The Client

Our customer is a prominent multinational high street fashion retailer headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. With a substantial workforce of over 72,000 employees spanning 16 countries, and a global presence of more than 400 stores, their mission revolves around offering affordable choices for every customer, from stand-out styles to everyday essentials.

The Challenge

Before partnering with Inetum UK&I, the customer relied on a ticketing toolset to manage incidents and workflows. However, gaps in software functionality and processes resulted in reduced staff productivity and unnecessary overheads. The absence of basic capabilities such as reporting, automation and ease of search severely hindered efficiency as users simply could not get what they needed in time.

The customer aimed to transform their Service Management function by developing a new set of processes and migrating to ServiceNow, with two key objectives:

• aligning Service Management with the company’s overarching digital transformation strategy – with a core driving force of enhancing employee experience
• remove labour-intensive, manual procedures that consumed substantial time and human effort, which were spread across multiple platforms like Word and SharePoint

According to the company’s internal research, a notable 81% of their users expressed a need for a swift, efficient tool to tackle their concerns, while a significant 88% of users sought an instant chat functionality. Additionally, quite a few of them voiced concerns about an inundation of email notifications. These have prompted us to earnestly confront these issues, aiming to elevate user experience and shorten resolution times.

Additionally, quite a few of them voiced concerns about an inundation of email notifications.

The solution

Process Evaluation

• thorough examination of the customer’s existing ITSM operation, encompassing the platform, the processes and the users
• engaged in extensive interviews with key stakeholders, from tech and infrastructure teams to security personnel
• identified critical areas of concerns e.g. process inefficiencies, platform performance gaps and user experience

Roadmap Construction

• defined processes and capabilities that best fit the organisation’s workflows
• conducted a series of interactive design workshops to foster collaboration
• determined the scope, including: Incident and Problem Management, Incident Triage, Change Management, Service Reporting, Performance Analytics, Service Portal, Knowledge Management, Virtual Agent, Internationalisation, Integration Hub

Implementation

• unfolded over 6 releases for a phased transition
• comprised 42 hours of training
• listened and responded to every feedback for absolute clarity and satisfaction

The ServiceNow implementation showcased a true, one-team collaboration between our customer and the Inetum UK&I team.

The Benefits

ServiceNow has replaced unstructured work processes, leading to the efficient streamlining of operations and reduction of cost.

With over 12,000 incidents handled, the enhanced system has accelerated workflows, saving significant time. Notably, 98% of 8,000+ conversations have been resolved through Virtual Agent without human intervention, translating into substantial manual effort savings.

Customer feedback

“ Working with Inetum UK&I has been a remarkable experience. They consistently exceeded our expectations, even when resources were limited. Their priority management made my onboarding effortless, and their support ensured we met crucial deadlines. Their insightful roadmap session highlighted areas for ITAM and CMDB improvements while providing a clear path for our digital transformation. Their ability to challenge us and keep us on track has been instrumental in our ServiceNow journey. ” ITSM Product Owner of the Client

The transition has enriched user experience, reducing overwhelming email clutter via Teams integration. With 500+ knowledge articles and multilingual support, employees receive quick, readily accessible assistance to straightforward questions in their selected language.

Our enterprise-class platform established a robust foundation for merging the customer’s two IT service desks, and will further empower the organisation with enhanced visibility into ticket progress and flexibility for ever-growing business needs.

Over 8,000 virtual agent conversations have been recorded, with an impressive 98% of them concluded without being routed to a live agent, translating into substantial time and manual effort savings.

The Future

The ServiceNow implementation showcased a true, one-team collaboration between our customer and the Inetum UK&I team. Moving forward, plans include:

• a gradual integration of more 3rd party vendors to maximise the tool’s potential
• merging the brand’s local store service desk seamlessly with the corporate one
• increase scope of ServiceNow to include more non-IT business areas

Curious to witness how Inetum UK&I can emerge as your trusted ally in ServiceNow implementation and deliver value to your organisation just like how we did for this globally renowned fashion retailer? Reach out to us for a conversation and we can explore the possibilities together.

Click to see the Infographic

The post Inetum UK&I Empowered an International Fashion Retailer’s Digital Transformation, Deflecting 98% of Calls appeared first on ERP Today.

The Client

Inetum UK&I were engaged by a leading fashion retailer to help consolidate and enhance their internal IT processes. The brand operates globally, focusing on the high street rather than online services, employing nearly 100,000 people in total.

This major presence on the high street has continued to grow their business, with a particular focus on delivering a continued value and excellence to their customers.

The Challenge

Prior to working with ServiceNow and Inetum UK&I, the customer’s IT asset management processes were mainly manual, with heavy use of spreadsheets and multiple asset management tools. The responsibility for managing assets was often sitting between themselves and their suppliers, which lead to a lack of visibility and control of their data. The team were working with no automation either: this meant an increased risk of error, poor communication between departments and wasted time spent manually reporting. This needed to be addressed urgently, as the size of the company and the focus on the high street made it imperative to establish consolidated processes and a single source of truth.

