Successful ServiceNow strategy

Based in Cologne, RheinEnergie is an energy service provider active throughout Germany. It is also well positioned for the future: In addition to energy and drinking water, the company of fers numerous energy solutions for private individuals, commerce, and industry. With sales of around five billion euros, RheinEnergie has securely positioned itself in the German energy market while still maintaining close ties to the companies and people in the Rhineland region.

In order to improve its strategic focus on the future of the digitalized energy market and to establish a stable cost structure, RheinEnergie began looking for a competent service partner for its ServiceNow platform. “By hiring an external service provider, we wanted to bring on board both technical expertise and cost stabilization,” explains Björn Friedrich, Head of IT Operations & Service Integration at RheinEnergie.

The invitation to bid was divided into four batches: Batch 1 comprises the operation and management of four ServiceNow environments, including maintenance, incident management, change and problem management, and CMDB maintenance and control. Batch 2 consists of requirements management—i.e., the evaluation, processing, and implementation of change requests. The third batch focuses on the further development of the platform. Things are expected to get exciting in batch 4: The goal is to gradually build up a multi-provider landscape and integrate as many third-party providers and partners as possible with ServiceNow.

“Fujitsu treated us as equals during the bidding process. We quickly realized that we share the same understanding of IT and speak the same language,” Friedrich recalls. “As a result, the decision to award all four batches to this partner was not a difficult one.”

To ensure the fail-safe and high-performance operation of ServiceNow, Fujitsu has introduced an implementation process that continually optimizes the instances. This ensures that the 10,000 or so users can interact with the platform without interruption. In addition, Fujitsu has worked with RheinEnergie to improve the requirements management step by step: Change requests can be conveniently opened from the service portal, then identified, evaluated, and ultimately routed into a release process. Thanks to its consulting services and best practices, Fujitsu has made the platform easier for users to understand. Within a short period of time, it was also possible to integrate the first external service provider with ServiceNow via a real-time REST interface. This required an overall improvement and restructuring of the ITSM processes. Thanks to comprehensive process consulting, an in-depth understanding of the technical feasibility in ServiceNow, available development resources, as well as optimal project management, Fujitsu was able to achieve a significant improvement in response and implementation times and a high level of acceptance—even among new user groups—within a relatively short period of time.

“In addition to the ServiceNow expertise, we have been particularly impressed by the exceptionally high level of commitment shown by Fujitsu employees,” says Friedrich, praising the partnership-based collaboration. “Fujitsu has not only helped us make ServiceNow into the leading system, it also showed us numerous innovations. We have noticed the added value in a number of areas, not just in terms of cost stability,” Björn Friedrich is pleased to report.