How do you cope with two disasters at once?

Trading on a global stage
Headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, Aegon is a multi-national insurance, pension, and asset management company with 29.9 million customers and 22,300 employees. Half of its business happens in the US where it trades as Transamerica. Global Technology Services is the IT infrastructure business unit of Aegon and the internal owner of the ServiceNow BCM product.

Growth through acquisition
With regional offices across the US, EMEA, and APAC, Aegon had become a complex empire with a similarly complex and regionalized business continuity program.

“Aegon grew by buying a lot of existing companies but none of them did business continuity the same way,” explains Business Continuity Manager, Denny Hodge. “We needed some tooling to bring all of those different groups together with the same methodology.”

Delivering a single source of BCM truth
ServiceNow Business Continuity Management (BCM) was selected after a rigorous eight-month tender process in which candidates had to complete a 40-page Request for Proposal and take part in some 50 evaluation sessions. ServiceNow was able to demonstrate its capacity to meet Aegon’s needs – to automate operational controls and drive efficiency with digital workflows and approvals that cut across the enterprise.

With 500 users, ServiceNow BCM is now implemented globally to give Global Technology Services the cohesive BCM processes it requires. Digital workflows are saving time and dollars while increasing efficiency.

Benefiting from the speed of automation
Having a global ServiceNow BCM solution helped Global Technology Services fight COVID-19, enabling it to pass vital information between countries. It also supported the company’s planning when an inland hurricane or derecho hit its largest US office.

Previously it took three hours to perform a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and that now takes 15 minutes to update based on the data and workflows native to ServiceNow. Likewise, it took 14 hours to translate findings into a plan and that now takes just three.

ServiceNow solutions working together
Global Technology Services has increased the efficiency and ability to recover safer and faster with increased precision. In particular, the Now Platform delivers digital workflows with automated controls replacing time consuming and error-prone manual processes cutting through organizational silos.

“For me, the major benefit has just been developing a more consistent methodology and global structure for our business continuity,” concludes Denny. “We have already seen time saving and automation and, as we start connecting more things inside the Now Platform, that is going to increase.”

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