Delivering an efficient and interactive IT service experience in Dubai

DSOA promotes technology-based industries through full-service IT offerings
Established in 2005, Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority (DSOA) is a 100% free zone, owned by the government of Dubai. With a mission to facilitate and promote modern technology-based industries, DSOA supports the region’s demand for business expansion—providing a full package of incentives and benefits to companies operating within the free zone.

Dubai Silicon Oasis is a technology park that provides an integrated living and working community. It was designed as a high-tech ecosystem, offering businesses a plethora of advantages including state-of-the-art infrastructure, in-house business services, and strong business support, such as technology investment incentives for large enterprises, entrepreneurial support, an incubation centre, and venture capital funding.

DSOA is committed to delivering the same technology and level of IT service experience to its internal users as it delivers to external Dubai Silicon Oasis customers. The team covers the entire IT spectrum, from helping to ensure new business applications and security patches are made available, to making sure that servers are working. This scope of work requires a powerful IT service management (ITSM) platform. However, as the business grew and matured, the legacy ITSM solution was incapable of keeping pace.

“Our existing ITSM platform required an update to align with the latest technologies to boost functionality and efficiency,” explains Hamed AlAwadhi, Vice President - ICT at DSOA.

“Core to our organisation’s mission and vision is adopting industry-leading business processes, increasing efficiencies, and fostering greater employee happiness,” says Hamed. “As we looked to align our technology with our business growth strategy, we realised that we needed to provide higher levels of automation and mobility within our IT service delivery.”

ServiceNow delivers a comprehensive and flexible IT service management platform to DSOA
After an exhaustive review, which included benchmarking ITSM solutions at other semi-government organisations in the United Arab Emirates, Hamed and his team quickly settled on ServiceNow. Working with Fujitsu, one of ServiceNow’s key partners in the Middle East, the DSOA ICT team deployed several modules within ServiceNow IT Service Management, including:

• ServiceNow® Incident Management
• ServiceNow® Problem Management
• ServiceNow® Change and Release Management
• ServiceNow® Asset and Cost Management
• ServiceNow® Request Management
• ServiceNow® Configuration Management (CMDB)
• ServiceNow® Knowledge Management
• ServiceNow® Reports and Dashboards
• ServiceNow® Service Level Management

DSOA selects ServiceNow to transform its IT organisation
According to Hamed, “With ServiceNow, we can easily configure modules to help ensure that workflows, controls, SLAs, and KPIs are tailor-made for our business needs.”

Hamed continues, “I would say that 90% of the functionality was designed by our in-house team. At the same time, tomorrow, if those needs change, reconfiguration is just as easy! An added advantage is that customisation is done on a development layer above the core, so making changes does not impact our upgrade cycle.”

ServiceNow helps DSOA reduce time to resolution
With ServiceNow providing the critical interface to internal users, arguably the biggest benefit has been a significant reduction in total transaction cost. “Prior to ServiceNow, when a ticket was raised for any issue, be it a request for a new laptop or inquiry regarding disruption of an IT service, it would be routed to pre-defined IT stakeholders. The stakeholder would then assess the request before deciding if it was something that was actually within their purview or if it needed to be routed to another employee,” says Hamed. “Similarly, all follow-ups were either managed via email, over the telephone, or in person. As such, the process was extremely inefficient, lengthy, and could potentially impact the organisation’s performance.”

With ServiceNow, prior to raising a ticket, users can first refer to the most up-to-date and relevant content in ServiceNow Knowledge Management to get answers to a query. If users still feel the need to raise a ticket, depending on the nature of the request, it is immediately routed to the right stakeholder.

Hamed explains, “This is because ServiceNow allows us to configure forms that collect the right data and then set routing policies based on that information. Furthermore, automated alerts, rules for escalation, and the ability to manage follow-ups from within the platform allow us to significantly reduce delays and, as a consequence, reduce time to resolution of the issue.”

DSOA increases accountability and transparency to stakeholders
The real-time, accurate reporting and dashboard capabilities available in the Now Platform also contribute to the improved IT service experience.

Hamed explains, “The ability for users to create highly-customized reports and dashboards, with just a few clicks, is important for a number of reasons. The task of generating reports traditionally fell on our ICT department. This is time they can now spend on more business-critical tasks.”

“Additionally, it does away with manual reporting that was not only cumbersome but often lacked accuracy,” Hamed says. “Now, every user, be it the initiator of a request or owner of an action, has full visibility of the entire lifecycle of each and every one of their open tickets. This transparency has gone a long way in increasing accountability and improving the service experience for our users.”

Hamed continues, “From a management perspective, being able to drill down into certain issues and pick up on trends is invaluable to our business strategy, be it resource planning or future technology investments.”

ServiceNow empowers DSOA to maintain better control over IT processes
One of the solutions that has proven to be invaluable to DSOA is ServiceNow Change and Release Management. Hamed explains, “Let’s take an example of a request for change to a workflow or business application functionality. Prior to ServiceNow, there was no standard work or process for us. Now, using the change module, in parallel with data from the CMDB, we can first do a thorough risk analysis to understand the implications the change would have on all other processes and configuration items in our environment.”

“Once the change is made, the release management tool helps ensure smooth delivery to the production environment and continuously monitors the change to assess the post-deployment impact. Furthermore, in the unlikely event that the change does not have the desired results, with ServiceNow, we have the ability to roll back the change quite easily,” says Hamed.

This, along with other business process improvements, such as the ability to set a myriad of SLAs and KPIs, set user controls and privileges, and keep detailed records of all actions/notes related to a ticket, have allowed DSOA to obtain its ISO 20000 certification.

DSOA and ServiceNow partner for the future
Pleased with the performance of the solution, Hamed is keen to expand the partnership with ServiceNow. “ServiceNow® IT Operations Management offers strong orchestration technologies and that is something we will consider, as we drive towards more automation and AI.”

Hamed concludes, “We manage a technology park and given the cutting-edge technology that some of our customers are developing and offering, it is essential that we keep pace and invest in best-in-class solutions that can drive greater performance and efficiency across our organisation. As one of the most innovative vendors in its space, ServiceNow is an ideal technology partner for DSOA and I look forward to building on our relationship.”    

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