Saudi Government reaps the benefits of efficient service management

Need to unify employee services
Even the higher realms of government are not immune to the challenging complexities of amalgamation, and the Saudi Government is no exception. When its Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD) was formed through the amalgamation of three other ministries—the Ministries of Labour, Social Development, and Civil Services—the legacy was a confusing mix of service management solutions and technologies.

The MHRSD is responsible for formulating general policies on social and labor affairs, and for guiding social development aimed at improving living standards in the region. But numerous portals for separate systems, such as HR, finance, and document management each required a separate login to access.

Further compounding this issue was the absence of a portal directory which made information difficult to find. And if any of the 23,000 employees needed to remedy IT problems or access other business services, they were faced with laborious manual processes, time-consuming voice calls, or lengthy email chains. There were two different service management solutions, and different ticketing systems that made it a struggle for workers to access the help they needed.

“The employee’s experience was scattered across disconnected portals within the organization,” recalls Mohammed Almukhalfi, Assistant Deputy Minister for Systems and Business Development at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, Saudi Arabia. “Employees struggled to stay up to date on Ministry news, events, and important resources—as a result, levels of engagement were low."

Faced with the major challenges of unifying and improving the employee experience and decommissioning the old systems, MHRSD turned to its long-time IT consultant, Devoteam, a ServiceNow partner. Devoteam had already been handling digital transformation for the individual ministries and after the merger it was called in to create a new joint digital strategy. Service management was an important element of that strategy.

Wider enterprise role for portal
“They had intended to use one or other of their existing systems or amalgamate them, but we told them we had a new system, ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM), that would give them better service in terms of customer experience and agility, and also financially,” says Mohammad Dahleh, Devoteam Partner in charge of the Ministry project.

Devoteam conducted an in-depth comparative analysis of the ServiceNow solution and the two legacy systems, and outlined the Now Platform benefits to the Ministry. Implementation was scheduled to take nine months but was achieved in six.

The new solution is delivered through a single customer portal on the Ministry website and while it initially dealt with IT matters, it has since taken on a much wider enterprise role.

“By implementing Khadamati, we were able to consolidate the two main ITSM systems into a single system, giving support to employees, full visibility on all requests, and allowing them to streamline the task resolution,” says Mohammed Almukhalfi from the Ministry.

Through the Khadamati system, the Ministry implemented a one-stop shop by building a directory of all the portals in the Ministry. To access these portals, employees simply log in to Khadamati using a single sign-in, click on the desired portal, and will be automatically logged onto that portal by the system. “Since its implementation, we have seen an increase in employee satisfaction and improved overall morale of the workforce, which has had a positive impact on performance,” says Mohammed Almukhalfi.

The powerful low-code capabilities of ServiceNow have allowed developers to easily introduce or update existing eServices on both the front and back end, using a simple and intuitive system. This technology has enabled developers to implement new services quickly while allowing service facilitators and senior management to easily monitor organizational performance with state-of-the-art dashboards and reports.

Self-help is key
The service is called Khadamati, which means ‘All Services’, and the portal provides one single point of contact for all employees from the Riyadh headquarters and 50 other locations throughout the region. Visitors can view a comprehensive service catalog and can access direct service links or hyper-links to other sites. Self-help is high on the agenda with a series of knowledge banks on many topics. The chat bot—Dalal—supports MHRSD employees and managers to enable them to be more connected to the platform and be more agile. Dalal—backed by 500 live agents–has made it easier for users to request services and raise incidents as well as checking status, searching portals and the employee directory, and checking the event calendar and promotions. Managers can also now approve requests more easily.

All of this is handled in one place in Arabic, the native language of the users, so conversations can be performed in Arabic alongside English. Devoteam utilized the localization feature of the platform to support Arabic, as well as defining the intelligent keywords most likely to be used by employees.

With ServiceNow, the Ministry has digitized and automated more than 300 services, allowing for complete visibility of progress and an accelerated processing time. Of the 300 available services, some 90% relate to IT matters but 10% deliver enterprise services. Employees can view the latest Ministry news, special offers with third party organizations like restaurants and travel agents, a calendar of key Ministry activities, and a full map of all Ministry office and branch locations. They can also conduct basic admin tasks such as booking a meeting room. Management now has a holistic view of the performance through the generated dashboards and reports, and has set SLAs to improve work and satisfaction.

Since the implementation of ServiceNow ITSM, Mohammed Almukhalfi has noticed that agent performance has improved greatly, and problem resolution has accelerated by 50%. More than 95% of employees are using the portal and taking advantage of the self-service capabilities of the platform.

“We have seen a 45% optimization rate in agents’ performance with the introduced self-service and service catalog,” says Mohammed Almukhalfi, “and 100% of ITSM contacts are now being done on the portal with high satisfaction. Additionally, we have developed a comprehensive set of KPIs to track and measure performance against the entire service management lifecycle.

“Finally, in line with our culture of continuous improvement, we have also implemented an open feedback channel with employees to discuss new innovations and ideas, and promote higher engagement.”

The digital transformation journey continues 
With Devoteam’s help, the Ministry plans to grow the number of services covered by Khadamati and is considering expanding its Now Platform with the addition of Government, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM), and IT Operations Management (ITOM).

“Looking ahead, we plan to further leverage ServiceNow capabilities to build a mobile application for employees that will take efficiency and accessibility to new heights as part of our dedicated efforts towards continuous improvement and, of course, progress,” says Mohammed Almukhalfi.

“We are impressed by how easy it is to develop new services and how flexible the Now Platform is. Delivering all services though a single easy-to-use portal has brought many benefits.”

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