Leading beverage distributor modernizes operations to eliminate manual work

Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits (Southern Glazer’s) does more than distribute a vast selection of beverages. It’s a family-owned, industry leader spanning 47 U.S. states, Canada, the Caribbean, and Central and South America that offers outstanding customer service, unbeatable market expertise, partnering with more than 1,200 suppliers to distribute more than 11,000 brands, maintaining a well-balanced portfolio of wine, spirits, and beer. Employees consistently say it’s the company’s culture that makes it stand out.

“Whether you’re a supplier, customer, or employee, it feels like a family here at Southern Glazer’s,” says Shannon Chapman, Senior Director of Enterprise Service Management. “Many people work here for decades because they know the company is always looking out for them, finding ways to help them grow.”

Leadership noticed that employees spent too much time on administrative or technical tasks. They wanted to free employees from these responsibilities, giving them more time to help suppliers grow their businesses and get beverages on customers’ shelves. Any solutions to address this issue needed to support a diverse workforce, reaching both office staff on their computers and deskless warehouse employees.

Southern Glazer’s decided to invest in the ServiceNow AI Platform, gaining a single platform that improves operational efficiency and gives employees the tools they need to work faster and easier. Built-in AI tools help IT and HR teams solve employee problems faster and elevate employee experiences.

“We didn’t want to purchase a bunch of one-off tools. With ServiceNow, we can grow with a full platform capable of improving all our business operations,” says Chapman.

One AI platform fulfills employee IT and HR needs

Southern Glazer’s solved two of the biggest employee support needs in IT and HR with a single AI platform. First, the company deployed IT Service Management (ITSM) to consolidate IT services and quickly fix technical issues for employees in any location.

Soon after, Southern Glazer’s centralized HR tasks with HR Service Delivery (HRSD), providing employees with multiple ways to connect with the HR team. They can use the self-service portal, chat with a virtual or live agent, or call HR. This multi-channel method is crucial for warehouse employees and drivers who may have limited digital access.

IT and HR teams save 490 hours of writing time in four months with generative AI

With Now Assist for ITSM and HRSD, Southern Glazer’s resolves issues faster by using generative AI to summarize cases, incidents, and resolution notes. IT and HR teams saved 490 hours of writing time in just five months, giving them more time to focus on complex challenges that can contribute to larger business goals.

When cases need escalation, IT team members can quickly review incident summaries, resulting in faster support and minimizing service delays.  When the incident is closed, Now Assist generates accurate, consistent, and detailed resolution notes that make it easier for IT to address similar problems in the future. This helps to reduce the average time to resolve unplanned outages by 15%.

Employee service improves with AI agents assisting with administrative tasks

Southern Glazer’s joined the ServiceNow AI Lighthouse program to accelerate AI adoption and test AI use cases. The company started with two out-of-the-box AI agents for:

• Knowledge base duplication checks: When IT and HR team members write new articles for their knowledge base, the ITSM and HRSD AI agents check whether the topic exists. Teams can add quick updates and focus more time on writing new content that delivers impactful knowledge.
• Next best action for incident resolution: When an issue occurs, the AI agent looks at an incident’s history, including past resolution notes, to suggest the next best action to quickly resolve. Southern Glazer’s believes this could become part of a broader agentic AI strategy, combining multiple AI agents to recommend actions and automatically solve problems.

“Our goal is to provide personal, white-glove service to employees,” says Chapman. “By using AI to handle time-consuming administrative tasks, we can focus on what’s important: connecting with employees.”

Suppliers see revenue faster thanks to a custom app that reduces product entry time

Before Southern Glazer’s can sell a beverage in a new market, supplier managers must add the product to multiple systems. To simplify the item setup process, Southern Glazer’s built a custom application using App Engine. The app sends product data through ITSM and feeds it into all necessary systems, automating many of the manual steps across markets and teams, from supply managers in Boston to warehouse operations in Kansas City. What once took 45 days and involved multiple departments now takes an average of three days per market. This dramatically reduces the time it takes for Southern Glazer’s to get suppliers’ beverages on shelves and start generating revenue.

In the future, an AI agent could make this even easier by pulling product information from a photo of the label to enable warehouse staff to add new products with just a few clicks.

“App Engine helped us take a specific, complex distribution process and turn it into a simple app. It shows the power of working with ServiceNow,” says Chapman.

Southern Glazer’s partners with ServiceNow Impact to deliver greater returns on platform investment
Throughout their technology journey, Southern Glazer’s uses ServiceNow Impact for implementation support and guidance, and to help maintain overall platform health. Their Impact squad and digital tools advise Chapman on the roadmap, recommends accelerators and training, and provides expert consultation to support new feature implementations.

This guidance helps Southern Glazer’s better understand the full value ServiceNow solutions can deliver. With ITSM alone, they’ve generated over $1.5 million in annual incremental benefits – ultimately delivering a faster, more reliable experience for their employees and customers.

The Impact squad also created an adoption roadmap showing the benefits of Security Operations (SecOps) and Integrated Risk Management (IRM). Within a year, these products became essential to the company’s security and risk strategy. The company now reduces risk across the board by using SecOps to automate threat and vulnerability response and IRM to provide visibility with real-time intelligence into policies, compliance, governance, and audits.

“The ServiceNow Impact squad has been a total game-changer,” says Chapman. “They’re an extension of my team, taking care of the details to help us succeed while freeing up my time for strategy.”

Expanding with ServiceNow: Investing in one platform for the whole business

Southern Glazer’s continues to expand with ServiceNow. The company upgraded from standard Hardware Asset Management (HAM) for tracking equipment throughout its lifecycle to HAM Pro. This change added greater functionality, including out-of-the-box automation and normalization, without needing to hire a partner for customization.

The company recently added IT Operations Management (ITOM) for better visibility into the IT environment, and they plan to add Employee Center Pro for IT self-service. The team is also exploring ServiceNow AI Control Tower to further enhance governance and oversight for stronger integrated risk management.

“The ServiceNow AI Platform has everything we need to better support many areas of our business,” says Chapman. “By investing in ServiceNow, we can deliver more responsive service that helps employees, suppliers, and customers feel more like family.”