Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 20 | Page 59

CASE STUDY V irgin Trains is determined to transform the rail experience into a reliable source of enjoyment and pleasure. The company wants to deliver a consistently positive experience that keeps customers happy and keeps them coming back. When it set out to radically improve customer service, Virgin Trains selected ServiceNow as a strategic partner. “We’re moving towards a digitised, automated, personalised rail experience that puts customer satisfaction first,” said John Sullivan, CIO at Virgin Trains. “All of that starts with a foundation of streamlined internal processes and excellent IT service delivery and that’s exactly what ServiceNow brings to the table,” said Sullivan. “Eventually, we’ll be able to use the same system to integrate data and automate processes across the enterprise, in just about any business function.” ServiceNow provides Virgin Trains with the visibility needed for continued process improvement For Virgin Trains, the first milestone on the journey to service excellence was modernisation of its IT Service Management infrastructure and applications. The company’s legacy IT service management platform was ageing and had limited capabilities. “Everything we do for customers starts with great support for employees,” said Dean Underwood, Head of IT Services for Virgin Trains. “If you don’t have infrastructure and processes in place that can improve service delivery and grow and evolve with you, transformation is just not possible.” The initial focal point was transparency. “We had no visibility into processes and we had very limited data on which to base decisions that would improve service delivery,” said Underwood. At a previous company, Underwood saw that the Now Platform could integrate applications and data from multiple sources, thereby creating a single source of truth and new ways to streamline IT service management processes. “With ServiceNow, we have data and visibility into processes so we can take ownership of RICHARD BRANSON HAS A SAYING, ‘IF WE LOOK AFTER OUR STAFF, THEY WILL LOOK AFTER OUR CUSTOMERS.’ those processes and continuously improve them,” said Underwood. The Now Platform gives Virgin Trains insight into core IT processes such as incident and change management. “We can quickly understand where failures are occurring, what’s causing failures, average resolution times and so on — and we can monitor our progress in both preventing outages and minimising their impact to employees,” Underwood commented. “Fundamentally, ServiceNow gives us the data we need to improve the service desk and overall service delivery,” said Sullivan. “In the past, we made changes based on what we felt needed changing. Now we have the data to drive better decisions. www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 59