Serco Inc. is the Americas division of Serco Group plc, one of the world’s leading providers of outsourced technology-enabled services and support systems to governments and public sector organizations.
Its North American team of more than 9,000 professionals in the United States and Canada delivers a diverse range of program management, digital technology, and engineering services for the defense, transportation, and citizen services sectors.
Serco Group plc is headquartered in the United Kingdom, employing 50,000 people in 35 countries worldwide and generating global annual revenues of more than $6 billion.
Setting new standards, with a human touch
In North America, Serco is supporting national, state, and provincial governments and their agencies in the digital transformation and automation of public services, setting new standards for scalability, efficiency, and quality.
To help meet citizens’ and businesses’ higher expectations, Serco combines in-depth understanding of the public sector landscape, data analytics, intelligent automation, and AI expertise with a strong collaborative culture and human touch, provided by teams deeply invested in its clients’ missions.
To achieve its goals and to extend its reach into the federal civilian marketplace, Serco is constantly improving its own internal systems and capabilities. With this in mind, the company partnered with ServiceNow to take advantage of the features and functionality within IT Service Management, IT Operations Management, and App Engine.
Once deployed, Serco wanted to ensure that the business was maximizing the value and impact of its investment, and that it was securely positioned to offer ServiceNow solutions as part of its own product and service portfolio.
“By the beginning of 2023 our team understood the power of ServiceNow,” recalls Brian Snodgrass, VP Enterprise Applications and Development. “But we wanted to go further to unlock the full benefits of the platform and our toolset, so we decided to seek the guidance of ServiceNow Impact.”
ServiceNow Impact is the industry’s first human and AI-powered value acceleration solution, designed to help accelerate time to value with ServiceNow. Built on the Now Platform, Impact provides customers with personalized recommendations and expertise to help them achieve the specific outcomes their business needs.
As part of ServiceNow Impact, Serco has a designated Customer Success Manager (CSM) and access to a diverse range of software tools. Serco is now going faster and further and achieving much more with ServiceNow.
Showcasing what’s possible
The CSM works alongside Serco to help deliver a tailored roadmap aligned with its business objectives. As an advocate and direct point of contact, the CSM provides hands-on advice and guidance, and helps orchestrate the full range of ServiceNow Impact resources and expertise to meet the client’s goals.
For Serco, one of its first priorities was creating a capabilities map. A capabilities map enables organizational transparency and clarity into the Now Platform with a comprehensive list of the products and capabilities available. Descriptions of those capabilities are provided and can be drilled down to explore additional information about each one, including access to tailored self-service adoption guidance and resources.
To get off to the best possible start, the CSM worked closely with Serco’s Manager of Enterprise Product Management, Allison McFall, to create a complete capabilities map, providing solid foundations for progress and improvement.
“Our capabilities map serves as our core navigational tool, providing a clear, comprehensive overview of our platform’s functionalities,” explains Allison. “It has enabled us to strategically plan and optimize our use of ServiceNow, aligning its capabilities with our needs and thereby enhancing operational efficiencies and internal customer satisfaction.
“ServiceNow Impact has empowered Serco to drive efficiencies and innovation. Our Customer Success Manager works closely with us to keep our roadmap up to date and is always listening and making recommendations on which ServiceNow capabilities align with our strategic objectives and would provide Serco with the most value.”
Fast, efficient, and targeted value realization
Next, Serco utilized three Impact Accelerators, which are fixed-scope offerings that give customers access to the expertise they need, when they need it. Accelerators provide fast value for targeted, strategic initiatives.
Serco used the Health Assessment and the Jumpstart Your Upgrade accelerators, first to gain a technical analysis of the health of its instance using a ServiceNow HealthScan, and second to ensure a fast, efficient, and complete upgrade process.
“Both accelerators have helped to expedite our digital transformation initiatives, streamline our upgrade process, and ensure that our systems are running using the latest best practices while maintaining out-of -the-box functionality without the need for customizations,” explains Allison.
“Based on the success of these, we also used the Jumpstart Your Employee Center accelerator to ensure that key initiatives for 2024—to provide a seamless experience for our people—are expertly delivered. With the launch of Employee Center, Serco has created an employee hub for automation and process modernization, streamlining the request and approval process into a single platform.”
“We want to make sure that we’re secure and following best practices,” adds Brian. “The Health Assessment accelerator gave us the confidence we needed in the platform and proved that we could adopt innovation faster.
“Upgrades that were taking us four to six weeks are now completed in two to three, and we have confidence in the steps, checklists, and tools we’re using. We’re spending more time unlocking the power of the platform and less time on simply carrying out the upgrades.”
Training grows internal capability to enable speed and accuracy
ServiceNow Impact has also transformed Serco’s in-house ServiceNow expertise. From a team of just three, Now Learning on-demand training has enabled 34 additional Serco employees to become certified as system administrators, application developers, and citizen developers. And the numbers are constantly growing, with more and more team members successfully completing courses and acquiring certifications in a variety of specific skills and competencies.
“We want to extend our collaboration with the ServiceNow Creator Workflow Product Success team, who guided us through our citizen development program workshop series. Serco wouldn’t have been able to stand up our citizen development practice and train all the people without ServiceNow expertise. They are a great partner for us.
“Through App Engine, we’ve stood up our citizen development community of practice and released 12 applications, with more than 17 in the pipeline,” says Brian. “App Engine has enabled Serco to transform citizen experiences, improved service delivery for our business units and corporate operations, and helped us modernize legacy processes across the company.”
“Thanks to ServiceNow Impact and the commitment ServiceNow has demonstrated to us, we understand the platform much better and the critical guidance we have received has enabled us to unlock the power of performance analytics, reviews, and trends.”
Brian continues: “We’re moving faster and accelerating outcomes. The constant, transparent dialogue with our Customer Success Manager means we share our challenges every time we meet, and she always brings solutions to the table.
“We want to go faster again to build out our value blueprint in 2024. Taking on Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and Virtual Agent will unlock even more value from ServiceNow.”
“As a well-known media proprietor said recently: ‘The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.’ That is exactly why Serco, our technology-based services company, chose to partner with ServiceNow,” explains Don Styer, Chief Technology Officer at Serco.
“By using ServiceNow’s powerful platform-as-service, we are realizing the speed and efficiency that benefits our citizens, customers, and colleagues.”