Five ways to achieve operational excellence

By Gary Collins, Director, ServiceNow Platform, Finastra

Having recently returned from Knowledge 2019, the annual ServiceNow event for customers and partners, I realised how important peer-to-peer information sharing and collaboration is to remain at the forefront of innovation.

ServiceNow is a strategic partner for Finastra and insights into the future development of the Now Platform presented at the event were hugely valuable. But equally I was able to share my experiences of standardising the entire Finastra IT operation on the Now Platform with other ServiceNow customers, executives and users.

The conversations I held mostly centred around five key learnings, as summarised below.  

1. Start with your employees first

Finastra’s ambition is to become the number one fintech provider, so we need to be laser-focused on our own operations. Our teams can only deliver seamless services if they have the most efficient means of doing this at scale. So, start with your employees, understand their roles and put the focus on how you can enable them to service customers properly

2. Create digital workflows

Finastra’s vulnerability management process is crucial to minimising our risk exposure, but it involved a huge amount of manual input in the past. To respond to vulnerabilities faster, we have created a digital workflow that enables the automated assignment of tasks, as well as robust reporting structures to ensure action has been taken.  

The results have been impressive. Our vulnerability response time is an estimated 25% faster and our teams across cybersecurity, IT and process have saved around 5,278 hours annually. The ultimate result is estimated savings of $350K annually.

3. Solve the problems of the future

Following the 2017 merger that created Finastra, we were restricted by multiple legacy technologies and processes. This lack of consistency meant our operations were hugely inefficient, so a decision was made to overhaul the entire IT infrastructure.

We unified all our systems, policies and processes on the Now Platform. The crucial aspect of this decision was that it wasn’t just about solving the problems we had at the time but to find a solution that would be scalable for future challenges and further growth.

4. Build a backbone for continuous digital transformation

A lot has been written about how unlocking value from data is key to digital transformation. At Finastra, the information available across the organisation and the way we can use it to optimise our business is very powerful with the help of ServiceNow.

In fact, we are accelerating digital transformation across the organisation by including additional ServiceNow modules and introducing new digital workflows. Currently we are looking at deploying ServiceNow’s HR Service Delivery module and the Governance, Risk and Compliance solution as an extension of the vulnerability management project. The question the business asks us now is not ‘can we do it?’, but ‘when should we do it and what’s the best way?’.

5. Find a trusted partner

I mentioned true partnerships at the beginning, but I cannot emphasise this learning strongly enough. It is important to find a partner that shares your ambition, helps your organisation grow and has the potential to take your services to the next level.

It is also great to overhaul IT operations with a partner that delivers a positive experience throughout the process. At Finastra we have struck gold in that regard.