EDF transforms service delivery, engaging trusted partner Tata Consultancy Services

Modernizing energy and IT
EDF is one of the UK’s largest energy companies and has a goal of reaching net- zero carbon emissions. To better serve its business and residential customers and respond to rising energy demand, EDF sought to become more agile and move away from legacy systems and manual processes.

New technologies such as smart meters presented new opportunities for IT, however the company’s highly customized service management system was not up to the task. EDF maintained two separate service desks—one for its government regulated network that supports power generation and another for its non-regulated, corporate network—and users often logged tickets in the wrong system, causing headaches for support staff.

With largely manual processes, limited potential for automation, and duplicate software licensing, IT costs were high. Also, the legacy solution was unable to reliably predict or prevent IT system failures, which potentially created customer service challenges. To achieve its vision of net-zero carbon emissions and remain a competitive energy provider, EDF needed to modernize IT service management to provide a better user experience at a reduced cost. In addition, the company wanted to enhance security to better protect critical systems from new and emerging cyber threats.

“EDF is working with TCS to transform our service offering with a focus on user experience and application experience, recognizing a move to more flexible and blended working,” says Oliver Lawrence, Head of Customer IT Services at EDF.

Accelerating time to value
Knowing that it needed to put a new service management foundation in place, EDF asked its trusted IT partner Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for recommendations. As a ServiceNow managed services partner, TCS understood that placing ServiceNow at the center of EDF’s IT transformation could help the company achieve its goals. “The collaboration between EDF and TCS has been outstanding, resulting in a Service Now implementation that provides our businesses with a true ‘Business 4.0’ digital experience,” says Kelvin Wing, Chief Information Officer at EDF.

TCS proposed ServiceNow IT Service Management as a fully-managed, end- to-end service, handling everything from license procurement through platform support. “Being able to collaborate and consolidate systems and processes with ServiceNow has given us the opportunity to enable operational excellence and support teams with simplified workflows,” says Yunas Mohammad, TCS Utilities Client Partner at Tata Consultancy Services.

To accelerate delivery, it followed the TCS RapidNow ITSM implementation framework. Most of the features that EDF required could be implemented out of the box without any customization, including a live chat option.

“TCS gave us fast time to value, implementing ServiceNow in just six months,” says Donna Lloyd, Enterprise Product Manager at EDF. “TCS has an expansive ServiceNow Center of Excellence and many very talented developers. Without TCS, we would have struggled to get so many expert resources on our own.”

TCS replaced EDF’s two disconnected service management platforms with a single ServiceNow instance, integrating service management for both of the company’s networks. Employees request IT products and services through an easy-to-use portal called myIT, which provides a familiar, B2C-like shopping experience. It’s easy for end users to quickly find catalog items, manage approval requests on the go, and collaborate with colleagues and IT.

Expanding into the enterprise
EDF’s success with ServiceNow IT Service Management led the company to explore other ServiceNow offerings, including ServiceNow IT Operations Management. To improve visibility across its two networks and multiple clouds, EDF is populating a real-time configuration management database (CMDB) to better understand its infrastructure and application components.

To automate security workflows, EDF uses ServiceNow® Security Operations for incident management and vulnerability response. It integrates with business- critical applications such as Microsoft Outlook to allow users to easily log phishing attempts and automate processes from detection to resolution. A CISO dashboard provides a bird’s eye view of what’s happening on the organizational level.

“ServiceNow is a key enabler, giving a fresh, modern look and feel; seamless reporting and dashboards; optimized catalogue; intuitive knowledge base; and improved communications in a single platform that makes it much easier to collaborate with colleagues to deliver a proactive, engaging, and user-centric support offering,” says Lawrence. “Working as one team, ServiceNow was delivered on time, at cost, and with quality, resulting in high satisfaction and expected value realization.”

EDF also uses ServiceNow Automation Engine to connect other critical systems and platforms, such as JIRA Software and Amazon Web Services (AWS). This proved especially useful when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and EDF had to provision remote digital workspaces for its contact center agents to access the company’s CRM system to serve customers.

“We simply created a remote workspace catalog item in ServiceNow and automated the process of provisioning the workspace on AWS,” says Prasun Sarkar, Senior Solution Architect at TCS’s ServiceNow Center of Excellence. “Workspaces are provisioned in about 45 minutes without any manual intervention, which represents a 98% improvement in turnaround time.”

Saving time and money
Having a single, managed ServiceNow instance has greatly improved efficiency at EDF for both the agents and the engineers. Requests that used to take up to five days to process are now completed in minutes. By simplifying its service desk, EDF was able to assign two full-time employees to other areas, saving £180,000 a year in operating expenses. It also generated approximately £4 million in soft savings by optimizing processes and tooling.

“For the processes we’ve automated with ServiceNow, in many cases we’re seeing that it takes 99% less time to fulfill requests,” says Amanda Handley, Enterprise Product Owner at EDF. “It’s just a massive improvement in the user experience.”

• Faster response to incidents
• Easy access to knowledgeable engineers
  
• Reduced workloads for support teams
• Seamless upgrades with new features 

Improving customer service
By transforming its own IT service, operations, and security processes, EDF is well positioned to improve customer experiences with smart metering and other services, while moving closer to achieving its net-zero emissions goals.

Lloyd concludes, “ServiceNow has become a business-critical environment for EDF. It’s helped us improve many aspects of our business, and we’re considering other areas where it can play a role in future.”

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