Case Study www.servicenow.com What’s it like to roll out a new IT service management (ITSM) system globally to 16,000 users in seven languages in one day? How can you train IT staff worldwide to prepare for the rollout? Knorr-Bremse knows from first-hand experience. The Knorr-Bremse Group is the world’s leading manufacturer of braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles. For more than 100 years now the company has pioneered the development, production, marketing and servicing of state-of-the-art braking systems. In the rail vehicle systems sector, the product portfolio also includes intelligent door systems, HVAC systems, control components, and windscreen wiper systems, as well as platform screen doors, friction material and driver advisory systems. Knorr- Bremse also offers driving simulators and e-learning systems for optimum train crew training. In the commercial vehicle systems sector, the product range includes complete braking systems with driver assistance systems, as well as torsional vibration dampers, powertrain-related solutions and transmission control systems for enhanced energy efficiency and fuel economy. The Knorr-Bremse IT department’s objective was to upgrade to a new ITSM system that had more functionality and was easier to use than their previous tool. However, their new ServiceNow system accomplished much more than they anticipated. Time running out on the old tool Knorr-Bremse IT was using a niche SAP-based tool for managing incidents and requests. But the old system had limitations to its functionality, user-friendliness and the basic SLA information Knorr-Bremse needed. So when the vendor of the old tool decided that it would discontinue its use of the tool, the company turned to the marketplace for an alternative. “We ended up with ServiceNow because it seemed to be the most flexible product on the market, without requiring too much effort [out of the box] on our part,” says Michael Badstieber, project manager for implementation at Knorr-Bremse. “It was also one of the first systems we brought on that is hosted in the cloud, at a time when our CIO wanted us to accumulate more experience with cloud-based products.” Once their processes were defined and their ServiceNow instance was ready, Badstieber’s team received initial administrative training on ServiceNow. They then began working with WSP Consulting, a local implementation partner. Worldwide Rollout in a Single Day Highlights ServiceNow trains global IT staff in four days, takes worldwide users live in one day Organization Knorr-Bremse Group Business Industrial – Braking systems Headquarters Munich, Germany Geographies Worldwide Modern ITSM Software ServiceNow ® Incident Management Application ServiceNow ® Service Catalog & Request Management Application Implementation Timeline Approximately eight months (including pilot at one location) “The quality of the outcome compared to the limited amount of resources we had for our ServiceNow implementation was perfect. We don’t have too many projects with almost zero issues after implementation, and that was great. I have to admit that this was maybe the most challenging project I’ve ever had since working for Knorr-Bremse, but it’s also the project I’ve enjoyed the most so far.” This ServiceNow case study is based on an interview with Michael Badstieber, project manager for implementation at Knorr-Bremse.
Transcript
Case Study
www.servicenow.com
What’s it like to roll out a new IT service management (ITSM) system globally to 16,000 users in seven languages in one day? How can you train IT staff worldwide to prepare for the rollout? Knorr-Bremse knows from first-hand experience.
The Knorr-Bremse Group is the world’s leading manufacturer of braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles. For more than 100 years now the company has pioneered the development, production, marketing and servicing of state-of-the-art braking systems. In the rail vehicle systems sector, the product portfolio also includes intelligent door systems, HVAC systems, control components, and windscreen wiper systems, as well as platform screen doors, friction material and driver advisory systems. Knorr-Bremse also offers driving simulators and e-learning systems for optimum train crew training. In the commercial vehicle systems sector, the product range includes complete braking systems with driver assistance systems, as well as torsional vibration dampers, powertrain-related solutions and transmission control systems for enhanced energy efficiency and fuel economy.
The Knorr-Bremse IT department’s objective was to upgrade to a new ITSM system that had more functionality and was easier to use than their previous tool. However, their new ServiceNow system accomplished much more than they anticipated.
Time running out on the old toolKnorr-Bremse IT was using a niche SAP-based tool for managing incidents and requests. But the old system had limitations to its functionality, user-friendliness and the basic SLA information Knorr-Bremse needed. So when the vendor of the old tool decided that it would discontinue its use of the tool, the company turned to the marketplace for an alternative.
“We ended up with ServiceNow because it seemed to be the most flexible product on the market, without requiring too much effort [out of the box] on our part,” says Michael Badstieber, project manager for implementation at Knorr-Bremse. “It was also one of the first systems we brought on that is hosted in the cloud, at a time when our CIO wanted us to accumulate more experience with cloud-based products.”
Once their processes were defined and their ServiceNow instance was ready, Badstieber’s team received initial administrative training on ServiceNow. They then began working with WSP Consulting, a local implementation partner.
