dxc fruition...– it administration • it will most likely require training • it is a new tool...
TRANSCRIPT
A practical guide to service management for the entire enterpriseIncluding real-world examples
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DXC Fruition
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By automating business services, service management enables companies to create
a modern workplace by replacing emails and worksheets to make work more efficient.
The entire organization benefits from streamlined processes powered by a modern
platform and, as a result, works faster while delivering a higher level of service.
Enterprise service management can be applied to a wide variety of business units,
such as facilities, human resources (HR), customer service, security operations and
many more. Some, but not all, of its benefits are:
• Saves time and costs
• Improves productivity
• Allows employees to concentrate on more important tasks
• Provides better service and customer experience
• Improves collaboration even for tasks that involve various departments (e.g., the HR
onboarding process)
• Helps move to a digital enterprise (as part of the digital transformation)
• Allows better control through monitoring
Over the past few years, enterprise service management has become an important topic for all types of organizations. The idea behind it is that all units of the enterprise are service providers that aim to offer an excellent service to their “customers.” In other words: reach service excellence.
Enterprise service management and its benefits
Table of contents
Enterprise service
management and
its benefits 2
How to extend service
management to the
entire enterprise 3
Service management for
the entire enterprise —
a real- world example 11
Conclusion 17
About the author 18
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All units of an enterprise deliver and consume services, and if you ask some
managers, most will concede that the delivered services could be much more
transparent for their (internal) clients; measurable, so they can improve; have
better-planned resources; and, in some cases, be more efficient and convenient. In
the following sections, we explore how you can move away from clunky tools and
embrace a service management approach
Sell it internally. Ask the right questions.
Which services and processes could benefit from a service
management approach?
In their private time and thanks to technology, people got used to great user
experiences such as online shopping, ordering a cab or a pizza in two clicks, or
checking their account status on their bank app. In the professional world, the IT
department strove to improve with features such as the ability to request an item in a
self-service portal, getting notifications about a request’s progress, the ability to add
extra comments or reply by email with attachments being taken into account,
among others.
Therefore, if a specific department can achieve a good user experience, why not the
others? And what kind of services could benefit from it?
Here are some concrete examples:
• As a new employee, I’m being onboarded and, on top of IT-related items, I need an
access card, a desk, a phone and a parking space.
• As an HR agent, I need to know who has a parking space so I can deduct the
parking fee from that employee’s salary.
• As a business user, I need someone to get an item from the stockroom
(or bring it back).
– I need to book a room for a specific event and order such options as:
– Lunch, breakfast, drinks
– Special room setup
– IT devices, IT support
– Hosts, hostesses
– Security
– Booking parking spaces
– Coat rack(s)
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How to extend service management to the entire enterprise
• As a facilities dispatcher, I need to coordinate various people to organize an event,
a move, an installation or a planned maintenance with a supplier.
• For the reception and shipment of goods, I want to move away from paper
and emails.
• I need to ask HR a question regarding my fund pension.
• As a reception agent, I receive items that I have to deliver internally, and I want to
keep the evidence that it has been received.
How long does it take and how much does it cost to do things differently
each time?
When no process is defined, users raise their requests via random intake channels,
requests are decentralized and from the requester’s point of view, they fall into
some sort of black hole. On the one hand, each user adopts a specific way to raise
his or her request, and on the other hand, each agent of the back office manages
incoming demands in his or her own way. No common process exists to evaluate and
process the demands. Without a doubt, for every manual process, there is room for
improvement, especially for recurring and no-value-added actions such as email
confirmations, recurring user questions, automatic assignments, reports, etc.
The unfortunate truth is that email has become the universal go-to tool to manage
all sorts of processes. Leaving unstructured, message-based communications and
moving to structured workflow approaches will make everybody look at the same
data in a very structured and transparent way. This is what we call a Single System
of Record/Truth, and it will bring some time (and cost) savings once in place.
How do we measure our activity and performance?
Having no single source of data or having multiple data sources (spreadsheets, Excel,
emails, etc.) means that reporting is impossible or, if not, so time-consuming that
you’ll simply not do it. It will result in a complete inability to answer the
following questions:
• What is the volume of requests we get?
