Enhancing data security with automation

Improving data governance and security
Sportsbet is a leading Australian online betting company with offices across Sydney, Melbourne, and Darwin. It offers a variety of wagering options through its website, mobile app, and phone betting service. As part of global sports betting and gaming operator, Flutter Entertainment, Sportsbet emphasizes responsible betting initiatives through deposit limits and breaks in play to protect customers.

“More locally in Australia, our purpose is to bring entertainment to life for our customers in a safe, responsible, and sustainable way,” says Ben Calder, Technology Capability Manager at Sportsbet.

Protecting customer data is a priority for Sportsbet. Staff identity management and access governance play a key role to minimize the risk of a data breach and ensure ongoing compliance. Ben emphasizes, “If we don’t manage what people have access to over time, the potential scale of impact can be significant if their credentials are compromised.”

Faster and simplified identity access management with an enterprise portal
Previously, Sportsbet used multiple systems for HR and IT processes but there was no enterprise workflow to connect the data flows. When a user request came in for new hires or leavers, the IT team had to manually verify the request before provisioning access to users. This resulted in data duplication and inconsistencies in the systems. The manual process also caused significant delays for the IT team to complete a user request, such as creating an identity or giving additional access to users moving to a different role.

Sportsbet partnered with Thirdera; an experienced, pure-play ServiceNow partner, to automate IT, contract management, and HR processes with ServiceNow App Engine and Automation Engine. Since the beginning of Sportsbet’s ServiceNow journey, Thirdera has served as an authoritative source of knowledge and expertise that has enabled Sportsbet to maximize the value of its ServiceNow platform and streamline employee experience. In addition, Thirdera architected and built their application onboarding solution to simplify application requests from users. To date, 157 applications have been onboarded.

By deploying custom low code apps with ServiceNow App Engine new service catalog, requests were created that trigger workflow automations leveraging the Automation Engine Active Directory spoke. Sportsbet now has a single low code enterprise portal to automate the data flows between request management, HR, and provisioning systems. This enables the IT team to easily process user requests for different types of employment including permanent employees, contractors, and third parties.

Through the automation of data flows with the custom low code built ServiceNow Activity Portal (SNAP), Sportsbet can instantly add or remove access to systems based on their different phases (joiner, mover, and leaver phases). For example, ServiceNow will automatically update the distribution list when someone is moving between positions or changing their work location from Melbourne to Sydney. This allows users access to required enterprise applications on day one.

“From submitting a request to checking the identity and creating an account, this process can now be completed in just two minutes instead of 30 minutes. That’s a 93% improvement and a game changer for the business,” says Ben.

In addition to saving time in creating an account, it also takes 86% less effort to complete a job change, such as extending access for contractors. The simplicity to fulfill a user request also enables Sportsbet to provide an exceptional staff experience for repetitive and high-volume tasks.

“In the past, we would have to re-enter the data and go through the whole process again. With ServiceNow, we literally click a couple of buttons and everything is automatically updated without any intervention,” says Ben.

Improving user experience and enhancing compliance control
With previous manual processes, the IT team had to talk to people and explain why things had to be done a certain way. It was difficult to manage and error prone. By standardizing HR and IT processes with SNAP, it provides greater visibility into the workflow and empowers the IT team to quickly identify the problem and fix it.

“Thanks to ServiceNow’s flexible low code App Engine, we are now in control of our own business processes, and they are all systemized. It’s been a real shift from an organizational perspective,” says Ben.

Compliance controls are also more effective as it cuts down the risk of identity and access management breaches. “As a result, we can easily trace system access back to an individual and pinpoint issues in our process,” adds Ben.

Achieving effective business results with a strategic platform
Sportsbet's values – reflect, learn, and improve – are well showcased through its use of ServiceNow Creator Workflows (App Engine and Automation Engine) to streamline its core employee processes and achieve effective business results.

For example, in Sportsbet’s new User Onboarding process, the New Starter Request allows users to register details such as personal and employment data, and contractual duration – all in one step. SNAP then checks for matches in their central HR platform. Any outstanding task is routed directly to the right team for action. No human intervention is needed as all updates are automated in its backend HR system. In addition, only one request is required for multiple tasks.

Adopting ServiceNow’s low code App Engine and Automation Engine also helped Sportsbet focus on making it easily accessible to users when the system went live. “We didn’t migrate every process from the old system. We delayed a lot of them until we’ve deployed the system. Then we worked with the business to redesign the processes and leverage capabilities in ServiceNow to drive simplicity, standardization, and supportability,” says Ben.

Rolling out new systems can be tough for an organization. To overcome that, Sportsbet uses multiple internal communication platforms and video guides to send clear messages to employees. All this is made possible with ServiceNow Creator Workflows App Engine’s adaptability and standardization benefits.

“With ServiceNow’s out-of-the-box low code app dev functionality and configurability, we have realized the benefits of efficiency gains and improved governance,” says Ben.

Download PDF