Case Study:
William Hill

William Hill is the UK’s leading bookmaker and one of the most recognised and trusted brands in the gambling industry, providing gaming and betting services across multiple channels: online, on the high street, on the phone and on the move. They have been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 2002 and employ over 15,000 people in the UK, Ireland, Israel and Bulgaria.

Their aim is to give their customers what they want, when they want it, where they want it. Well-known for their 75-year sports-betting heritage, they also offer a full range of online and telephone gaming products. In order to meet the changing demands of their diverse customer base they are continuously evolving their product range to create an exciting and entertaining gambling experience.

This has been the fastest implementation of any system I’ve ever seen, but when you consider the complexity involved this timescale was quite extraordinary,

Rob Gwatkin, Services Manager

What was needed

As the business has diversified from its betting roots it has become increasingly reliant on a complex set of integrated applications and IT infrastructure. An IT team of over 200 provides support and on-going application development for online gaming and betting, 2000 retail outlets, as well as internal systems.

This complex infrastructure was supported by a service management system called Heat. However William Hill had outgrown its capability, particularly in its ability to integrate with other systems, its response times and incident and problem management reporting. In addition there was no workflow to support the systems management processes or any online self-service capability.

How we tackled it

William Hill engaged with a number of potential providers. A scoring matrix was used to help determine the most appropriate solution given the various criteria. The key criteria were for flexibility and scalability as well as an easy upgrade path, simple and intuitive to use and could meet the tight implementation timescales.

Given all the criteria, particularly the need for a rapid implementation, William Hill opted for the ServiceNow solution from Engage ESM. One key question was over security and could ServiceNow meet the stringent security requirements for William Hill.

With just a 7 week deadline for phase one, Engage ESM provided the initial consultancy to ensure best practice, followed by technical implementation assistance, support and training. The plan was to deliver a core replacement Service Desk together with a number of interfaces with MS Exchange and IT directory services.

Business outcomes

Problem management was quickly completed with Service Desk and Incident Management following close behind - and in less than 2 months ServiceNow went live to 100 users. Within weeks our ServiceNow solution had significantly reduced resources required - by some 30%.

The second phase was to enhance the service offered to the rest of the business by enabling users to log incidents as well order services online through a self-service portal. In addition to being able to log incidents, users were also able to view the status of their logs through the portal.

Get in touch

We can help you improve the way your organisation works. To learn more just drop us a line or call us on 0800 783 3040.