• What are the types of requests? How long does it take to complete the process?
• What is the user’s level of satisfaction? Where is the knowledge?
The point is:
• If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it
• If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it
• If you don’t measure it, you probably don’t care
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You can’t manage what is opaque. Therefore, you need to create a structure that
allows the whole process to become transparent and measurable. In addition, with
several sources of data, poor data consistency and quality, it is hazardous to make
decisions and difficult to get them right.
How do (internal) customers perceive our service?
Do you know how requesters see your business unit? And the way you provide your
services? In the IT context, one of the usual pitfalls is the lack of transparency: From
the end user perspective, the request is falling into a black box, and they have no way
to see whether any progress is being made. Carefully think about your service, define
its pitfalls, the process and the way you deliver it. Think about what would delight
your customers and make them have a positive experience.
Is it worth implementing it?
In some cases, you have to streamline your processes and record users’ actions for
legal reasons, so the question of cost will be secondary. But more often, there will be
some questions about the return on investment (ROI) you can expect from taking the
service management approach. To measure it, you can compare current and future
situations in terms of:
• Number of workdays to support the process
• Licenses and support costs
• Investment and operation costs
This being said, you should not forget to add the time saved by users, their gain in
productivity, the decrease of errors in handling the requests, and the measurability
gained from centralizing requests and data in your ROI analysis.
Pick a tool that will do the job and take the time to assess the entire situation.
Which technology solution should we use? That is the big question, and the options
are countless. Companies might want to use a new solution or the best Gartner’s
Magic Quadrant tool in the targeted area. In this case, it is probably the best they
can get ... on paper. But ask yourself this question: “How many of the features will be
really used?”
Obtaining a new tool or platform means:
• It needs to be integrated into the existing IT ecosystem (master data, user directory,
single sign-on, etc.)
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• There will be a new interface, features and behaviors for:
– End users
– The back office
– IT administration
• It will most likely require training
• It is a new tool to support
• It comes with a new provider and licensing model to manage
• It can impair your scalability
Rather than acquiring a new solution, you should first check whether one in your
ecosystem already fits the needs. If so, there are many advantages: The platform is
already integrated within the company, which means that behaviors, capacities and
interfaces are known, and the master data exists.
There’s currently a trend toward the standardization of the number of solutions within
organizations so as to decrease the complexity of the IT ecosystem, the number of
integrations, and the training required for people interacting with the solutions. In
short, a trend to rationalize IT.
The importance of “demand management”
Any organization should have “demand management” in place. This process is meant
to identify business needs, check and decide if it is worth it or not, find the funds,
define the goals and, at the end of the day, convert the demand into a project. At
some point, the demand is reviewed by the technology/architecture board. Up front,
the organization must have defined the standards in the company. This is where the
question “What tool to choose?” should be raised. If ServiceNow is in the ecosystem,
why doesn’t the company leverage its capacities? The good news is that ServiceNow
has proven it can support various processes (HR, customer service, facilities, finance,
etc.), and we can go far beyond.
Note
The following chapters of this book will be based on the assumption that
ServiceNow is part of your IT ecosystem and that it is the solution you’ll use to enable
Service Management for the Entire Enterprise. Of course, the important elements and
examples provided can apply to any other software that would present
similar capabilities.
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Establish the roadmap
When establishing the roadmap, make sure you involve the business process owners
and present what the platform covers and what it is capable of. Then, establish a list
of needs, and for each item identify:
• The business process owners
• The annual cost with details, such as:
– The licenses or software OPEX
– Support costs
– External and internal labor OPEX
• Wish date
• Priority
• ROI
• Dependencies
Once you’ve gathered all these elements, you can establish the roadmap, present it
to the people in charge of approving it, and agree with them on the next steps.
Do it with the right team
Even if it sounds obvious, having the right people on your team from the beginning
is key.
As this cannot be repeated enough, we will say it again: Never underestimate the
importance of having the right team for a project. This team should not only include
process owners but process users as well.
