"In the dynamic and ever-shifting retail industry, a fast-growing convenience and petrol retailer’s ability to navigate the ebb and flow determines their success and fuels its growth. With the right technology in place, they stay on top of industry trends, which can change minute to minute or hour to hour. Companies who want to continue to maintain market leadership and rapid growth need the right technology and the right technology partnerships. "

At a Glance

Founded in 1992 and headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, this forecourt retailer has seen substantial growth in 30 years. Today, it employs 11,000 people through 559 sites in 3 countries with 204 locations in the Republic of Ireland, 164 locations in the United Kingdom and 191 locations in the United States.

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Ready to quit ServiceNow

One such retailer launched ServiceNow through a different engagement partner in 2016. After some leadership changes and the exit of the entire internal ServiceNow team, a systems administrator took ownership of the ServiceNow platform within the organisation. He instantly knew that he had his hands full. Many people in the organisation felt the platform needed a lot of babysitting.

When department leaders requested IT support to use the platform to satisfy a specific need, IT would turn to their ServiceNow partner to scope out that need and outline a cost. The process was lengthy and cumbersome. By the time it was complete, and IT wrapped back around to the requestor, they already developed a workaround without IT support.

Additionally, the partner had poor communication and their project price tag was frequently too rich for the company’s budget. With slow project response time and pricing barriers, ServiceNow crept to the top of the list of technology slated to be cut. IT didn’t feel they were getting value from the platform and expansion into other areas of the business was slow and somewhat painful.

If they were to continue to use ServiceNow, IT needed to be faster at responding to requests, able to tie the business’s need to the capabilities of the platform, and in turn, articulate the information back to each business unit so that they understood and had buy-in. The key to making this work and reinstating a positive image of IT was to have a capable and reliable partner ready to turn needs into action.

A New Team and a New Way of Thinking

During this low point in the relationship with their original ServiceNow partner, the system administrator got an email—out of the blue—from Nick McGillivray at Crossfuze. He felt there was value in what Nick offered. The team engaged Crossfuze to do a Health Check and assessment of the state of their ServiceNow instance.

Meanwhile, the system admin set up a suite of communications, internal documentation, and workshops to see how the platform was working for the various department heads. In those meetings, he realised that people asked for things in ServiceNow but, those things weren’t getting delivered.

The team expanded the Health Check to include department heads. Crossfuze held a series of meetings to discuss how ServiceNow could consolidate and integrate legacy systems and how that would streamline workflows to improve employee productivity. These conversations went deep into the organisation and engaged people who weren’t yet using ServiceNow to identify how the platform could be helpful in their work. Together, Crossfuze and the internal team developed a strategic roadmap for ServiceNow moving forward. And the conversations revealed something else about the Crossfuze team.

These highly skilled developers had the soft skills necessary to explain ServiceNow to end-users. This communication helped facilitate strategic meetings that eventually proved pivotal to how the company uses the platform today.

Additionally, the system administrator appreciates that the Crossfuze developers have taken the time to understand him as a person along with the business. They share his vision for ServiceNow. They’re deeply familiar with the core business and the retail landscape overall. Crossfuze moves quickly on projects, but they also know the ServiceNow platform well enough to be able to tell developers when to put on the brakes—without friction.

The ongoing partnership with Crossfuze helps the organisation see the big picture. ServiceNow went from being viewed as a “forgotten about IT tool” to a business driver. Today, the platform is every bit as important as the employees who work for the organisation.

Now when business units and leadership discuss efficiencies, IT and ServiceNow are an essential part of those conversations. Department heads, including the CIO, come to IT to see if the solution lies in ServiceNow—either as a custom app or one of the already licensed applications.

Not Just a Platform, a Partnership

Crossfuze demonstrated a deep interest in the customer’s ideas for the platform from the very beginning of their relationship. The Crossfuze team focused on integrating as deeply as possible into the account so that they could understand the enterprise’s inner workings, beginning with IT. In doing so, the team was able to quickly provide creative approaches to solving business challenges while keeping an eye on what’s to come on the horizon for opportunities.

