ActivTrades bets on ServiceNow to accelerate business growth and innovation

ActivTrades reengineers its IT service delivery approach to fuel business growth
ActivTrades, a leading independent broker, supports its employees’ diverse IT requirements through a 20-person IT operations team. However, as the organisation grew, it became increasingly clear that its home-grown ticketing system could no longer provide the support the business required.

“We were using a free, open source system to deliver IT support that had been configured by numerous people who subsequently moved away from the IT department,” explains Ivan Ivanov, Systems Administrator at ActivTrades. “The result was a legacy IT set-up with limited features and no flexibility to scale with our requirements.”

ActivTrades needed to address its chaotic approach to IT service delivery, lengthy request fulfilment processes, and slow resolution times. There was no standardised template for raising a ticket and no guidance on the information required, so issues couldn’t be easily articulated. Often, users would avoid the ticketing system altogether and visit an IT person at their desk.

“There was a perception across the company that our ticketing system was ineffective, chaotic, and inefficient,” says Ivan. “We needed a platform to streamline IT service delivery and match the sophistication of our trading tools.”

ActivTrades fulfills its IT service vision with ServiceNow for service, incident, change, and project management
As a fast-growing organisation, ActivTrades moved quickly to design a new IT service management strategy and selected ServiceNow to underpin its approach. Working with IT and management consultancy ITCE, ActivTrades planned a phased approach to its adoption of the Now Platform.

In just three months, ITCE and ActivTrades scoped and implemented release one of ServiceNow, focusing on areas that would deliver maximum value in minimum time: IT Service Management, Service Portal, Incident and Change Management, and Project Management.

“ServiceNow offered the best functionality on the market, and its cloud delivery model allowed us to achieve a fast, straightforward implementation,” says Ivan. “We spent around 10% of our time on technical aspects and 90% on designing the functionality of the ServiceNow platform to ensure maximum value from the first release.”

Intelligent and intuitive workflows resolve employee queries faster and eliminate in-person service requests ServiceNow created new and improved workflows that have significantly improved the efficiency of the IT service delivery process and eradicated desk-side visits.

Through a single sign-on function, employees land on the service portal home page, where they can select from two options: submit an issue—for example, if something has stopped working; or make a request—for example, to gain access to a particular system.

A series of drop-down options—customised per previous selections—help ensure accurate and relevant information is provided for each request and issue, and these are then automatically assigned to the most appropriate IT group.

“ServiceNow has brought simplicity and efficiency to service delivery at ActivTrades,” explains Ivan. “Standardised templates and intelligent workflows mean IT teams get the information they need to take action and resolve an issue quickly. There’s minimum effort for everyone involved, with no back-and-forth between an employee and the IT service desk to clarify missing details.”

With 99% of requests raised through the Now Platform and significantly reduced ticket resolution times, ActivTrades employees feel better supported by IT
A notable benefit of using ServiceNow has been the dramatic reduction in the number of people visiting the IT support team at their desks.

“Before ServiceNow, our employees were trying every method they could to approach IT about a query or problem except using the ticketing system,” says Ivan. “Today, 99% of employee requests and issues go through the Now Platform. If someone comes up to our desk, we know they want to catch up with us personally, and not talk about IT.”

Issue resolution and request fulfilment times have also decreased dramatically, as ServiceNow removes the burden on internal users and IT to explain and define a problem or query. Aged tickets do not exceed 48 hours.

“By using pre-populated information, we’ve significantly reduced the end-to-end time between a ticket being raised and completed,” explains Ivan. “On more complicated issues, we’ve removed up to an hour from the discovery phase as IT no longer needs to analyse what the problem might be. With around 70 to 80 tickets a week, that’s a lot of time freed up.”

ServiceNow enables IT to work smarter and focus on innovation-led initiatives
The efficiencies that ServiceNow has delivered in the IT service desk have enabled Ivan and his team to balance the issues of internal users with the demands of the business for innovation-led projects.

ServiceNow Project Management was introduced as part of phase one to support the focus on multiple projects and certification in ISO 27001, ensuring Ivan’s team can manage and resource key activities that support business development and growth.

ActivTrades plans to extend ServiceNow into knowledge, problem, and asset management to help IT deliver more value to the business
Following phase one of the ServiceNow implementation, ActivTrades is moving to expand the Now Platform into other areas of IT, including knowledge management, problem management, asset management, and CMBD.

For Ivan, the introduction of SLAs on the Now Platform is key, with SLA definitions that are clearly aligned with the requirements of the business. He says: “IT needs to be accountable to the business and that’s why SLAs are critical. With ServiceNow, we’re ideally placed to set and meet SLAs and prove our value to the business.”

Given the success of ServiceNow to date, Ivan is keen to support other departments through the platform. He says: “Technology lies at the heart of our business, and the more it grows, the more ServiceNow can grow with us and adapt to our needs. ServiceNow is an enterprise service delivery platform and I can easily see how it can extend across the organisation to contribute further to our success.”

Download PDF