Building on a successful formula
M1 prides itself on coming first. Launched in 1997, it was the first to offer nationwide 4G services, and the first to receive one of Singapore’s two nationwide 5G standalone network licences. Today, it is also Singapore’s first digital network operator.
M1’s two million customers, both consumers and businesses, enjoy a wide range of smart mobile and fixed communications services. Corporate customers can select from a menu of managed business services embracing connectivity, cloud, cybersecurity, Internet of Things and data centres, building a combination of solutions ideally suited to their needs.
Expansion into new markets with technology
To stay competitive and profitable, M1 has responded by being proactive and innovative. A new strategic growth plan has seen the company evolve from a predominantly consumer telecoms business into a more diverse technology operator, with a growing range of products and services for both individuals and, increasingly, enterprise customers.
The company is committed to continuous improvement in the customer experience, with a drive for hyper-personalisation to enable bespoke service packages to meet the unique requirements of every customer. Through the acquisition of Glocomp, one of the premier enterprise solutions providers in Malaysia, M1 has also acquired ICT capabilities to expedite cloud and enterprise growth in the region.
In highly competitive economies, successful businesses are constantly reducing the cost of winning and serving customers. To achieve this, M1 has invested in digital technologies, with ServiceNow to support the transformation of their IT operations. In 2022, Jan Morgenthal joined the company as Chief Digital Officer to help accelerate the adoption of cloud-based platforms and solutions for both M1’s business-to-consumer operations and its rapidly expanding business-to-business operations.
Data insights inform action at pace
Jan describes ServiceNow as a great support which has elevated his IT operations to new heights. Remarkably, performance, stability and reliability for M1 has already been achieved without using all features and functionality of ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) yet. “We’re looking to build on what we’ve achieved so far with ServiceNow, while also taking a managed, phased approach as legacy tools and contracts expire”, he explains.
The ability to expand the use of ITSM into new domains, the overall ease of use of the platform for employees, and out-of-the-box reporting capabilities are all important attributes of ServiceNow.
“Thanks to these tools, and the reports that we can create at speed in ServiceNow, we can very quickly see what is really going on within our IT engine and provide the insights we need to take immediate action. This is important to help drive our strategy and ensure we have control of our own destiny”.
The deployment of ServiceNow also contributes to enhancements in the experience for M1’s customers too. Technical issues affecting services can quickly be routed via ServiceNow to the right technical experts to diagnose, prioritise and execute a fast resolution, ensuring that M1 always delivers against service level agreements.
As the partnership between M1 and ServiceNow continues to expand, ITSM has made an important contribution to the saving of employee time every single day, allowing those employees to use this time to focus on higher value and more urgent tasks. Incident resolution effort and incident call volumes also fell substantially, while the incident closed rate improved.
ITSM now valued throughout the business
“When you embark on a massive digital transformation journey as M1 did a few years ago, it’s important to have a core IT platform, such as ITSM, to support that process, to provide stability, to bring knowledge together in one place, to control workflows and to keep daily operations running smoothly”, says Jan.
“ServiceNow ITSM is now used as the workflow management tool of choice and service support throughout the business”.
Jan continues: “You could say it’s a typical ServiceNow success story—starting in the IT domain, demonstrating its value there and then expanding into other business areas with similar requirements, and that’s exactly what’s happened at M1”.
Close partnership builds ServiceNow roadmap for the future
M1’s ServiceNow roadmap includes steady expansion with the ITSM features and functionality to extend self-service and service deflection, proactive management and issue resolution, and workflow automation.
“We appreciate the close partnership that we have with the ServiceNow team in Singapore; they provide the foundations for us to be successful in our daily operations. We hold regular workshops on live topics to map out new developments for me to build into my plans for years to come.
“2024 looks like a pivotal year when we will build on our success with ITSM and begin our expansion into other solutions in the ServiceNow portfolio, such as IT Operations Management, where we have just begun using Discovery.
“In particular, I’m exploring the opportunity to move onto an AIOps model, which, with ServiceNow’s help, has the potential to completely transform how we automate and optimise our operations”.