Worldwide Rollout in a Single Day
Highlights
ServiceNow trains global IT staff in four days, takes worldwide users live in one day
Organization
Knorr-Bremse Group
Business
Industrial – Braking systems
Headquarters
Munich, Germany
Geographies
Worldwide
Modern ITSM Software
ServiceNow® Incident Management Application
ServiceNow® Service Catalog & Request Management Application
Implementation Timeline
Approximately eight months (including pilot at one location)
“The quality of the outcome compared to the limited amount of resources we had for our ServiceNow implementation was perfect. We don’t have too many projects with almost zero issues after implementation, and that was great. I have to admit that this was maybe the most challenging project I’ve ever had since working for Knorr-Bremse, but it’s also the project I’ve enjoyed the most so far.”
This ServiceNow case study is based on an interview with Michael Badstieber, project manager for implementation at Knorr-Bremse.
Global user training on short noticeTo meet the goal of implementing ServiceNow before the end of the year, it was necessary to train over 250 IT users at support sites all around the world. Badstieber’s team determined that with such a short timeline, they would need to work with a training partner in ServiceNow’s ecosystem. Within just one week of the initial meeting with the ServiceNow Training department, Knorr-Bremse had a first draft of training documents for three modules:
application features
“We expected that ServiceNow would be able to create training material much faster than we could,” says Badstieber, “because they have templates available and they know exactly what users need to know. But their ability to absorb our processes, their quick turnaround and the high quality of their documentation exceeded our expectations.”
In addition to the training material, Adil (an Authorized Training Partner Instructor) provided valuable insight into ServiceNow, enabling Knorr-Bremse to include the most important product features in his four days of face-to-face training at the company’s two main hubs. ServiceNow conducted similar Web-based training sessions for IT users in over two dozen locations around the world including Germany, USA, Brazil, UK, Russia, India, Hong Kong, Australia, Japan, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy and Austria.
Knorr-Bremse IT has since published all of the ServiceNow training materials to their internal portal, which is accessible to all users. Badstieber points to other advantages of the training:
of the recorded sessions high enough to make them required viewing for new IT employees.
modules, Badstieber believes that the materials will suffice for the foreseeable future without any changes.
consider having ServiceNow conduct training on new modules as Knorr-Bremse implements them.
Pleasant surprise – Going live for the whole worldOnce training was in place, IT had plans to split up its rollout by region – first in Europe and in Asia Pacific, then in the Americas – to reduce risk and lessen the impact on their support resources. But both ServiceNow and reference customers convinced Knorr-Bremse IT that a same-day global rollout to thousands of users was possible.
“When we planned the project,” says Badstieber, “we never thought that we would be able to roll out ServiceNow to the whole world at once. However, in November we went live with all our IT units on the same day – seven different languages plus support for all the regions – and the rollout went smoothly. We never thought we could achieve that.”
IT benefits most from the flexibility of ServiceNow, in that it’s much less painful to customize the application than before. For example, the old tool had required custom development for even simple modifications like triggering in-process notifications. With ServiceNow, these are just small changes to workflow. And as processes change, ServiceNow requires far less effort from IT to modify the system to align with the new processes.
“When we did our initial project planning, we never thought that we would be able to roll out ServiceNow to the whole world at once. Finally in November we went live with all our IT units on the same day – seven different languages and support for all the regions. We never thought we could achieve that.”
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Much greater business valueBadstieber is pleased with the business value Knorr-Bremse has found in ServiceNow, including:
Smoother approvals – Routine requests for hardware and devices was a manual process involving hard copy forms routed through intercompany mail. Requesters can now submit and track requests in ServiceNow, and approvers receive them via email, saving huge amounts of time for users all over the company.
Quicker response to change – Now that they can keep up with and easily implement changes in process, IT’s role in the business is much more visible.
Greater transparency – Before, when managers wanted information on change requests for specific enterprise applications, they had to call a meeting to gather and document the data before they could organize it. Now they can look up the actionable data on their own or receive regular reports directly from ServiceNow.
Finally, Badstieber points to several metrics demonstrating that ServiceNow was the right choice for Knorr-Bremse: “We implemented this with one and a half resources – our consultant, and myself and later on my successor part-time – compared to other systems we’ve implemented that required five or six consultants. We managed a same-day, worldwide rollout to 16,000 self-service users who can now report service incidents and events. In the first three months after go-live, our users generated more than 12,000 incidents and 7,500 requests. While our people need more training in a few processes, the overall acceptance of the system is very good, and management including our CIO considers this project a complete success.”
Worldwide Rollout in a Single Day
ServiceNow requires far less effort from IT to modify the system to align with the new processes.
