Entertaining and inspiring a global audience
Around the world, 24 hours a day, millions of people are entertained, informed, challenged, educated, and inspired by content created and distributed by the Bertelsmann Group.
Bertelsmann’s highly diversified worldwide operations are supported by the Bertelsmann Global Business Services (GBS) unit, a 380-strong global business services team located in Germany, the US, and the UK.
GBS delivers a range of centrally organized professional services, tailored to meet the unique needs of more than 360 group companies in more than 25 countries, from all of Bertelsmann’s divisions and solution groups. It strives to combine high quality professional advice and punctual service delivery with stable, secure, future-proof systems and processes. However, historically, communication and service requests between GBS and its customers had relied primarily on email.
To further compound Bertelsmann’s challenge, its digital management systems were approaching end of life, and its existing environment could not deliver all the functionality that Bertelsmann and GBS required.
In the ServiceNow AI platform for business transformation, GBS’s Managing Directors, Carsten Waschkowitz and Christian Eigen, saw an opportunity to reimagine the way services were organized and delivered.
“We wanted to transform the way we work and make the customer experience as simple and efficient as possible, not just upgrade our technology and move into the cloud with the existing solution,” explains Carsten. “With ServiceNow, we could eliminate email communications and create a single, secure entry point for all our customers to request services.”
ServiceNow’s low-code, no-code capabilities were an added benefit, giving GBS the flexibility and independence to build its own internal skill levels, removing its reliance on external partners.
“We can create our own roadmap, scale at speed, and integrate with core platforms such as our SAP ERP system. With ServiceNow, we can continuously improve and in time expand our service portfolio, while also reducing total cost of ownership,” explains Christian.
Automation improves speed, reliability, and accuracy
Service requesters from the Bertelsmann Group around the world are now using ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM). With one bespoke, easy-to-use portal, users can access and navigate a service catalog specifically designed to meet their needs. Information gathering is streamlined, and stable and secure integrations, achieved with ServiceNow Automation Engine, enable existing data to be automatically and securely imported from other systems, saving time, eliminating errors, and improving accuracy.
“With all requests now captured in the ServiceNow platform, life for GBS staff and managers is so much easier! They can now allocate and manage the work of their busy accountants and other service providers faster and more efficiently,” adds Carsten.
Everyone uses the same system and accesses the same secure, cloud-based data, available in multiple languages. As a result, communication and team working are enhanced, both within GBS and with customers, delivering faster results.
“Delivering coherent financial services requires numerous teams to work quickly and effectively together,” says Christian. “Using one platform, one data model, and one architecture means that colleagues have confidence in one source of the truth. They’re spending less time inputting data and more time using their valuable expertise to benefit GBS and our customers.”
Moving to a single platform will also reduce management and maintenance costs, when compared to multiple systems each requiring discrete technical expertise and contract management. Carsten and Christian anticipate achieving an overall cost reduction and optimization efficiencies target of at least 5% year-on-year.
“Feedback from our internal customers is very positive,” says Dominik Mitschke, Senior Director Business Process Services, Bertelsmann GBS. “It’s still early days but in one GBS process area alone—our Master Data Management activity—ServiceNow is helping us to make significant efficiency savings, worth in the region of €200,000 per year.”
Time and cost savings
One way these master data savings are being unlocked is through ServiceNow integrations with other corporate systems to access core data. Now, for example, when a requester needs to change a vendor or business partner’s details or create a new profile, many fields in digital forms can be automatically filled. Vendor and business partner identity checks are now automated, and autocompletion of fields means data is more accurate.
The small time saving of a few minutes per interaction, when multiplied thousands of times, is delivering substantial time and resource savings. The user experience is improved, the status of the request can be tracked, and teams across the group have more time to focus on higher value tasks.
Accurate asset tracking
Another area in which ServiceNow automation is delivering important value is in the essential task of maintaining an accurate asset inventory. This embraces everything from essential office equipment and hardware and software to the buildings themselves.
Given Bertelsmann’s huge operational scope and scale, thousands of assets are constantly moving on and off the Group’s balance sheet. Previously, the process of scrapping assets involved time-consuming work in Excel spreadsheets, manually removing lines of data. A process that was inefficient and prone to human error. With the data now captured in ServiceNow, this vital exercise is fully automated and can be completed in seconds, saving significant time for asset managers, and ensuring that company records are always precise.
In-built intelligence enhances the user experience
Deploying the IT Service Management component of CSM is next on the agenda, enabling customers to access the same portal for their IT support requirements for incident handling. The addition of AI Search and Virtual Agent will further enhance the user experience, connecting requesters with the services they need faster and more efficiently.
“Best-in-class technology like ServiceNow enables us to provide great services at competitive, transparent prices, which is the combination our customers are looking for. This positions us as their supplier of choice, with the platform and the tools to grow and add new services that meet their needs and make their lives easier,” concludes Christian.