Case Study:
Veolia

Veolia aligns IT operations with global service strategy and business goals

Veolia provides water, waste, and energy management solutions designed to preserve scarce raw materials and contribute to the sustainable development of communities and industries. The company’s operations are focused around three core activities: developing access to resources, preserving available resources, and replenishing resources. Using the Now Platform® and ServiceNow® Performance Analytics, Veolia established a global centre of excellence to ensure a consistent, best practice approach to KPIs and performance measurement.

Resourcing the world through service innovation, Veolia puts the sustainable development of communities and industries first

Veolia’s global culture of innovation has long helped the company increase efficiency, both internally, and in collaboration with customers. However, the company’s growing global presence was beginning to pose a challenge. Each country had its own IT operation headed by a different CIO, which meant there were 45 approaches to IT service delivery, data input, performance measurement, and reporting.

Veolia re-engineers its global IT approach: Act, Plan, Check, Do

To address this challenge, Martin Black, Veolia’s Head of Centre of Excellence for ITSM, re-engineered the company’s approach to IT service management. The result was a new strategy: Act, Plan, Check, Do.

Veolia selected ServiceNow to provide a foundation for the new strategy, delivering consistency in the way Veolia’s 24/7 IT services are delivered and measured across 45 markets.

A dedicated team was formed—and, together with Rob Gwatkin, Senior ITSM Service Delivery Manager, and Prabjoth Saimbhi, Global Product Manager—a best practice IT service management foundation was created.

ServiceNow enables Veolia to align local IT operations to its global service strategy and business goals

“ServiceNow gave us a platform to align our local IT operations with our global services strategy and the goals of the business,” says Martin. Using the Now Platform, each country can see at-a-glance what requires immediate attention, the number of incidents, first contact resolution results, and opportunities for streamlining.

 

ServiceNow has enabled us to take a single group approach to managing KPIs across the world.

Prabjoth Saimbhi - Global ITSM Product Manager, Veolia

The platform handles an average of 15.5 million transactions every year, and is used by Veolia's country IT teams to support local operations, including agile IT development, self-service portals, IT support, and operations management. Since the ServiceNow deployment, Veolia has achieved a 47% improvement in service response times through real-time, queue management dashboards. Veolia creates a center of excellence to drive enterprise-wide best practices 

Veolia has formalized a global service approach by creating a center of excellence (CoE) to govern IT best practices. The CoE has put in place accurate service level agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) worldwide, for a consistent, enterprise-wide approach. 

“Through ServiceNow, we’ve made IT a professional service—an accountable and measured part of the business,” explains Rob. “We now have a documented strategy for IT, with clear, repeatable processes and a focus on simplification, integration, and automation.”

As part of this strategy, a Group CIO Council was also created through which the company’s 45 regional CIOs discuss how to evolve the CoE framework, and control and govern any changes.

Veolia deploys ServiceNow Performance Analytics for a single view of global service performance

Global ITSM Product Manager Prabjoth Saimbhi says that although 45 countries supplied the same output to the central business, there was no single, global approach to operational analytics. Instead, each country team worked and interpreted data differently, which led to inaccurate measurement and reporting. He notes: “Benchmarking performance on a global scale was impossible.”

Under Prabjoth’s direction, the global IT Service Management team was tasked with formalizing and standardizing global KPIs for incident management, change management, request fulfilment, and problem management. Meanwhile, ServiceNow Performance Analytics was deployed to provide a single, global view of service performance and delivery against KPIs aligning with business goals.

“Globally, we now have a clear strategy and roadmap built on consistent KPI data that we can trust, thanks to ServiceNow,” says Prabjoth. “Our SLAs are relevant and realistic and—most importantly—interpreted and reported in the same way by every CIO and country team. That’s imperative for setting targets and focusing on continuous improvement.”

Holistic analytical approach results in more informed business decisions for Veolia

The new analytical approach delivered dramatic improvements in the performance management process for Veolia’s global ITSM team, and helped to accelerate reporting and process improvements. Because ServiceNow Performance Analytics is in-platform, decisions are based on accurate, consistent, actionable information. 

The single source of data and automation capabilities has rapidly accelerated reporting and process improvements.

“When I first joined Veolia, I spent three days a month putting together a service report just for the UK market,” says Prabjoth. “Imagine this process 45 times over. It was incredibly inefficient and inconsistent.”

Prabjoth’s team now has a holistic view of the business, allowing them to forecast efficiently and make more informed decisions. They have achieved three times faster service reviews, which has led to a 50% increase in employee satisfaction.

Veolia teams in 45 markets work toward common business goals for the first time, thanks to ServiceNow

Today, every country CIO at Veolia is empowered to input into the global ITSM operation and performance and measurement approach.

ServiceNow enabled the company to take a single group approach to managing KPIs across the world, while its dashboards led to the buy-in of ServiceNow Performance Analytics methodologies across the wider business.

“I now have 45 country CIOs who understand the value of ServiceNow Performance Analytics and are working towards common performance goals,” says Prabjoth. “The benefits of the Now Platform are being actively promoted by our Group CIO Council, representing a complete turnaround in the way they see service delivery.”   

Veolia is now looking to expand the Now Platform across its legal, HR, and finance departments in multiple countries to showcase performance-driven goals in a more efficient and streamlined way.

Source: ServiceNow,Veolia aligns IT operations with global service strategy and business goals