Vitality transforms IT with ServiceNow to support business innovation

Disrupting the market by offering different services

Vitality's innovation-led ethos drives new services for customers and its approach to IT
Vitality, a leading medical insurer with over a million customers in the UK, is the first insurance company to focus on rewarding people for healthy living. A disruptor in the financial services market, the company’s IT service operation has an innovation-led ethos and a desire to re-engineer the way it supports the business.

Claire Oxley, Head of IT Operations, explains: “Vitality is disrupting the market by offering services that are different to any other insurance company, and our IT strategy mirrors this ambition. We want every aspect of IT to be at the cutting edge of technology and innovation.”

The IT team saw an opportunity to kick-start their vision with the Vitality service desk, moving away from offshoring by bringing front-line support back to the UK and combining three independently-run service desk teams.

Vitality brings its service delivery vision to life with ServiceNow
After rethinking the service desk model, Vitality IT Service Manager Steve Amos selected ServiceNow as the company’s enterprise platform for IT service management (ITSM).

Vitality has replaced service desk tools with ServiceNow^® ITSM, delivering an out-of-the-box, best practice approach to incident, problem, and change management. ServiceNow also provides a self-service destination where Vitality’s 2,000 employees can submit requests and track queries.

“ServiceNow has removed confusion for our internal customers and service delivery teams, bringing an intelligent approach that has boosted employee satisfaction and accelerated resolution times,” says Steve.

ServiceNow automation reduces incident triage times from hours to seconds
Today, Vitality’s service desk handles 60,000 incidents a year, with 80% raised by employees through the self-service destination. Calls and emails to the service desk have been reduced dramatically, and through automation, 80% of tickets are now raised via self-service. Of those tickets, 55% are triaged automatically rather than manually reviewed.

“Our internal service desk is intrinsically linked to the Vitality customer experience, and ServiceNow has transformed the way we support the business,” says Steve. “If someone has a problem processing a claim or getting a quote, it can have a big impact on customer satisfaction. Now, instead of taking one to two hours to triage an incident, it’s passed to the support team in less than 30 seconds.” 

Vitality creates instant visibility for agents by integrating ServiceNow ITSM with monitoring tools
The integration of ITSM with Vitality’s management and monitoring systems is delivering additional value. For example, ServiceNow allows information from Nexthink, a tool that monitors performance and policy issues, to be immediately visible to service agents, helping them accelerate restoration time. If a user calls to say their computer is slow, the frontline team can click to Nexthink data as a level one check.

Vitality wants to conduct further integration work to allow Nexthink to automatically raise a ticket in ServiceNow when action needs to be taken. For example, if a laptop’s temporary files need clearing, agents won’t be required to fulfill the action.

Vitality is extending ServiceNow benefits beyond IT
“ServiceNow has opened up so many avenues that our primary challenge is focusing our attention,” says Pete Beesley, ServiceNow Developer, Vitality. “The flexibility of ServiceNow means we’ve been able to expand way beyond ITSM to develop applications that support other areas of the business, such as timesheet applications, booking systems, and processes to support our facilities management team.”

The IT delivery team is also exploring the joiner-mover-leaver process with HR, plus identity management functionality to automate the onboarding process. The vision for HR is a fully automated workflow that condenses the onboarding process so that everything is set up before a new employee arrives. The front desk can address the new hire by name, hand them their ID card and induction schedule (with appointments already booked in), and show them to a desk where their IT system is set up, allowing them to start work immediately. 

Claire explains: “IT always wants to add value to the business, and the employee experience is a great example. With ServiceNow, we can deliver a slick experience from the moment a new employee enters the building.”

Vitality takes a ServiceNow-first approach to changing its business for the better
Looking ahead, Pete has his sights set on innovation: “The next version of the Now Platform^® is always at the forefront of my mind as it’s integral to our future and ensures that innovation will continue to drive our approach.”

“Other companies talk about a cloud-first model, but for us, it’s ServiceNow-first. Our vision is to fundamentally change Vitality’s business for the better. ServiceNow challenges us to look at every process and find a way to optimize how we work. We can see where our journey needs to go, and ServiceNow is the technology partner to take us there,” says Claire.