Beyond selecting the right people, it is equally important to define, explain and
attribute roles.
• End users. These are the people requesting the service. At least some of the end
users should be involved as early as possible. Their role is to give feedback on what
is built and to make sure that the solution is going to be understood by the rest of
the end users.
• Agents. These are the people delivering the service. It can be a facility field agent,
an HR employee, etc.
• Dispatchers. The dispatchers are facilitators. Their role is to coordinate internal (or
external) resources and make sure that the agreed-upon deadline is met. They will
be the interface between the user and the back office.
• Process owners. They ensure an accurate process definition. The trap would be to
implement the current process without taking the opportunity to (re)design it and
make it more efficient. “Automating bad processes only gets you to a poor outcome
more quickly.”
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• Sponsor. Not highly involved in the project but “knowledgeable” and, ideally,
having some leverage within the organization so he or she can clear roadblocks.
• Architect. Ensures the consistency of the application and that the application
maps to the business. They also ensure and leverage the standards in place.
Handle or avoid roadblocks
• (Again) Make sure you have the right people
• Make sure the processes are defined and take the opportunity to improve them
• Keep it as simple as you can
• Avoid over-customizations
• Consider quick wins based on the native features
• “Push” the business to get as much information as possible about their
requirements. What are their problems?
• Ensure that the business leaders properly define the types of reports they want
and the KPIs they will need
• Clarify the security aspects
• Always keep scalability in mind
• Implement apps per the state of the art
• Implement apps at the right place
Some other important points that require special attention when you build a non-IT
app are:
Discovery workshop
It is easy to forget that not all the people in the room are familiar with ServiceNow
or with its out-of-the-box features. The aim of this discovery session is to show what
ServiceNow is, what the native features are, the reporting capabilities, security
aspects, present the service portal, etc. This exercise aims at providing a certain
volume of information and aligning the level of knowledge of all participants.
Whiteboard
Confucius said: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” It is quite hard for the business
users to imagine what the app will look like and how it will behave. A good practice is
to use a whiteboard to depict forms, mandatory fields, the view for the back office,
the view for end users, workflows with stages, notifications, etc. This will greatly help
everyone feel as if they can “touch” and “influence” the app you’re developing.
Focus on priorities
Find out what really matters, what is important. Since you probably have to deliver a
solution that works on time and within budget, the scope has to be flexible but
well-defined. Behaviors and features can be bright ideas, but how useful will they be?
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“No matter how
well-planned a project
is, there can always be
roadblocks that make
everybody’s life more
difficult. The following
points — if taken into
consideration early
enough — will help you
avoid them.”
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Very often the business expresses additional and very valid needs. At this point,
according to the scope and complexity, a phased approach is recommended. Even
if it sounds pragmatic, the business users might not feel comfortable with it, usually
because they have heard too many stories about “next phases” that never happened
or they fear future budget constraints. This also needs to be considered and
balanced with the deadline to ensure the successful completion of the project.
License compliance
Ensure compliance with the license model to avoid any “bad” surprises. Make sure
that you fully understand what the license model includes, what it does not
and whether it matches the envisioned development. If you struggle with this, ask
your implementation partner or another expert for help.
Prototype and validation run
It is recommended that you present a prototype as soon as possible and not wait
for the application to be fully “polished.” It gives the future users a chance to raise
comments, provide input or ask questions. At this stage, telling the business users,
“This is your chance to give feedback” will ensure that you get their attention. This
will also strengthen their trust in the project since it will become a partnership model.
For projects in the IT service management (ITSM) area, one validation run is usually
enough, but in an area without any framework or good practices, we recommend
having at least two validation runs. In some projects driven by DXC Technology, we
may reach up to four validation runs.
Have a pro with you when you start the user acceptance testing (UAT)
UATs are undeniably a “stressing” phase for the business users. They must plan it and
put the necessary effort in it.
Performing tests in a “dotted” mode is definitely not the best way, since it takes some
time for the users to dive into the process, and to remember what has been discussed
and decided. Also, test users need to define and execute the full use cases.
