PetSmart’s Chewy and ServiceNow conducted a “digital palm”


(Image by huoadg5888 from Pixabay)

Chewy was acquired by PetSmart for a high price of US$3.35 billion in 2017, and it leads the way for online retailers to sell pet food and pet-related products. Last year, Chewy brought nearly $5 billion in revenue and continues to have a loyal buyer base of animal lovers.

The company now has 18,000 employees, has 3 corporate offices, 4 call centers, and 11 fulfillment centers in 22 different locations in the U.S., and it raised $1 billion during its IPO in 2019.

However, with this success and rapid growth, it is necessary to rethink the way Chewy operates within the organization and realize that to continue to expand it requires streamlining processes, increasing team productivity and standardizing its technology across all departments.

This was done by using the ServiceNow Now platform, on which Chewy started using ServiceNow’s ITSM module, but has since expanded it to areas such as HR, facilities, SecOps, and application performance management.

Sarah Lawless-Gunn, Head of ServiceNow Platform and Product of Chewy, recently delivered a speech at ServiceNow’s Now at Work event. At the meeting, she introduced the organization’s “digital paw formation” process in detail and shared experience and lessons.

For all reports on diginomica in “Work Now”, please check out our dedicated event center here. For links to all the content of the event itself, including many on-demand customer demos, please click here.

Lawless-Gunn explained that the internal drive for change began with Chewy’s senior leadership. she says:

Let’s dive into what is the digital paw form and what does this mean for Chewy? Therefore, our digital handheld journey started with our senior executives, who said it was time to change Chewy. We need digital transformation from now on. Therefore, we looked at what are the key elements of digital claw formation? We can divide it into three main parts. We have our tools, our processes and our team members. Our team members are always our main focus.

Why did we choose ServiceNow? Well, it’s very simple. Our IT, human resources, and facility leadership all said the same thing. We need to adopt standard processes to improve the experience of team members. This will change the way we work at Chewy, will change the entire enterprise, will integrate with other tools, and configure the tools and the ability to configure the platform as Chewy develops. The powerful reporting function will promote the maturity of the entire organization.

Chewy development method

According to Lawless-Gunn, Chewy decided early on to adopt a development method that leverages ServiceNow’s out-of-the-box approach-which means that it can largely avoid overdevelopment and has achieved many shortcuts. Chew’s development method follows the classic: planning, design, development, testing, deployment, review, and then start. Then, it repeats this cycle over and over again until it meets the requirements of the entire organization.

As mentioned above, Chewy started using ServiceNow for ITSM for its IT service portal in July 2018, the nickname is `ʻAstro”. Then, it quickly added some initial integrations for SCCM, discovery, and human resource management. Then in 2019, it began to develop its governance and standards across the platform, and it was also integrated with a tool called Nuvolo for tool management.

Chewy then created a unified service portal called Kennel Club and increased the automation of workflows for most of its products. In addition, it also developed an internal hardware asset management plan.

By 2020, this work will be further advanced. Since then, Chewy has integrated with incident management, SecOps, ITFM, GRC, application portfolio management, and introduced the company’s Intranet to ServiceNow. Mobile products have also been deployed and other integrations have been added, which helps increase the data within the platform.

Regarding the company’s ambitions, Lawless-Gunn said:

What is the goal? This is very simple and can be boiled down to four main aspects. Enhance the capabilities of team members through self-service and optimize our operations by automating processes-reducing manual touch and creating better touch time. To really promote the development of team members’ experience, the faster we reach the speed that team members can solve their problems, the faster we are. We can solve the downtime problem faster, Chewy.com will be better.

Our third main goal is to promote innovation. Address specific opportunities for chewy that we could not do before. This makes us proactive rather than passive. Our fourth main goal is to revolve around corporate transformation. Really get out of trouble and eliminate silos, and increase the visibility of the entire enterprise, which can improve the experience of our team members.

