Posten Norge service integration and management

The Company 

Posten Norge is the postal service of Norway, founded in 1647. The company has changed with the times, amongst others with an added focus on parcel delivery as well as innovation. Parcels now make up over 75% of Posten’s revenue. The company has almost 13.000 employees throughout the Nordics.

The Challenge

Bringing multiple vendors together

Posten Norge has several vendors who handle different aspects of the company’s IT services on a contract basis. Its IT-management team set out to bring together all of its IT service management under an improved service integration and management (SIAM) model. The challenge for Infosys, Posten Norge’s new SIAM provider, was substantial – to bring multiple vendors together.

Why GuideVision

Deep understanding of ServiceNow

GuideVision was selected for this project for several reasons, including its deep understanding of both ServiceNow and business processes in Nordic companies as it had several customers from that region in its history. It also helped that GuideVision is a member of the Infosys family of companies.

The Solution

Taking advantage of ServiceNow “out-of-the-box” features

The Infosys ServiceNow suite of offerings, part of Infosys Cobalt, is at the center of Posten Norge’s new solution. GuideVision recommended that Posten Norge take advantage of as many “out-of-the-box” ServiceNow features as possible, to avoid investment in extensive customization and capitalize on the tool’s capabilities from day one. To address Posten’s IT service desk workload issues, GuideVision made use of several out-of-the-box ServiceNow features, including its new ‘chat to agents’ functionality, which deflected many telephone calls.

The self-service portal enabled users to check on the status of their requests; another solution to cut back on calls and emails to the service desk. The new portal also enabled the IT department to make company-wide announcements. To ease end users’ transition to the ServiceNow platform, ‘guided tours’ were created so that people could get familiar with the new features on a self-help basis.

The ServiceNow Mobile Application not only empowered end users to report issues and make requests from their phones but also enabled on-the-go approvals.

SIAM best practices and adoption of the ServiceNow Common Service Data Model (CSDM)

In order to coordinate smoothly with other vendors, Infosys provided extensive process consultancy that resulted in cross-vendor processes accepted by all vendors. Those processes were based on SIAM best practices, including the adoption of the ServiceNow Common Service Data Model (CSDM). It required a deep understanding of how the legacy system worked so that the new solution could be truly an improvement. The solution uses Microsoft Azure for foundation data and relies on Infosys’ own SIAM Integration Framework (SIF) for ITSM process integrations and configuration management data integrations.

“Despite the complex multi-vendor landscape the new system is as close to out of the box as I have ever built” says Antal Pettermann, ServiceNow Technical Architect (CTA) at GuideVision. “The customer was focused more on the business outcomes, did not intend to replicate legacy solutions in ServiceNow, and trusted us deeply with the technical design. It allowed us to adhere to best practice solutions and to avoid unnecessary customization by plenty. The system is future-proof, ready for the coming upgrades and to be extended with new applications whenever the customer goes for it.”

The Benefits

User-Friendly Service Portal and Agile Coordination: Key Factors in the Success of Posten Norge Project.

A user-friendly Service Portal was key to the success of the project. By all metrics, the project has shown clear benefits: Workload to the Service Desk has decreased by 20%, agent chats increased by 400%, the number of outbound calls necessity was cut by 30%, and the number of emails to the Service Desk was reduced by 42%.

With the new system, every ticket (incident, problem, change, request) is logged against a service that provides the following benefits:

• Increased efficiency by real-time tracking of service requests and incidents to quickly identify and resolve issues
• Improved communication between Posten Norge and it’s service providers with a centralized platform offering end-to-end transparency
• Better decision making by providing data and insights into service and vendor performance
• Cost savings by helping to automate manual processes and initiate improvement activities

Joined forces and a happy client

According to GuideVision co-founder Norbert Nagy, the agile coordination between multiple vendors and Posten was a key success factor. “I’m proud of GuideVision’s work together with Infosys to make this project a success for Posten. Great things happen when we join forces.”

“We are very happy with the outcome,” says Ann Kristin Bråthen, system owner for the service desk and service catalog at Posten. “We have had very good people from GuideVision involved in the transition as well as after the implementation.”

“GuideVision and Infosys have been solution oriented,” Bråthen adds. “Pragmatic as well, in a positive sense. We need to have people telling us: ‘Let’s not overcomplicate things.’ That’s been really good. We feel that we’ve been prioritized and that we’ve been an important customer.”

Key Highlights

The Client: Posten Norge is the postal service of Norway, founded in 1647. The company has almost 13.000 employees throughout the Nordics.

Headquarters: Oslo, Norway

Industry: Postal & Courier Services

Geographies: Norway

Employees: Almost 13.000 employees

ServiceNow Partner: Infosys & GuideVision - an Infosys Company