As the partnership with Crossfuze has grown, the company finds ServiceNow projects routinely come in under budget and much faster than expected. The image of IT has changed for the better—to one of a team that helps other areas of the business achieve success by applying creative approaches to overcoming challenges and identifying areas of opportunity. Today, requests continually flow into IT for leveraging the platform. The more workflows done on the ServiceNow platform, the more IT and other users learn about what the platform can do.

Crossfuze takes an already valuable, out-of-the-box, product and adds app customisations to help run the business. The partnership makes ServiceNow a more user-friendly tool for enabling IT to contribute to the company’s strategic goals across three countries on two continents. Now, IT gets positive feedback on the platform and their effectiveness in working with the business.

"In the dynamic and ever-shifting retail industry, a fast-growing convenience and petrol retailer’s ability to navigate the ebb and flow determines their success and fuels its growth. With the right technology in place, they stay on top of industry trends, which can change minute to minute or hour to hour. Companies who want to continue to maintain market leadership and rapid growth need the right technology and the right technology partnerships. "

Confidence in the Relationship

Crossfuze understands the organisation’s vision. The relationship has become so symbiotic and frictionless that developers feel that they can pass applications they’re working on over to Crossfuze for tweaks with confidence. They know the Crossfuze team will get it done on time, on or under budget; and apply creative thinking to ensure the project has the highest user satisfaction rate possible. This kind of working relationship is rare and a big deal in IT. Confidence in Crossfuze as a business partner drives platform usage company-wide. Today, the value of the platform is clear for the company. ServiceNow has become one of the top technology assets on IT’s list.

Crossfuze also explained licensing models and helped put better modelling in place. They introduced custom app licensing by showing tangible examples of benefits. Crossfuze assists the company in managing goals, objectives and measuring success. They consistently demonstrate an understanding of what’s possible with ServiceNow and how the platform can positively impact business objectives. With help from Crossfuze, the ServiceNow ship has been turned around and set back on course, thus repositioning IT within the organisation as a team that adds measurable value to achieving the desire business outcomes.

The retailer’s faith in Crossfuze has grown so much that they’ve dedicated a ServiceNow team member to work on ServiceNow projects with Crossfuze. Alongside IT, Crossfuze continues to engage with the business and help scale up projects that give employees a good, consistent experience—no matter where they are around the globe.

Key ServiceNow Initiatives

Cash Bag Monitoring:

Crossfuze helped implement a custom app to manage the Cash Monitoring process in all stores. ServiceNow replaced a legacy system and introduced a new, better process which includes automated output to the finance department. The company plans to roll out this module across three regions.

Graduate Programme:

The Graduate Programme provides training for employees as they progress on their career path. The inaugural Graduate Programme launch was put at risk last year because of an issue with their company website and vendor. IT saw an opportunity and suggested ServiceNow as an alternative. Crossfuze helped IT build a Graduate submission form that was published on the company website and then captured into the platform for HR. The programme was so successful leadership used ServiceNow again for this year’s campaign.

ServiceNow-Finance API:

A U.S. sub-company implemented the already successful custom Facility Management application. While reviewing the scope for this regional build, IT engaged with Crossfuze to see the feasibility of implementing a real-time API between the Facility App and a third-party finance system and removing the manual steps involved for Facility Agents raising PO’s. Working with the company and the third-party finance system vendor, Crossfuze delivered an extremely impressive API that removed all the manual steps involved in raising PO’s in one section of the U.S. for Facility Incident. The success of this API has it in scope for deployment across their entire U.S. footprint.

Holiday Tracker:

To further enhance the employee experience, Crossfuze developed a Holiday Tracker Application that replaced the department’s legacy systems for managing staff leave with Excel spreadsheets.

These changes have led to a significant culture shift within the organisation. Today, when someone has an idea for a new workflow, they happily go to IT to see if ServiceNow can deliver that workflow. The ServiceNow platform makes it easy for the enterprise to operate in three countries on two continents. Employees have a good consistent experience with ServiceNow that helps them deliver a better customer experience.

For this company, Crossfuze saved the day, turning their ServiceNow ship around, going from low perceived value to high value, positioning ServiceNow as an essential asset the company. The partnership has given the organisation the ability to tackle simple to complex workflow automation needs quickly and effectively making IT and all other departments excited about what the future holds.