Crucially, the operational efficiencies achieved
by using the Now Platform have been achieved in tandem with, rather
than at the expense of, a far-reaching transformation of the employee
experience at Thames Water.
Whereas previously, the Thames Water service helpdesk had often been
referred to as the “unhelpful desk” by employees, Philip and his team
have dramatically turned around this perception.
“Our IT infrastructure and applications are vital to the
productivity of our 6,000 employees, whether they are in the field,
liaising with customers in our call centre, or working in the head
office,” says Philip. “Our Taps portal, powered by ServiceNow,
provides a modern, light-touch way for employees to interact with IT,
which is underpinned by powerful digital workflows that mean problems
and requests are resolved at pace.”
The full integration of ServiceNow with Microsoft Teams has served
to elevate real-time communication between the IT team and Thames
Water employees, giving reassurance that major issues are being addressed.
In the event of an outage, the Virtual Agent within ServiceNow sends
a message via Microsoft Teams to any employee who might be affected. A
banner is also created by the platform to flag that IT is already
working to fix the problem. Chatbots can also be launched to give
employees an immediate way to find out more information and get
updates in real time–with no human intervention required.
ServiceNow provides a foundation for continued innovation and
progress at Thames Water
Looking ahead, Thames Water
plans more operational and agent intelligence on ServiceNow to
continue its programme of enhancements. As Philip explains, “This
isn’t about replacing humans, but allowing our employees to do more
‘cool stuff’ by freeing them up to run mini projects that will add
value to the business.”
ServiceNow has brought a foundation for continuous innovation and
improvement to Thames Water. As Philip highlights, “Everything that
happens from a technology standpoint goes through ServiceNow, whether
it’s business as usual tasks or key projects. We now have the
governance, control, and processes in place to take our ambition to
the next level.”
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