National Grid powers efficiency and operational excellence with ServiceNow

Facing unprecedented change, National Grid seeks to align IT strategy with company ambitions
As one of the world’s largest investor-owned utilities focused on electricity operations and gas transmission and distribution, National Grid connects millions of people to the energy they use, bringing heat, light, and power to customers’ homes and businesses—safely, reliably, and efficiently.

The needs of its customers, shareholders and communities are at the heart of National Grid’s business operations. With a vision that looks continually at the future, the company wants to deliver value and play an active role in helping to shape the energy landscape. However, with the energy sector undergoing an unprecedented rate of change, it was essential that National Grid’s IT strategy aligned with its ambition to develop and transform.

David Westwood, ServiceNow Platform Manager at National Grid, explains: “Evolving business models, the economic landscape, developments in technology, and changes in consumer behaviour mean our organization is constantly evolving. Our IT and digital teams needed to react to these changes faster than ever before to support the business vision.”

To keep pace, National Grid reviewed its approach to managing the huge volume of processes across multiple departments to make work simpler, while at the same time driving measurable business value.

ServiceNow helps National Grid automate and simplify IT processes
National Grid was already using ServiceNow to manage IT service delivery, but David knew there was a big opportunity to fully align the use of the Now Platform® to National Grid’s vision: “To exceed the expectations of our customers, shareholders, and communities today and make possible the energy systems of tomorrow.”

With the appointment of a new chief information and digital officer, the need to automate and simplify became a driving force. The Now Platform was placed at heart of this approach and the team jumped straight to the newest platform release to take advantage of the very latest technology developments.

“The implementation showed the real pace and agility of our team, upgrading in just six weeks to support 40,000 active users, and we achieved stability straight away,” says Joe Ridgway, ServiceNow Platform Architect at National Grid. “We had instant access to additional benefits in service, business, and operations management, and could show value to the wider business instantly.”

National Grid centralises IT infrastructure support, optimising performance and growth with ServiceNow
From an initial foundation of IT service management for incident, problem, and change management, National Grid has continually developed and built on the Now Platform to create a central control system for all IT and infrastructure-related support and development.

David says: “Given the scale of our business, even small improvements can have a huge impact on our overall performance."

A dedicated National Grid ServiceNow team leads the strategy for the service platform and is tasked with aligning activities with the overall business strategy to optimise operational performance, create opportunities for growth, and equip National Grid for the future.

“ServiceNow has been key to our digital transformation and helped us save or mitigate £1.2 million in costs in just 12 months, through a combination of cost avoidance, consolidation, and a smooth delivery model,” says David. “This will continue as the automation we are implementing brings additional cost savings with suppliers and gives us commercial leverage with other vendors.”

National Grid and ServiceNow create a delivery network for the future
National Grid’s service delivery technology is now fully future-proofed against the effects of a changing energy landscape and set up to meet the evolving needs and expectations of its customers.

“ServiceNow helps enable us to stay current and keep moving forward, with a roadmap for platform development that removes the need for custom builds,” explains David. ServiceNow keeps us one step ahead so we can upgrade continually and gain instant access to the latest standards and innovations.”

The team is taking an agile approach to service development, with regular sprints and releases that add value to the business. Additionally, they are continuously reassessing how processes can be changed to optimise the end user experience.

Bespoke applications are also in the plan, focusing on specific areas of the business where immediate gains can be made to improve manually-driven processes. This includes control room incident management, where Joe is testing a streamlined way to handle incidents that occur on the electricity grid, moving the process from emails and spreadsheets to the Now Platform.

“Our approach has instilled confidence with our stakeholders. ServiceNow is enabling the team to guarantee reliability while driving innovation and developing new services in a nimble way. It’s an exciting time to be an IT professional at National Grid,” says Joe.

National Grid continues to deliver value across the business with new projects on the horizon
The dedicated Now Platform team at National Grid plans to extend the platform to include IT business management (ITBM) for financial modelling and management, and to gain visibility of the cost of service delivery, and better manage demand, resources, and budgets.

HR case management is another area for expansion where National Grid is keen to automate employee requests for information and the onboarding and offboarding process, freeing managers from manual tasks.

“With ServiceNow, we have the capability to do significantly more and sprint to keep ahead of market trends,” says Joe. “The Now Platform offers so much potential to take our IT service management mentality to other business functions to advance organisational processes to make work simpler and drive value for the business.”

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