From instance inspection to better ServiceNow

From instance inspection to better ServiceNow

Belgian financial heritage

Degroof Petercam is a financial institution with 150 years of experience with headquarters in Brussels. The bank employs more than 1400 professionals in eight European countries. Until today more than 70% of the company is owned by the family shareholders. With 469.2 million euro net income and 75 billion euro total clients assets, the bank offers a comprehensive range of services to high net worth clients, including private banking and wealth management.

Main challenge: improve instance work

The Customer wanted to perform an instance inspection to improve instance work with the main focus on developing some ServiceNow areas and fixing them like, e.g., the Service Portal look. Degroof Petercam struggled with inconsistencies related to flows implemented in Flow Designer and Workflow Editor. Eliminating problems with wrong ticket numbers was of the highest priority.

ServiceNow instance inspection process

After discussing current issues on the ServiceNow instance¨together with Degroof Petercam, we decided to perform both manual and automatic inspections followed by reports. Results of assessment and steps provided in the Action Plan were divided into incidents or changes to be further implemented. Our solutions covered:

Running our automatic HealthCheck scripts to verify instance performance. HealthCheck is a SPOC Maintenance & Development Team service that verifies the ServiceNow instance performance
Manual inspection performed by the M&D developer to, among others, make a licenses analysis and propose additional ServiceNow features that could be useful for the Customer.
Health Check performed on the Customer production instance.

Our perspective

We used our HealthCheck tool to determine if there were any potential issues at the Degroof Petercam instance that needed to be urgently addressed. HealthCheck also made it easy to find spots on the system that needed to be tweaked to keep things running smoother.

Milena Szklarska-Behlke

Engineering Manager at SPOC

Engineering Manager

ServiceNow instance inspection benefits for Degroof Petercam

No more problematic notifications

Most of the ServiceNow flows were fixed

Mapping new possible improvements that could be implemented on the customer instance, e.g., Change Management process, ITOM, security improvements

The customer has found additional issues on the instance (Incident Management description field) that extended the scope, and we fixed these issues

In addition to diagnosing the problems, we also fixed the new deficiencies discovered on the instance

Knowledge about new features available on the ServiceNow platform

What does the client say?

HealthCheck helped us determine if there were issues in our instance that needed to be addressed urgently. HealthCheck made it easy to find places in the system that needed to be tweaked to keep things running more smoothly.

Steven Claes

ServiceDesk Manager at Degroof Petercam

HealthCheck by SPOC for checking your ITSM instance

HealthCheck by SPOC for checking your ITSM instance

Baltic e-identity

SK ID Solutions is an Estonian company specializing in global e-identity solutions that enables citizens of different countries to log in to e-services and access electronic signatures. The company cooperates with nearly 1000 organizations, including financial, healthcare, education, and other private and public sector e-services. It also partners with the Estonian government in issuing certificates for ID cards, Mobile-ID, Digi-ID, etc. The main markets are Baltic and Nordic countries, which have been issued with 3 000 000 authentication tokens by SK ID Solutions.

Main challenge: improve instance work

The Customer needed to perform an inspection to check the instance’s general health and develop some areas of ServiceNow, like improving the look of the Service Portal or translation uniformity. There were also some inconsistencies related to flows in Flow Designer and Workflow Editor. Notification content for assets displayed wrong ticket numbers. Checking instance performance in areas used commonly (Incident Management, Change Management, Assets, Service Catalog) was the main task to ensure protection and security of ServiceNow.

Project stages

HealthCheck is a service provided by SPOC Maintenance & Development Team. During this project, our automated scripts verified the performance of the SK ID Solutions ServiceNow instance. After accepting the proposed estimate and scope on the instance, the M&D Team performed a manual inspection and ran an automatic assessment. The Customer received a data report in one file, and during an additional session, we discussed the results and explained the impact of the specified elements on the whole instance. Also, we proposed additional workshops to discuss more complex issues. As a result of the project, we fixed problematic notifications and most of the problems related to flows. SPOC M&D proposed new improvements that could be implemented on the customer instance – e.g., Change Management process, ITOM, security improvements.

Our perspective

SK ID Solutions wanted to focus on checking instance performance in areas used commonly (Incident Management, Change Management, Assets, Service Catalog) and security level. We provided clear information about the inspection results with potential impact on the instance and based on the results, we could propose few improvements. During the work with SK ID Solutions, we learned how effectively we can verify security of the instance in order to propose an effective plan to strengthen this aspect.

Milena Szklarska-Behlke

Engineering Manager at SPOC

Engineering Manager

Benefits for SK ID Solutions

Full-service coordination, also including ServiceNow activities

Attractive price, lower than competitive services

Clear report that was the basis for further work and discussions

Unlimited consultation sessions to discuss report results

Knowledge about new features available on the ServiceNow platform

Opening the instance and the company for further development with new ServiceNow products

What does the client say?

