Case study: SaaS-based service management at Addleshaw Goddard

Law firm opts for ServiceNow ahead of CA, BMC and ICCM

Law firm Addleshaw Goddard (AG) has selected cloud service management provider ServiceNow to automate its IT service delivery functions ahead of offerings from CA, BMC and ICCM.

The move to IT service management was due to the law firm not meeting the required services level, and was part of a broader transformation project in IT, according to AG's head of IT, John Whitlow.

"One of the things we are tackling is a service quality issue, which came from having a reduction of staff over the last few years due to the economic challenges. We didn't adapt our service to cope and we tried to do the same with less people, resulting in us delivering poorer service," he told Computing.

The firm wanted an IT platform that could meet its current and future requirements rather than having a solution to which the business would have to adapt.

AG began researching potential solutions in December 2011 by looking at what other specialist options for the legal sector were available. But according to Whitlow, none of these were "world class" so the firm looked instead at analyst and market reports.

"We started at the top of the list, and didn't preclude anything," he said.

Whitlow explained that AG reviewed products from HP, Nimsoft, Microsoft and its incumbent Hornbill's current offering, but none of these made the shortlist. The final four were: ServiceNow, ICCM, CA and BMC.

"ServiceNow was a clear winner; many solutions that ticked the box weren't a cloud offering but functional and non-functional requirements. The clincher was that ServiceNow is a true software-as-a-service offering, and from a user perspective it scored 20 per cent above the others in their product reviews," he said.

The RFP was completed in February this year and thereafter there were four weeks of commercial negotiations. The implementation then began with ServiceNow creating a development environment within two days, and then taking six weeks to complete the implementation, which included the incident and problem management module and a configuration management database (CMDB).

Case study: SaaS-based service management at Addleshaw Goddard

Law firm opts for ServiceNow ahead of CA, BMC and ICCM

ServiceNow partner TeamUltra helped AG understand how it could optimise some of its current processes with ServiceNow configuration.

"We followed this with a very short development test implementation cycle, to implement the core service desk and the core incident process, and we did a concept of a major incident," Whitlow said.

"I think the core challenge for us was the developer process – it's a lot more of a robust process compared to how we were supporting our own internal systems. We didn't deliver change to the Hornbill system and people didn't look to develop it. We are learning from scratch from a ServiceNow perspective – which has been extremely simple and straightforward to implement," he added.

Whitlow claimed the biggest challenge was the need for a cultural shift on behalf of the firm's employees.

"It changes their basic day-to-day routine, the way they think about delivering all of the different practical aspects a service. Some people are more comfortable than others [in starting to use ServiceNow]," he said.

Benefits

Aside from the benefit of better service quality, AG had put together a detailed business case for the implementation of ServiceNow.

"We restructured the support function so there has been a headcount saving, which in effect justified the first year's investment. Because of the changing agenda across the business we are looking to redeploy some of those individuals on new projects," Whitlow stated.

In terms of the product itself, Whitlow said it has been straightforward to use and implement, with a key benefit of better integration with existing systems.

"If we brought it in-house I know we would have crafted it into a place where that level of integration would have been very difficult. We're finding the integration aspect very powerful," he explained.

The future

AG's head of IT said that ServiceNow is acting almost like an ERP system for IT, integrating key management information across the firm, so it is looking to run all of its core processes on the product.

"There are some exceptions that we've identified including our development self-lifecycle tool set where there is an overlap between what ServiceNow can do and what Microsoft can do. We're integrating those to ensure that it is seamless from a process perspective," Whitlow said.

The law firm will also use ServiceNow's Run Book Automation and Discovery and Dependency Mapping features.