Chewy challenge

Lawless-Gunn admits that while Chewy has the opportunity to change rapidly in a growing market, it is not without challenges. she says:

So I have to be honest with you. Chewy challenge. According to the speed of our listing, we face challenges. We face challenges in managing incoming demand. How do we maintain incoming demand and balance the new applications being launched? When stakeholders are different and we are on a unified platform, how do we prioritize their priorities? Ultimately, with the rapid growth of Chewy, how do we create a reliable roadmap on the platform? The us of yesterday is not the us of today, nor the chewy people of tomorrow.

Chewy is managed by adopting its own maturity model-sit down, stay and retrieve. Lawless-Gunn explained:

In 2018, we “stayed” from the first stage. This is the starting point where all our content is very manual, so just put the process in the right place. Then in 2019, we entered the second phase and began to implement governance to build the foundation of the ServiceNow platform. Build our ServiceNow team, from one team to eight teams.

By 2020, we can indeed enter the third phase, which is our self-service. This is where we begin to listen to what is happening around us. Promote self-service through our service portal and chat and mobile. Increasing our integration has really promoted knowledge sharing with team members. Entering the fourth stage is our plan for most of the fourth quarter of this year.

Entering 2021, this is the real initiative that Chewy plans to take, to understand and start checking the data it obtains from the Now platform. Lawless-Gunn added:

The tool contains unlimited data, so please make sure we are capturing the correct KPIs and the data being captured, and make sure you are using it for operations. Make sure that we are making the right decisions to improve the process to simplify the experience of our team members and continue to develop on the platform. Then our goal is to truly enter the acquisition phase or operation phase in 2021, at this stage, we will get the most value from the platform. This is achieved through continuous automation, virtual agents, agent intelligence, etc. Really promote this ultimate value.

Learn a lesson

Although Chewy has not yet entered the “acquisition” phase of the maturity model, or at least in the early stages, the organization has learned many lessons from using ServiceNow and how to effectively manage the entire change. the company.

For example, Lawless-Gunn said, at the beginning, it is important to understand where the organization is headed and how to achieve this goal. Specifically, you must understand how to manage the demand on the platform. When Chewy went live in 2018, it had no plans on how to do this, which was a problem. However, the leadership quickly gathered together and established what kind of support mechanism-leading to the slow hiring of a larger ServiceNow full-time team internally.

Second, Lawless-Gunn said, organizations should not underestimate the role of brands in driving people to invest in change. She explained:

This is critical to the success of the platform. At Chewy, the brand is everything. Therefore, integrating the brand into any customer-facing aspect is essential. We have established roles (the puppy’s name) representing IT, human resources and facilities. All three of our puppies can be imported into a kennel, which is our unified portal “kennel club”. It’s important to share icons in ads across the organization. The overall usability and the approval of the organization can use the tools you have implemented. Through brand innovation, we can quickly make these changes in the organization.

Third, Lawless-Gunn said that when launching new platforms, companies should not underestimate the level of effort required to reach different levels of maturity. She suggested that the person in charge should establish some work or sprint buffers in the development cycle to avoid overuse. The final key points include:

Really determine the roadmap of your platform. And only a six-month or one-year roadmap is possible, you don’t need to solve the world hunger problem immediately! Start with the little things you can control. Therefore, starting from one year, three months, and six months. Develop a long-term roadmap that suits the needs of your organization.

One of the last major gains and lessons we learned is the importance of knowing your stakeholders. We have learned the hard way, that is, the way you interact with key team members is very different from the way you use the facility. Law, human resources, everyone is different. All their needs are different. Some organizations and groups want rapid development, while others want slow development, so truly understanding your stakeholders is essential to the overall success of the platform.

Finally, the lesson I want to learn is to hire the right people. Make sure to conduct due diligence to make sure you find the right person for the organization. And know when to hire your direct employees, and when to rely on a third party to help with implementation. IT will truly be the success of the platform.

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