HealthCheck is an innovative solution from SPOC. Through that, we quickly discovered areas to improve our ServiceNow instance. SPOC’s specialists showed commitment to the project. During the consultation, they identified targeted improvements. SPOC has great knowledge of the ServiceNow platform.

Rene Karjus

Internal Services Team Lead at SK ID Solutions

Complex ITSM implementation for the top company from the pharmaceutical industry

Complex ITSM implementation for the top company from the pharmaceutical industry

Leader of innovation

Polpharma Biologics is a relatively new and innovative company; however, being part of Polpharma, it has nearly a century of history. The company develops and manufactures biosimilar drugs in three sites in Poland and the Netherlands. With over 700 people and 10 000l bioreactor production capacity, it is one of the biggest biopharmaceutical companies in Europe. Polpharma Biologic, with its pipeline of novel biologics and biosimilars, is currently working on two innovative drugs and has seven molecules in the portfolio of biosimilar drugs.

Main challenge: fulfilling sector regulations

Polpharma Biologics needed an IT Service Management tool that is stable and fulfills strict pharmaceutical regulations. Introducing changes to an IT system has to follow a specific validation process, covering documenting the solution, defining an adequate level of testing, and providing evidence of performed tests. All those components need to allow full traceability. 

ServiceNow validation proces

To implement the ServiceNow ITSM, Polpharma Biologics chose SPOC as a partner. The main goal was to meet complex pharma industry-related validation and ensure high-quality, holistic testing and required documentation. After the scoping workshops, SPOC prepared a User Requirements Specification document as a key prerequisite for starting the design and delivery phase, launched after the first product workshop. It led to the delivery of all requirements, tests, and documents. SPOC provided the process owners and practitioners as well as the end-user community with the platform training. The SPOC PPM tool supported the creation of content of documents used in the validation process (FS, DS, CS), provided input to traceability matrix (RTM), and generated formal pieces of evidence in the testing process. Once validated, the ServiceNow ATF tool allowed regression testing to support Customer in platform upgrades, new ITSM modules implementation, or creating specialized business applications based on ServiceNow.rnrnThe first release covered platform’s Core Configuration, CMDB and Asset Management, Incident Management, Change Management, Service Portal and Service Catalogue, and Automated Tool Framework areas. The project ended successfully, and Polpharma Biologics is currently working with the ServiceNow platform, planning further developments.

Our perspective

Most of the challenges in the recently completed ServiceNow ITSM implementation resulted from validation requirements. It was successfully resolved thanks to the very close cooperation of team members, their analytical skills, and strong commitment from SPOC and Polpharma Biologics.

Marta Piotrowska

Senior Project Manager at SPOC

As a team we gained another great opportunity to deep dive into the pharma industry and its requirements when it comes to delivery of the project with all the other fundamental activities needed for the pharma business. We worked through it together tackling all the internal and external components to deliver products meeting all the stakeholder needs.

Karol Skałowski

Engineering Manager at SPOC

Senior Project Manager

Engineering Manager

What distinguishes this project?

Close cooperation

The project was challenging due to the specificity of the pharmaceutical industry and process validation. The key to success was analytical skills and strong commitment from both the SPOC team and Polpharma Biologics.

Solutions variety

The project covers various services like IT Service Management Products, Key processes synchronized via setting the respective workflows with the GxP process, PDF Generator (native SPOC app), Process Consultancy / Advisory.

ServiceNow benefits for Polpharma Biologic

One IT system that meets all the pharmaceutical industry requirements, like qualification process (IQOQ) and access to the ServiceNow CORE for Life Sciences (Compliance Operations Readiness Evidence) documentation

ITSM processes maturity automatically shifted up through the implementation of the platform getting best practices and automated workflows

Great base to evolve further enhanced by the respective piece of documentation as well as training

Regulatory and business needs reflecting in the platform

Built-in workflows and processes with high agility, flexibility and scalability

Structured and transparent framework for IT processes

What does the client say?

We play in the champions league, and we cannot afford uncertainty. The number of implementations of the ServiceNow platform globally was of great importance to us.

Bartłomiej Piernicki

Director Business Technology at Polpharma Biologics

For the first time for us, such an extensive IT system works entirely in a validated environment. This project equals accumulated experience, which we will use to end each implementation successfully in future IT projects.

Ireneusz Smoliński

IT Service Management & Application Manager at Polpharma Biologics

The SPOC company has gained our trust thanks to their knowledge. The design team consisted of people who knew the technology. SPOC employees have a passion for the development of the ServiceNow platform but also for working with people. We are committed to building partnership relations, and we have certainly succeeded.

Michał Kruszewski

IT Manager at Polpharma Biologics

Kategoria: Services