Driving continuous improvement and innovation

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is Australia’s independent energy system and market operator, and system planner. Its goal is to ensure that all Australians have access to safe, secure and reliable energy.

As part of its digital transformation strategy, AEMO is in a three-year Revolution Programme to drive efficiency and innovation across the business. With a focus on customer engagement, AEMO looked to ServiceNow to provide an enterprise platform that aligns with its strategic action plan to uplift productivity not only for IT services, but also corporate processes, and people and culture.

AEMO previously used two legacy IT service management tools, while more complex processes like onboarding and offboarding were also managed in spreadsheets. There was no single source of truth to track service activity and performance.

With the automation of over 100 workflows with ServiceNow, AEMO now has a single enterprise service management platform for employees and customers to connect and engage with the business.

Uplifting efficiency and transparency in service operations

Through the integration of ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) with identity management solutions and Microsoft Active Directory, employees can easily submit and track requests for a range of services, including IT, procurement, workplace services and facilities management, via a single platform. These automations have greatly reduced complexity in request management and contributed to a 20% rise in self-service usage in the past two years.

With continuous improvement of the ServiceNow platform, AEMO has reduced mean time to resolution (MTTR) by 30%. This is reflected in increased productivity and employee sentiment across the business. AEMO anticipates a 30% reduction in service desk contacts the coming months.

As an energy market operator, ensuring service availability is critical for its customers and people across Australia. AEMO is maturing its use of ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM) in preparation for proactive incident alerting and event management.

This will allow AEMO to be more proactive in analysing its IT infrastructure and preventing service outages. Having ServiceNow ITSM and ServiceNow ITOM on the same platform also helps the AEMO IT team to deliver more accurate reporting and improve service operations.

Achieving greater time efficiency through automation

AEMO’s customers are the market participants that distribute energy to consumers in Australia. AEMO is building a Customer Service Management portal to improve their experience within ServiceNow.

AEMO also has a panel of preferred suppliers and strategic partners to provide augmented project services. With ServiceNow App Engine, AEMO has built a low-code, no-code app specifically for supplier demand management.

Using the automated workflow within ServiceNow App Engine, AEMO can ensure that each supplier and partner follows the same process and minimises errors or missed steps. There are also significant savings in overall processing times—from augmentation requests to a consultant’s start day—as AEMO no longer needs to send emails back and forth or request a Statement of Work.

New processes built in the app have helped to remove touchpoints from the augmentation process for two business units. The app also gives team members visibility into key metrics for supplier responsiveness and performance, and allows negotiation of competitive rate cards and volume discounts with strategic partners, alongside cementing KPIs and terms and conditions.

With previous spreadsheet-based processes, it was difficult for AEMO teams to stay on top of risk activities and make effective decisions. As part of the Revolution programme, AEMO is also looking to implement ServiceNow Integrated Risk Management to provide a single source of truth to manage and control risk and audit practices.

Over the coming months, AEMO is also looking to continuously improve and grow the capabilities of the ServiceNow platform. These include:

·       The ability to create and manage groups automatically

·       Increased options in the self-service catalogue forms

·       A refreshed Service Portal

·       Service Operations Workspace to offer a ‘Walk Up Experience’

·       Introduction of ServiceNow Automated Testing Framework to AEMO

These improvements will help to align AEMO’s priorities to further boost efficiency and productivity across the business and take customer experience to the next level.