In the highly connected, data-driven marketplace, the pace of business failure or success runs at an accelerated cadence never previously witnessed. Understanding the need to innovate, acquire and advance at all times, UDG Group needed to move from its legacy IT toolset, which was unable to support their expanding IT requirements and processes.
The Dublin-based international business group which includes UDG Healthcare cited a lack of enterprise scalability, performance, and usability as its primary reasons for IT platform evolution.
Adopting Out-of-the-box
Keen to deploy and progress forward quickly, UDG Group used an out-of-the-box approach designed to deliver a rapid return on investment and implemented ServiceNow ITSM as a minimum viable product (MVP).
Additionally, UDG Group sought guidance from ServiceNow Elite Partner, Crossfuze. Together they designed a phased approach towards delivering a cohesive Content Management Database as part of the wider Enterprise IT Service Management (ITSM) strategy.
“My advice is to always keep things simple where possible. That way, IT teams can build the most effective, resilient, and functional deployments possible. This is very much evidenced by our MVP tactics, which formed part of a wider workflow strategy under the consultative watch of ServiceNow and Crossfuze,” said Jeremy Heaven, Group IT Service Delivery Manager, UDG Group.
Due diligence leads to brilliance
With ServiceNow already recognised as a market leader by UDG Group, the company nonetheless stood back from the market and consulted analyst house Gartner before engaging a process of due diligence. ServiceNow came through in pole position after these processes due to selection criteria pointing to scalability, structure for process automation and wider aspects of IT functionality across the enterprise.
Jeremy Heaven and the UDG Group team recognised the need for a ServiceNow implementation partner and consulted ServiceNow during its selection process. ServiceNow offers a selection of Elite partner options, never necessarily recommending any single firm directly to leave the power of choice in customers’ hands.
With Crossfuze integrated into its own team structure, UDG Group insisted upon forming a partnership that would extend beyond any basic notion of the deployment simply being an IT project. Knowing that it had to act as more than just an early stage implementor, Crossfuze drove UDG Group to think in different ways in order to get the most out of the deployment.
Above and beyond lift and shift
“The whole implementation process can be characterised by its holistic longer-term nature; this was not a lift and shift operation and all parties and stakeholders recognised that fact from the start. Working through user acceptance testing with an appreciation of the central budget constraints, Crossfuze brought ServiceNow architecture forwards with an outstanding delivery team,” said Jeremy Heaven.
The project kicked off in summer 2020 and took six months to the first go-live release. This included an initial period prior to implementation, known as Phase 0 and was used to work with Crossfuze’s Advisory Practice. Phase 0 saw a series of workshops and design and planning engagements that were executed upfront, this enabled the teams to plan and agree upon requirements effectively.
ServiceNow has been live in UDG for 10 months and reports very positive reactions from end users, many of whom have helped the company see a significant increase in self-service adoption via the ServiceNow portal.
Faster, easier data intelligence
“A key benefit for us is data management. We used to export data to Tableau for dashboards and reporting. The ServiceNow platform is very powerful and as our usage increases we will be able to make much better business decisions. 80 percent of your reporting goes downwards to support daily activities but 20 percent goes upwards to management to gain actionable insight,” concluded Jeremy Heaven.
Marking out key team members, UDG Group notes exemplary performance from Crossfuze employee principal technical consultant Steve Reekie, senior technical consultant Tony Hutchinson, technical consultant Charleston Recto and project engagement manager, Mariana Reynolds.
