Their new IT platform helped brighten a million futures

No country for old tech

In the American West, where summer temperatures regularly rise above 100 degrees and winter storms bring down power lines, delivering reliable energy to 1.4 million customers is an awesome and challenging responsibility. Without the right technology, it’s also a very difficult one.

One electric utility, studying its expanding and energy-hungry customer base, realized it needed to upgrade or replace its aging infrastructure to manage growing power demand.

Over customization leads to underperformance

The company faced significant challenges with its ServiceNow platform after 14 years of extensive customization. Among the many issues were the following:

• The platform could not be updated further.
• Over customization had left functions unable to communicate with one another.
• Risk management processes were slow and cumbersome.
• Restricted networks needed upgrades to protect sensitive information. 
• Inefficient mobile communications hampered field teams’ response times.
• Not all functions were automated; some were still handled on spreadsheets.

Although the company needed to reset the baseline to eliminate tech debt and enable growth, implementing a new platform would be a major step. The company engaged KPMG LLP, a ServiceNow Alliance partner known for its success in utility company transformations, to help plan, design, and operationalize a new ServiceNow platform.

With the new platform, the company could align its IT, risk, and security processes with ServiceNow’s out-of-the-box configurations to avoid technology debt in the future. The platform’s built-in capabilities would make customization unnecessary, and it would reset all systems to a new “square one” baseline. The result: enhanced communications and a better experience for workers and customers alike.

Industry and technology experience make the difference

KPMG took a methodical and strategic approach to creating the ServiceNow solution, focusing on the company’s long-term goals. We divided the transformation program into multiple phases, including a current-state assessment to confirm the case for a new platform, a defining of essential feature functionality, and the creation of a minimal viable ServiceNow product to establish a new baseline.

At each step, we leveraged our client knowledge and our work with other utilities to tailor and augment features for the client’s way of working. KPMG then worked to help the client:

• Configure and enhance the new ServiceNow platform to meet specific client requirements.
• Automate repetitive tasks to free employees for more important work.
• Expand features and functionalities to improve efficiency throughout IT and security.
• Add an on-call solution, service portfolio management, business continuity management, escalation management, and similar capabilities to the platform.
• Implement specialized security protocols to protect sensitive and highly regulated information.
• Heighten visibility and control over IT service management processes to ease project tracking from start to finish.

KPMG helped increase the platform’s capabilities, building out the knowledge base for centralized access to training materials and on-the-job guides. ServiceNow’s Guided Tour functionality helped drive platform usage with its quick overviews of high-demand workflows/pages. Additionally, insights from employee focus groups and surveys spurred updates to workflow and services portals that enhanced the employee experience. All were necessary levers to increase adoption and mitigate the likelihood of user reversion to previous work patterns. In working to implement the ServiceNow transformation while simultaneously helping users learn the platform’s capabilities, KPMG synchronized both the technical and human sides of the project.

Keeping it simple, making it better

With the new “back to baseline” ServiceNow platform in place, the company has been freed from the need to customize. Communication has reportedly improved among functions and is now more seamless and automatic. The client also reported a higher sense of security, with sensitive information better protected through restricted networks, and with cyberattacks spotted and addressed more quickly. The company has also created a more transparent view of IT and reported improvements in productivity and cost management. Teams across the organization have benefited from automated monitoring and management tools, helping them find real-time insights and enabling fast, proactive issue resolution.

Most importantly, KPMG helped the client configure the platform for the future, so that the company can update functions as needed, without requiring another “back to baseline” transformation down the road.

A relationship grounded in trust

Our strong relationship with the client over the years has been instrumental in driving this multiyear transformation program. The trust and collaboration between our two organizations have been key to the project’s success.

Pleased with results to date, the company expressed interest in expanding its ServiceNow platform to more business areas. KPMG will continue to support these efforts, helping the company set up governance structures and refine road maps to help ensure the platform remains aligned with the client’s strategic goals moving forward.