Alectra supports M&A growth strategy with ServiceNow

Alectra Utilities aggressively grows its business through mergers and acquisitions

Over the last several years, Alectra Utilities (Alectra) has aggressively pursued mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to grow its local electricity distribution business. To effectively execute this strategy, Alectra needs to onboard acquired businesses quickly and efficiently, breaking down organisational silos and creating a “One Alectra” experience.

To support continued growth, Alectra needed an enterprise service fulfilment platform that easily integrated new businesses

“We inherited multiple support systems and processes from different businesses,” explains James Ilari, Director of IT Innovation and Governance at Alectra. “For example, we had several outdated IT ticketing systems. There wasn’t a unified user experience, and the functionality was limited. And, because these were on-premises systems, we couldn’t just pick one and assume it would scale to meet future growth.” “We needed a modern cloud-based service fulfilment platform for our entire business. That way, we could deliver consistent, intuitive services across Alectra-not just IT services, but other corporate services, such as facilities and HR,“ says James. “With ServiceNow, we could do exactly that, while creating a comprehensive foundation for IT that went far beyond ticketing. And, to scale ServiceNow to support future mergers and acquisitions, we only had to add licenses. We didn’t have to worry about trying to grow and manage an on-premises system.”

With ServiceNow, Alectra replaces multiple IT service desks, making IT service delivery consistent, efficient, and measurable

Alectra started with a ServiceNow IT Service Management solution that included incident, change, request, and knowledge management. “ServiceNow made it easy for us to retire our existing ticketing systems, so we now have a single pane of glass where users can access all of their IT services,” says James. “Internally, we now work as a single team that communicates much more effectively, rather than having tickets bounce between multiple service desks. And, because everything is in one place with consistent processes, we can now develop KPIs that allow us to measure and improve our service desk performance.”

Alectra employees now have IT services that are as easy to use as Amazon

Bill Schmidt, Alectra’s Vice President of IT, mandated that Alectra’s ServiceNow implementation had to be easy to use, referencing Amazon as a benchmark for its intuitive interface and simplicity of navigation. “For our end-users, we took the Amazon approach. Amazon is so intuitive that no one needs training to use it, and it’s the same with ServiceNow,” adds James. “Of course, we sent out communications and provided user guides, but that was it. And, the results have been great.” “We’ve completely eliminated email requests and now have more than 75% of our incidents and requests come in through the ServiceNow self-service portal,” James continues. “We’ve had consistently positive feedback from our end-users, and it’s made life much easier for IT as well. For instance, IT previously managed service requests using paper forms. Now, users just pick what they want from the service catalog. That’s been a huge win for us, both from a workload and an auditability perspective.

Alectra builds its IT foundation on ServiceNow, plans to extend ServiceNow across the enterprise

Looking forward, Alectra continues to grow its ServiceNow solution, both within IT and across the enterprise. “ServiceNow Discovery is next on the IT roadmap, which will give us an accurate, up-to-date configuration management database,” says James. “That’s the foundation for other ServiceNow capabilities we want to pursue, including hardware and software asset management.” The team has already engaged with other corporate services teams, including HR, facilities, and learning and development. “We’re expecting to get one of these teams up and running on ServiceNow within a few months,” says James. “At that point, we’ll be well on our way to having ServiceNow as our overall enterprise service fulfilment platform.”