British communications giant BT is looking to standardize processes across its global organization, integrate various legacy service management applications into the ServiceNow platform, and is working on a ZeroOps strategy to improve both employee and customer experience. BT said the project should deliver £ 25 million in savings by 2027.
The project is driven from BT’s Digital Unit, which operates a service -focused Center of Excellence (CoE), while allowing global teams to use ServiceNow in ways most appropriate for employees and customers. The federated model means that the CoE takes care of the core platform, while freeing up agile teams to build what they see as critical to being an experience -driven organization.
The company also uses DynaTrace for tracking operations and identifying problems, while embracing Google Cloud’s machine learning capabilities, with the goal of reducing the time to fix any issues that affect a customer’s experience. The ultimate goal is self -healing, a truly autonomous environment.
This is no small task for a company the size of BT, which has many organizations, has a large amount of heritage, and has sometimes grown through acquisitions. However, the core team leading it now believes they have built enough momentum to accelerate its goal of becoming a service -oriented company that looks at everything through an ‘experience’ lens.
We had the opportunity to speak with Jim Dempsey, BT’s Technology Director of Service, and Julian Stobbs, BT’s Program Director of Service Design and Analysis, about the company’s ambitions.
Commenting on the drivers behind the project, Dempsey said:
I think self -management throughout BT is done in different ways, in different places, using different systems. And in some respects, when you talk to people about service management and some of the ITIL service management areas, people across BT are involved in that space, even though they have a similar type of the framework, we implemented it in slightly different ways and different places.
Really, part of the innovation and modernization agenda at BT is driving us more towards standardized processes and standardized ways of doing things. Incident management is the same, basically, in digital and networks, as in some of our business units, such as enterprise or consumer.
BT chose ServiceNow as the platform of its choice a few years ago and is working to standardize service management processes, starting with the work of integrating more than 50 service management platforms into the Now platform. Stobbs said:
Simplification is really about how we become more customer -focused and base our service on customers and the people who support customers. I think historically, the reasons why we had different processes and different systems were: we had legacy, we had fixed, we had mobile, we had different products, different other networks, there are acquisitions. Simplification around the customer is an important part of why we do this. It’s about how we become more customer driven and just simplify that journey for the customer.
On BT’s approach, Dempsey added:
The core platform, the ownership of the core platform, we include in the service management organization, within the technology unit. But we also have this view of a federated model of development based on agile principles.
What we don’t want to do is have a big central program that becomes too big and becomes too difficult. We will provide the guardrails, if you will, and take care of the core platform, and the performance of the core platform, and then throughout the organization, within technology and global business, there will be federated teams.
ZeroOps
BT’s service management ambitions are part of a broader strategy to create a self -healing environment, following the principles of ZeroOps. Stobbs said it won’t happen overnight, but BT is selecting processes where it can build momentum and focuses on developing, measuring, analyzing and adapting.
Dempsey explains:
The vision is pretty clear. There is a very clear digital approach around ZeroOps. It starts with the customer, the main goal is to drive towards an operation where you are actually healing yourself. If you look at how Incident Management works right now – and we’ve had enough of Incident Management – if there’s a significant incident affecting the customer, we can still take a little time to determine it, with the tracking we have. now .
Looking at the end to end journey takes a little time to figure out what’s wrong, and then it takes a little time to figure out how we can fix it. Although the tracking is pretty good, it’s still kind of a manual process to get a fix. And honestly, our tracking doesn’t always take us to where the problem is.
BT is aiming for a scenario where it uses DynaTrace for tracking, finds the problem, generates scripts, and it drives the self -healing process, with the help of Google Cloud machine learning tools . And then ServiceNow manages the workflows for all of this. Stobbs said:
There is something in it for the customer. There’s something here for our colleagues who have to work with clunky processes, clunky systems. And obviously there’s an element of cost here, with regards to the intensity of the people. There is some incredible knowledge in the people running these processes today, but we make it difficult for them.
And that means those individuals aren’t always customer focused. They try to do the processes. The only other point I would make is to be really data dominated using AI. All the different signatures of failure that we have today, it’s not about fixing the break, it’s really focused on the experience.
I think, there’s the combination of analytics from Google, Dynatrace for tracking, and then ServiceNow to manage those workflows-integrating those into one kind of service ecosystem allows us to deliver the best customer experience. And then make it a great colleague experience so they can focus on adding value for the customer. Also, closing systems, using less, having less waste in processes, is clearly its third dimension.
Stobbs added that it’s important not to get involved in believing your organization is ‘special’, and instead argues that companies following a similar approach should seek to adopt processes out of the box whenever possible. He said:
Where we are still on the journey is balancing tech focus with process and data focus. I think there’s a temptation that you have to build on the complexity of the process, and come up with a technical solution to all of that. And also with data, being really clear about what data you need.
Just make sure you use ServiceNow out of the box and don’t try to twist it. BT has a different temptation. And I just think, that’s a lesson we’re constantly going through, your cycle of being really a customer and balancing the process, and then focusing on your data.
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