Siemens reaches business goals of automation and digitalisation with ServiceNow

Siemens reaches business goals of automation and digitalisation with ServiceNow

To support innovation, Siemens IT seeks end-to-end solution to manage its multi-provider network
Siemens is a global force for innovation in energy, automation, and digitalisation technologies—from smart grid systems to medical imaging devices. The company is committed to building on its strong history of innovation and is granted thousands of new patents every year.

The IT team of 6,500 people at Siemens plays an integral role in supporting the organisation’s operations across 10 divisions and 200 countries. Yet the team faced significant challenges due to the complexity of its approach, as Dr. Matthias Egelhaaf, Program Director at Siemens, explains: “We lacked end-to-end control in our multi-provider environment. We were managing our providers in siloes, using manual processes and different tools for each country and business unit.”

The result was a high degree of manual effort for both Siemens and its suppliers, and a lack of transparency. Capabilities of new suppliers couldn’t be leveraged quickly, delaying time to market for new services. Contracts were managed separately, and there was no unified interface for cross-provider service integration. In addition, being locked in with some suppliers caused unwanted dependencies.

In its ambition to drive digitalisation and automation throughout its operation, Siemens also wanted to significantly improve the delivery of end-user related services.

Siemens uses ServiceNow to integrate a complex supplier network, speeding time to market for global IT services and cutting costs
Siemens is using ServiceNow to move to a service integration and management (SIAM) framework, establishing a single service integration platform to eliminate silos, remove the complexity of its multi-supplier network, and deliver end-to-end visibility and reporting.

“ServiceNow gave us a cloud-based integration layer to support the digitalisation of our company. This industry-standard platform allowed us to consolidate legacy platforms and reduce our reliance on point solutions, significantly improving efficiency,” says Dr. Egelhaaf.

Siemens has shut down multiple IT service management tools and consolidated IT Infrastructure services as well as applications (600+ resolver groups) onto a single platform for incident and problem management. This has fundamentally changed how the company delivers IT services and collaborates with its providers.

According to Dr. Egelhaaf, “To roll out a new global IT service in the IT infrastructure area, we just have to use one tool set instead of 15, resulting in much faster time to market cycles for global IT services. 

Dr. Egelhaaf continues, “Fully automated interfaces also allow us to easily plug in and out new providers.”

There are benefits for Siemens’ providers too. “We are extending rich automation capabilities to our providers, enabling them to remove manual fulfillment and driving a win-win situation,” says Dr. Egelhaaf.

Self-service destination from ServiceNow gives Siemens global employees a one-stop-shop for IT services and streamlines onboarding processes
Siemens’ new myIT is a self-service destination for its employees. As a onestop-shop for IT products and services, myIT allows 300,000+ employees to order and manage IT products and services and submit help desk tickets via one easy-to-use interface. Before, employees had to know how to approach a request and follow the right sequence—for example, requesting a smartphone before requesting a SIM.

Employees were only successful in setting up their IT if they knew who to ask. “Depending on what organisation you belonged to, the department you worked for, or even where you sat, the process for requesting new hardware or software was completely different,” says Dr. Egelhaaf. Now, all workflows are built into the service platform, with a consistent approach for every user.

Onboarding is also a dramatically improved experience. Every month, myIT drives the onboarding of 1,000+ employees and 100 to 200 employee transfers between countries and business divisions.

“We have transformed a highly frustrating and lengthy process into a fast, highly satisfying experience for our employees,” says Dr. Egelhaaf. “New hires or employees transferring to another division or country had to wait weeks before they could start work and now they are up and running in a couple of days. It’s a big win from a productivity perspective.”

IT aligns with Siemens’ business objectives to digitise and automate and reaches 98% automation with ServiceNow
Based on its success in consolidating and managing IT services, Dr. Egelhaaf is keen to explore new ways to add value to the business, saying: “There’s so much more we can do with ServiceNow to increase business velocity beyond IT.”

One such area involves opening up the Now Platform® to run more business oriented applications, bringing external customers closer to Siemens with self-service solutions. “The volume of requests won’t be huge, but the value we will generate through this approach will be extremely high,” says Dr. Egelhaaf.

Fundamentally, Siemens has engineered a change in IT service delivery that aligns IT operations with its business vision.

"The organisation’s goals of digitalisation and automation are natural fits for IT,” concludes Dr. Egelhaaf. “ServiceNow is our speed dial for digitalisation, and already 98% of transactions are automated. IT is a valued partner to the business, recognized for its ability to drive transformation."

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