Now, imagine that a user is coming to the room where the UAT takes place, he or
she sets up the material and, at the first login, a failure occurs. This would result in
a great level of frustration. Therefore, at DXC, we usually make sure that one of our
team members sits next to the users and removes any roadblocks or issues, answers
questions, and helps test-users flag defects properly.
The people who participate in the UATs should be those who attended the workshops.
If not, you will get a bunch of “how-to” or “why” questions, which will slow down the
UAT phase. Also, plan enough time for UAT.
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Plan (enough) training sessions.
Train yourself and the process users on the new tool. Don’t underestimate the time it
takes to train people, and make sure they get enough training. This should ideally be
planned before the UATs, so the test users have all the knowledge needed to test
the application.
At all times, remember this rule: The simpler the app, the less will end users’ training
will be needed.
Reporting
At DXC Technology, we handle this with a coaching approach. At the beginning, it’s
not easy for the business users to define the reports they want and need. So, during
the coaching meeting, we build some of the reports together and explain what can
be achieved with the tool. It’s a lot of information for the users to absorb, so we
encourage them to remember what they can do first, rather than how they can do it.
Then we meet again 1 month after the release of the application and go deeper into
reports. We create new reports based on the “what,” and go a bit further with “how”
they can create reports. At that stage, there is also real data that somehow belongs
to the process users and makes the whole thing more understandable.
Make users adopt the tool
For the back-office users, the first thing you should do to make them adopt the tool is
to involve them in the selection process. And then include them in the workshops
and decisions.
Don’t be surprised: You will always have people who keep the old habits. Talk directly
to the key people, use their phones or send an email. Don’t be too radical: There has
to be a transition phase. To smoothly operate the change, you can agree that at the
beginning an agent can raise requests on behalf of the users. In all cases, you have
to put in place a proper communication plan with the process owner and provide
guides and guidelines to all users, if needed.
Understand the differences between IT and non-IT users and projects
When going out of the traditional IT service management scope to embrace the
enterprise service management approach, you’ll start involving business users who
are probably not familiar with notions like kickoff, phases, UAT, milestones, scope,
time, costs, risks, etc.
It is therefore crucial that you take the time to explain these terms to them, what
they cover and how they apply to the project. If you do not do this, you run the risk
of having business users think that project management is an IT thing that does not
concern them. A way to avoid that is to have a project manager and a sponsor that
come from the business.
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“On the one hand, there
are the end users and, on
the other, there are the
process users. For the first
audience, keep things
simple with forms that are
as light as possible: Avoid
including every use case
in one form and focus on
the 80 percent, not the
exceptions. Ultimately,
each form should speak
for itself. According to the
complexity of the process,
in some cases, the best
scenario remains having a
coordinator between the
end users and the
back office.”
Also, at DXC we spend more time on the following elements (compared to what we
would do in the frame of an IT service management project):
• Discovery sessions
• Reviewing the scope of the project
• Workshops
• Validation runs
• UAT
• Training
• Hypercare
• Potential IT Integrations
• Coaching
Service management for the entire enterprise — a real-world exampleIn this section, we showcase some real-world examples implemented by one of our
customers — an international Swiss watchmaker that owns several worldwide-known
luxury brands — on the ServiceNow platform. The headquarters of our customer
include the offices of several of its brands and a research center. Today, more than
1,300 employees use ServiceNow (compared to 300 at the beginning of the
first project).
ServiceNow for facilities management
The first department that implemented ServiceNow was facilities. Before the project
started, the company used a basic application and emails to manage facilities. As
the headquarters began to grow and more and more people (over 900 users) needed
facilities services, the old solution was not sufficient anymore. ServiceNow is now
used whenever something needs to be replaced or fixed, but also for ordering office
supplies. Thanks to domain separation, every brand sees only its data.
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Self-service portal and email confirmation for facilities-related requests.
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When collecting their goods, recipients confirm the reception by an
hand-drawn signature on an iPad.
