“We’re very pleased with the results, and satisfaction levels amongst our 1,400 users are now above 90% too.”
Global Service Desk and IT Operations Manager
Addressing global demand for precious metals
The client is an international mining company headquartered in Canada, with operations in multiple countries. It acquires, explores, and develops gold, silver, and copper mines before processing the metals it extracts. While mining continues to play an essential role in meeting global demand for raw materials for diverse industries, the company is a sector leader in its work to minimize its environmental impact. In 2022, it invested more than six million US dollars in programs to support the communities in which it operates.
Meeting a unique combination of requirements
With its corporate center in Toronto and its core business operations hub in Eastern Europe, and industrial production centers on three continents, the IT infrastructure must service teams in very different locations and circumstances.
“There’s a real contrast between the work that our people are doing in our offices and those in our mines. They use very different tools and technologies, and we have around 200 different applications for very different tasks.
Many legacy systems in our mines are unique to our industry, so modernizing and streamlining our infrastructure is complex and takes time. But technology is now as important underground in a mine as it is in an office. It’s vital to monitor and keep our people safe while meeting our production targets.
Our goal is to provide high-quality services to all our people, supporting them whatever their needs are, wherever they are, and whatever device they use. Our vision, when we selected ServiceNow, was for it to provide the platform and comprehensive range of solutions, features, and functionality to join all of the dots for us, truly connecting IT and business.”
Global Service Desk and IT Operations Manager based in Eastern Europe.
Improving communications with end users
The ServiceNow journey began with the rollout of IT Service Management, delivered by ITCE as the implementation partner. Our team worked closely with the organization to establish a consistent and standardized set of IT services, accessible to all employees through a user-friendly portal available on workstations. Together, we laid the foundation for scalable service delivery, with plans already in motion to expand access across mobile devices as well.
“We started with incident management, service request fulfilment, and change management. This immediately improved communications with end users, so we added vendor management in ITSM to escalate tickets to vendors and to streamline and track communications with them in ServiceNow rather than using external emails. Colleagues really appreciate being able to see the status of their request or issue and how it is being resolved.”
Global Service Desk and IT Operations Manager based in Eastern Europe.
A growing knowledge base is enabling increasing volumes of self-service, fueled by analysis of data highlighting important topics for users. For example, employees can now set up multi-factor authentication themselves to ensure the security of their login. As a result, calls to the telephone help desk have steadily reduced.
To ensure that the company invests its IT budgets wisely, IT Operations Management, and in particular the Discovery process, was used to identify the full extent of the estate and to capture assets in a clean and healthy CMDB. Now, each IT asset down to individual devices and peripherals, can be tracked and reports created in ServiceNow to prompt action to recover assets that are missing.
“A recent development has been the addition of Hardware Lifecycle Management to plan and budget for a controlled and phased replacement of equipment every year. And as well as providing visibility and budget control for managers all our employees can now see what equipment is assigned to them and when new equipment will be available. Software Asset Management will follow soon. This is a very important project that will give us the information we need on our license usage to enable us to significantly reduce costs.”
Global Service Desk and IT Operations Manager based in Eastern Europe.
Taking control of projects
The Global Service Desk and IT Operations Manager is using the ServiceNow Platform to automate many core business workflows.
“For example, we’ve automated our employee onboarding and offboarding processes via an integration with SAP Success Factors. Before when we hired a new employee many of the activities involved time consuming manual tasks. Now user profile creation the granting of permissions and provision of hardware and software is carried out automatically in ServiceNow. We’re very pleased with the results and satisfaction levels amongst our 1,400 users are now above 90% too.“
Global Service Desk and IT Operations Manager based in Eastern Europe.
While streamlining and automating numerous workflows in ITSM had delivered multiple benefits and efficiencies next came the need for more visibility and control of IT resources and to prioritize the many IT tasks.
ITCE supported with the deployment of ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM), to provide a single platform for the management of all IT projects, with more than 100 active at any one time. Increasingly, IT-led business and mining production projects are being managed in SPM, too. These include the deployment of GPS technology to track the precise location of the company’s miners while they are working underground.
Safety first, always
With the safety and welfare of people working underground as a top priority, the company also added the Major Incident Management module to its ITSM portfolio. Integrated with its own emergency planning processes, this establishes clear communications protocols. Major Incident Management can guide responses during an event and after too and also capture any process refinements identified during the review stage.
Monitoring, repairs, and maintenance of underground mining equipment is also coordinated on the ServiceNow Platform, with a ticket raised when necessary, and reports generated for each mine’s managers after each eight-hour shift.
“ServiceNow provides a more agile way of working, and we’re integrating dashboards too so that team members who are working on projects as well as ITSM-generated tasks can see all these activities on one page and prioritize their work accordingly.“
Global Service Desk and IT Operations Manager based in Eastern Europe.
Next on the ServiceNow roadmap is the integration of the IT innovation team into ServiceNow providing the IT management team with instantly available data to make decisions and meet the needs of all business units in all locations.
ITSM contract management is on the radar too. There are plans to bring all IT contracts into ServiceNow capturing and providing visibility of all hardware and software contracts licensing details and renewal dates. The aim is to unlock efficiencies and cost savings. A planned integration with SAP will also support efforts to assess business performance against budgets and so finetune the annual financial planning and forecasting process.
“ServiceNow provides complete visibility into how IT issues are dealt with and we can now see how quickly they are resolved and whether we are meeting service level agreements and KPIs.“
Global Service Desk and IT Operations Manager