Seeing the entire supplier ecosystem on a single pane

Ensuring an efficient supplier ecosystem
Global organizations of all sizes need robust supplier relationship management solutions to save costs, improve efficiency, and secure data. As a global technology leader, ISG harnesses its own operational excellence to provide its more than 700 clients across the globe and 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises with digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics, managed governance and risk services, market intelligence, and technology research and analysis.

Automation accelerates sales
ISG needed a digital platform that it could scale across its many and varied clients and deliver an intuitive and connected user experience.

The technology research and advisory firm looked to ServiceNow to build a state-of-the-art supplier relationship management platform, GovernX^®. Using ServiceNow’s App Engine enables ISG to easily build custom workflow solutions for its clients with Creator Workflows. The company also benefits from having full control of the platform for ongoing development and enhancement. The Creator Workflows low-code App Engine and user-friendly toolkit empower developers to build apps faster and expedite conversion of ideas to client solutions, resulting in a more than 20% increase in the revenue and pipeline of clients.

Having developed the GovernX^® platform in-house, ISG has better control over product development to keep up with changing market trends, technology upgrades, and clients’ operating environments. ISG can roll out services at competitive prices with increased quality and deeper analytics. More time and costs are also saved by cutting the time it requires to onboard a new client by nearly a third, allowing ISG to hit the markets faster.

ISG also uses ServiceNow’s platform internally for IT service management and to automate digital workflows in HR and finance procedures. In this way, ISG has cut transaction processing by 40% and significantly reduced internal costs.

Visibility through a digital-first solution
Digitization mitigates risk when managing a complex set of suppliers from different parts of the world. When information is sporadic or poorly integrated, it leads to errors or, possibly, deep losses. For ISG to help its clients realize cost savings and operational efficiencies, it needed an agile, secure, robust supplier relationship management solution with the scalability to meet industry standards. As a single digital platform, GovernX^® allows ISG clients to organize third-party suppliers, gauge risks, and control costs.

With ServiceNow’s App Engine, ISG can build custom workflows that combine technology, expertise, market data, and analytics to provide the clarity and visibility required by clients and enable tracking for compliance and risk mitigation on a ‘single pane of glass’.

Changing the game of supplier management
With ServiceNow, GovernX^® showcases automation at its best, and encompasses business process management, document management, active collaboration across the supplier management ecosystem, governance forum management, and visual analytics for key business insights. Clients often are flooded with extensive amounts of supplier data; GovernX^® transforms the supplier management experience from complexity to clarity. The platform spots errors, allows for swifter onboarding and offboarding of suppliers, and saves money and time—a game changer in a time of a global pandemic.

Making hidden information visible
With cost and profitability being key business objectives, organizations must be able to track behavior and trends in vendor relationships. Value leakages happen when actual realized value is lower than the potential value of an agreement. GovernX^® mitigates value leakages resulting from unmanaged deliverables and obligations, misinterpretation of contracts, invoice errors, etc., reducing up to 30% of value erosion for clients.

Thanks to the granularity of data now available, the Creator Workflows within the GovernX^® platform can analyze miscalculations, spot errors, and simplify complex multi-vendor relationships. Now ISG and its clients can identify unnecessary expenses in vendor payments and duplicated outsourcing contracts, minimize disruption, and ensure secure working relationships that are built on trust.

Tapping into new markets
With ServiceNow as its technology partner, ISG not only enhances clients’ confidence in its advisory services but potentially opens up new markets as well. The ability to build a cost-effective solution to address a real challenge in the market is a boon for ISG. “Being able to use the platform without the need of additional staff allows us to go after mid-tier customers,” says Lois Coatney, ISG’s Partner and President.

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