Striving for a more accessible world
Sight loss affects more than two billion people around the world, more than a quarter of the global population. With life expectancy increasing and a lack of health services in certain communities, the number of those having to manage their disability, unsupported, is predicted to increase substantially in the years to come.
In the UK, the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is the country's leading sight loss charity. It delivers a huge range of practical services and emotional support to improve quality of life for thousands of blind and partially sighted people, their families and carers.
RNIB is a powerful campaigning organisation too, raising awareness of the experiences of the two million blind and partially sighted people in the UK and is a vocal advocate for action to make society more accessible for all. Around 15% of its—1,300 employees—have disclosed they are blind or partially sighted.
Providing safe places to live and work
RNIB provides more than 100 residential properties around the UK. The charity provides safe and secure homes catering for blind and partially sighted people of all ages. In addition to its headquarters building in London and network of regional offices, RNIB also operates resource centres and other facilities, to fulfil its mission to support people with sight loss with all aspects of life.
The organisation deploys a 20-strong team to manage this property portfolio, maintaining RNIB's professional standards and ensuring compliance with all laws and regulations.
Supported by an internal helpdesk team and external contractors, they deal with a huge variety of day-to-day property management requirements, from complex building maintenance and repair projects to catering and security.
When its legacy property service desk system—heavily reliant on email and manual, spreadsheet-based processes—needed replacing, RNIB decided to extend its successful technology partnership with ServiceNow.
A legacy system not fit for purpose
"Unfortunately, our existing system had fundamental flaws and hadn't been designed with the needs of users and the organisation as a whole in mind", explained RNIB's Simon Lakin, Technical Business Analyst.
"We didn’t have an online portal for tickets, so everything was sent by email, which was cumbersome, slow, prone to duplication and inefficient. We had over 100 categories of tickets, which was confusing for everyone and made prioritisation, analysis and reporting very difficult".
The previous system also failed to meet many of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards—a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium, the main international standards organisation for the Internet.
And with a dispersed workforce, combined with the legacy system's drawbacks, not all property management activities were being recorded. The result was process and decision-making inconsistencies and a lack of visibility and oversight.
"We didn't have a centralised property database, which was a major drawback", explains Simon. "We have a wide variety of buildings, so it's vital to know the details of each, its history and how it's being used, so we can manage it properly and efficiently, ensuring it's fully compliant.
"A complete, accurate, up-to-date property database was an essential component of a new property service desk solution".
Strategic platform of choice
RNIB's ServiceNow journey began in 2020, when it selected ServiceNow and IT Service Management (ITSM) as the organisation's core IT support service, implemented by ServiceNow Elite Partner, FlyForm. The success of the project, meeting RNIB's strict user accessibility criteria, put ServiceNow and FlyForm in a strong position to address the property team's challenges.
"The ITSM implementation has been very successful and really convinced us that the ServiceNow and FlyForm combination was the right one for us", explained Anila Mistry, RNIB's Technical Project Manager.
"The partnership has enabled us to constantly enhance the solution and to take full advantage of all ServiceNow's capabilities, to personalise it through branding and configure font styles and sizes on the Employee Service Center to precisely meet our needs.
"As a result, RNIB confirmed ServiceNow as our strategic platform of choice for all of our service desks, enabling us to forge ahead with our new property service solution with real confidence".
Gathering research and analysis while using a defined set of requirements, which included a system that met WCAG standards, as well as a central portal, a demo of the new Property Service Desk solution was created. The purpose was to guide team members through its development stage thus ensuring that their feedback, especially around user accessibility, was captured and incorporated.
The Property Service Desk solution was built using RNIB's existing ITSM module combined with the ServiceNow Employee Center and employee engagement portal, with extensive use of out-of-the-box functionality.
"FlyForm held our hands throughout and we were ready to launch in just eight weeks, on time and on budget, with a seamless go live", explained Anila. "That was a huge win for us, and we've never looked back".
Leading the way in online accessibility
Now, all property-related information and processes are in one ServiceNow system, accessed through the portal's intuitive, easy-to-use interface that meets best practice usability criteria for people who are blind and partially sighted, specifically around its high contrast and screen reader compatibility. The portal's interface is compatible with NVDA, JAWS and VoiceOver—commonly used screen reader software available through Windows operating system and macOS. "There's meaningful sequence and it’s navigable", says Simon.
A searchable database provides a profile of all properties and their uses and includes listings of all assets and equipment, such as boilers and heating systems, their status and maintenance history.
Ticket templates ensure that users provide all necessary information to enable them to be processed quickly and efficiently, by the right person or team.
"Within four months, 70% of requests were being raised through the portal", explained Simon. "The volume of tickets is up from 400 a month to 700, which we believe reflects the confidence everyone has in the ServiceNow Platform.
"Accessibility is a key requirement for RNIB, not just because some of our colleagues are blind or partially sighted, but because it's the right thing to do", adds Simon. "As a disability charity, we want to lead the way in accessibility and inclusion.
Every workplace should be accessible for equal access to all employees, whether they have a disability or not. We've been impressed by the way ServiceNow conforms with the UK Web Content Accessibility Guidelines around keyboard access, screen reader compatibility, structured HTML with clear headings and good contrast. But, in particular, we're impressed by its forward-thinking approach, continually working to improve the accessibility of the platform.
"It can be difficult to strike the right balance between accessibility and usability", adds Anila. "ServiceNow has achieved that balance, which our colleagues really appreciate and it helps all of us to work productively and efficiently together using the same system".
Automation ensures safeguarding and compliance
Dashboards and reporting tools enable everyone to track the status and progress of tickets, now organised in just 10 categories for ease of management and the actions related to each.
More than 5% of tickets are generated using an automated calendar. Each reminder prompts one of a wide range of routine activities, such as annual boiler services or fire alarm tests, reducing risk and helping to ensure every property is safe, fully functioning and compliant.
"Since ServiceNow went live, we have noticed a lot of positive changes", says Nicola Gray, Property Helpdesk Team Leader at RNIB. "The reporting function allows us to share accurate reports with senior management.
"Now, 100% of compliance work is logged and tracked via ServiceNow. As a result, all properties within RNIB are compliant. We can now hold all compliance documentation against each property and there are calendar reminders for upcoming compliance renewals and lease renewals ensuring jobs are not missed and are completed on time. The Facilities Managers can look at their sites, get an insight as to what is taking place at each site on any given day and manage their own compliance jobs. Prior to ServiceNow, compliance was managed by an individual staff member using spreadsheets.
"Thanks to ServiceNow, compliance work has become more efficient as the system is automated and no one has to keep manually checking a spreadsheet—it has removed the risk of missing a compliance date".
The solution is also enabling closer working between the property team and other departments. For example, the instant availability of information in ServiceNow means that the finance team can resolve invoicing and payment queries from suppliers of property services quickly and efficiently.
Ultimately, property managers will be able to interrogate the data, review trends, patterns and employee feedback and instigate continuous improvement projects.
While RNIB has transformed its ability to manage its property portfolio, the success of the first few months has also showcased the potential to achieve so much more, in partnership with ServiceNow and FlyForm. Already on its roadmap is a rationalisation of all its employee services onto the ServiceNow Employee Center, including IT and HR to unlock further efficiencies bringing multiple shared mailboxes and processes together into one platform. And by using the portal as a platform for charity-wide internal communications, RNIB expects to achieve closer, more collaborative team working.
"As a charity, we have to wait for budget to become available and then to use it wisely", concludes Anila. "This project has demonstrated how great technology like ServiceNow, designed with users in mind, can be transformative for an organisation like RNIB".