Custom application for reception of goods with hand-drawn signature
In the next step, ServiceNow was implemented for the reception of goods, since the
old application was not supported anymore. The different offices receive about 1,000
items per month, and goods arrive at the headquarters on a daily basis. Before the
ServiceNow implementation, the process was to send group emails to the recipients,
whereas now this is managed directly in the tool. When the company receives goods,
instead of sending an email, they now raise an incident in ServiceNow, and the
recipient automatically gets an email stating what he received, and where and at
what time they can pick it up. The collection of the package is confirmed with a
hand-drawn signature by the recipient.
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Boutique app with QR codes
In the next phase, our customer implemented ServiceNow for its internal store, where
employees can purchase the company’s products. With the tool, it is now possible to
handle the stock, the incoming goods, the selling process and the creation of invoices.
Together with the boutique app, a QR code application for managing the stock has
been implemented. The QR codes contain several details, such as article description,
brand, price, serial number and more that are helpful for inventory purposes. After
the QR codes are created with ServiceNow, printed and stuck on the items, they can
be scanned with an iPad or an iPhone and are directly registered in ServiceNow.
ServiceNow for the organization of onsite sales events
Every once in a while the company’s internal store organizes events for employees
where limited numbers of products are sold at a discounted price. Before the
implementation of ServiceNow, the organization of these events (including internal
communications, event registrations, rejection and acceptation of registrations,
cancellations and confirmations) was handled with Excel sheets and emails.
Following the implementation of ServiceNow, the events are now published in the
CMS, and employees can register for their preferred time slot. The capacity for each
time slot can also be defined. As soon as someone registers for a time slot and the
capacity is filled, that slot is no longer visible to other employees.
Once the registration period is over, all registered people get an email with their
confirmed date and time.
Visitors app
The security department of the company’s headquarters was searching for a solution
for the planning and overview of visitors and their check-in and check-out times. After
a review phase, it was decided to use ServiceNow for it. Visitors, groups or suppliers
are now announced via the CMS of ServiceNow.
On an iPad, the security department can visualize who is expected and when. Every
visitor arriving at the facility goes through the security checkpoint where security
staff does the first check-in. Then the visitor has a certain time period (customizable)
to park his or her car and get to the reception.
Each brand housed at the headquarters has its own reception area, and once the
visitor shows up, the reception agents confirm his or her presence with a second
check-in, also on an iPad. The same process applies when the visitor leaves, with a
first checkout by the reception agents and a second checkout by the security agents.
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If a visitor hasn’t reached the reception on time, agents are alerted.
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The visitors app includes the following functionalities:
• The security agent can quickly extract who is on-site in case of an evacuation.
• Each reception group sees only their visitors, they can only do the second check-in
if the first check-in has been previously done at the main security gate.
• Every evening, the list of visitors planned for the next day is sent out so the
back-office can prepare the access cards.
• A calendar is available for each reception.
• At the end of the day, visitors who did not arrive are flagged as absent.
• People not announced are tracked.
• If the second check-in does not occur within a certain time, the security office is
informed and staff will go out to find the person and take him/her to the
right place.
Sport lessons app
Every week, approximately 10 sports lessons take place at the company’s
headquarters. Those lessons are given by external sports teachers. Before applying a
service management approach, the process was:
• On a weekly basis, HR sent the timetables of the following week’s lessons by email
to all employees.
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• Interested people replied to this email, and an HR agent had to answer each of
them:
– If there was enough availability, the email confirmed the participation in the
sports lesson.
– If there was no more availability, the email informed the employee, and
that person was added to a waiting list.
– If someone canceled his/her registration, HR had to find out who the first
person on the waiting list was and send this person an email confirming his/her
participation.
Managing this process by email meant approximatley 300 emails — one day a week
of workload.
With the implementation of ServiceNow, sports lessons are now managed in the tool,
and the following improvements have been achieved:
• People can register either for themselves or someone else.
• People can see the current availability before they register. If there is no more
availability, they are automatically added to the waiting list. If there is still space,
they receive an automated confirmation email.The visitors app includes the
following functionalities:
• The security agent can quickly extract who is on-site in case of an evacuation.
• Each reception group sees only their visitors, they can only do the second check-in
if the first check-in has been previously done at the main security gate.
• Every evening, the list of visitors planned for the next day is sent out so the
back-office can prepare the access cards.
• A calendar is available for each reception.
• At the end of the day, visitors who did not arrive are flagged as absent.
• People not announced are tracked.
• If the second check-in does not occur within a certain time, the security office is
informed and staff will go out to find the person and take him/her to the
right place.
• If someone cancels, the next one on the waiting list receives an email confirmation.
The sports teachers receive an email with a summary of who is registered one day
prior the lesson. If, between lessons, people cancel and/or people are added from the
waiting list, the teacher receives an updated list automatically.
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Employees can view the upcoming sports lessons and register online.
The main improvement is a high degree of automation with far fewer manual actions
needed and therefore time (and cost) savings.
Mobility
Employees can rent a car space or get a contribution from the company to their
public transportation subscription.
• Parking spaces are managed in ServiceNow, their status and “owner” are known,
and HR relies on the tool to deduct the employee fee at the end of each month.
• Employees can request the organization’s contribution to their public
transportation subscription directly in the portal. The request is managed and
recorded in ServiceNow.
• If the employee requesting a public transportation subscription is renting a parking
space, the parking space is automatically canceled when the subscription starts.
The process is automated in ServiceNow.
With ServiceNow, several reports can be created, such as:
• List of parking spaces with their status: vacant, at capacity or partially occupied
• List of employees renting a parking space, in order to the deduct the monthly fees
from their salaries
• List of deltas: Who is starting to rent and who does not rent anymore
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Service management brings great advantages
The advantages are numerous: Not only do departments and employees become
more efficient and are able to focus on more demanding, value-added tasks, but
service management also allows the transformation of the enterprise and the
creation of a completely new workplace with a brand new user experience.
Ignoring service management can have severe consequences
Especially because technology today is progressing at a fast pace, it is important to
adapt to this changing environment and leverage the benefits it brings. If companies
keep sticking to old, hard-to-use tools, the probability is high that employees will
search for more user-friendly alternatives. As a consequence, IT will inevitably have to
face the Shadow IT phenomenon. It is also likely that employees will lose productivity
or become frustrated and demotivated by old and rigid processes and tools.
In conclusion, companies should not miss the great opportunities Enterprise Service
Management brings. It has the power to transform the entire company and to
modernize the workplace. There are a plethora of needs that can be addressed with
ServiceNow — as exemplified in this paper — and the only limit is your creativity. So
the question is not: “What can we do with ServiceNow?” but rather “What should we
do?” In any case, if you need a solid partner in your Enterprise Service Management
journey, get in touch. We are here to help.
In times where customers are more and more demanding, where employees
expect the same easy customer experiences at work as the ones they
experience in their private lives, and where technology is progressing and
advancing at a fast pace, companies must respond and offer the best user
experience possible to their employees.
Conclusion
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Learn more at www.dxc.technology/servicenow
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www.dxc.technology
About DXC Technology
DXC Technology (DXC: NYSE) is the world’s leading independent, end-to-end IT services company, serving nearly 6,000 private and public-sector clients from a diverse array of industries across 70 countries. The company’s technology independence, global talent and extensive partner network deliver transformative digital offerings and solutions that help clients harness the power of innovation to thrive on change. DXC Technology is recognized among the best corporate citizens globally. For more information, visit dxc.technology.
© 2018 DXC Technology Company. All rights reserved. FR-001. April 2018
About the author
Mustapha Boujida works as a senior solution consultant at DXC Fruition,
DXC Technology’s global ServiceNow practice in Nyon, Switzerland, and has a proven
track record in advisory, audit, configuration and implementation for various major
European companies.
With over 9 years of experience in IT service management, he is also ITIL Service
Operation and ITIL Foundation V3 certified. He has implemented several service
management projects in non-IT areas of the business: human resources, project
portfolio management, facilities management, governance risk and compliance,
and various custom apps.