Being a large high street focused brand meant that they were dealing with 390 locations, five data centres, more than 10,000 infrastructure-related hardware assets, and over 500 different types of software. These figures are indicative of the immense responsibility for Inetum UK&I on this project.

The customer needed a single tool capable of collecting and managing all types of hardware and software assets, and making the information available to technology functions so that it could support a multitude of often critical business decisions.

Inetum UK&I were engaged to transform the customer’s IT Asset Management (ITAM) and IT Operations Management (ITOM) capabilities.

In terms of ITAM, the customer’s main needs were to be able to: 

• Manage and maintain all current and future IT asset information, which included a single source CMDB (Configuration Management Database)
• Develop and design thorough, robust processes to support the ITAM Service
• Establish a team to run the service once fully implemented

For ITOM, the main needs were: 

• An automatically populated CMDB, with quality data providing real-time visibility into their infrastructure and services
• Reduce and prevent service outages by understanding business service relationships
• Maintain service health and optimise cloud spend

“ServiceNow was the stand out option as the best fit for our business needs during our RFP process. Although our immediate need was to deliver an IT Asset Management service with associated tooling and processes, we recognised ServiceNow as the platform that would best fit us strategically as we continued to mature and transform our service management services.”

Service Assurance Manager for the brand

The Solution

Inetum UK&I implemented ServiceNow’s IT Asset Management module for both Hardware Asset Management (HAM) and Software Asset Management (SAM), as well as the IT Operations Management suite of processes which focused on infrastructure discovery and business service mapping. In close collaboration with the customer, we delivered a CMDB with configuration management and hardware asset management processes as a single phase of work, as these are often highly dependent on each other. This allowed for data cleansing to be done only once for both processes and ensure quicker time to value for the customer as a result. Inetum UK&I then leveraged these processes to deliver a scalable and robust Software Asset Management process, and used the quality data in the CMDB to provide real-time visibility of the true state of play regarding licence compliance across their software estate.

Inetum UK&I designed, configured, and deployed various Discovery probes and patterns on several configuration item classes, which included Windows devices, servers, network switches and firewalls, along with AV devices and telephony assets. These capabilities continue to update the Configuration Items (CIs) in the customer’s CMDB in a timely fashion, ensuring real-time up-to-date information about their infrastructure and the relationships between its different elements.

We also worked closely with the retailer’s third-party partners to validate the captured information and, where required, made configuration changes as per specified requirements. The Inetum UK&I team configured multiple Discovery patterns to accommodate any additional requirements around bespoke infrastructure or innovative configurations on systems.

To further help deliver quicker time to value, Inetum UK&I carried out integrations with the following systems to populate hardware and software information:

• Microsoft SCCM
• Workspace ONE
• OneStop
• Aruba
• EPOS supplier asset register

The Benefits

The customer has seen huge performance and efficiency improvements since implementing ServiceNow ITAM and ITOM. These include:

• No more reliance on manual Excel reporting thanks to the on-demand reporting capabilities of ServiceNow
• Single point of entry for inventory, removing the risk of duplicating assets and workloads
• Complete visibility of the CMDB, allowing them to manage their EUC and infrastructure estate more effectively
• New transparency on how their IT is being utilised to ensure maximum ROI
• Reduction of re-work now that all information is captured in one place
• Full visibility of software licence consumption, expenditure, and effective licence positions for key vendors
• Comprehensive dashboards showing critical information and statistics at a glance, allowing quick resolution of issues, forward planning and the ability to monitor trends over time
• Inetum UK&I have recently upgraded the customer to the Rome release; already, they can take advantage of additional product capabilities without the need for any additional configuration

One of the main advantages of running infrastructure discovery with ServiceNow Discovery is that it’s native to the platform, meaning no further integrations are needed before benefits can be realised. This has given the retailer a total view of their operations footprint across on-premises data centres, delivery depots, offices, and cloud providers.

Another area that has seen significant improvement is the customer’s application services. The service maps that Inetum UK&I have created through ServiceNow Service Mapping provide views of these components that are easy to understand, and make sure all stakeholders (whether business or technical) are always on the same page. In turn, this has allowed the customer to make informed decisions quickly, diagnosing problems and prioritising them based on business impact.

“Inetum UK&I’s flexibility was key to this relationship, understanding our requirement for a service and not just an application, offering advice on best practise and helping us adapt this to our specific needs. Although deliverables were clearly outlined, Inetum UK&I were accommodating throughout, appreciating the learning and growing journey we were on. As we continue to transform our ways of working, we look forward to continuing our working relationship with Inetum UK&I.”

Service Assurance Manager

The Future

The retailer is planning the migration of their IT Service Management (ITSM) processes to ServiceNow to further leverage the benefits of their new CMDB and Asset Repository. This provides a rare but fantastic opportunity for the customer as traditionally organisations will migrate ITSM before addressing CMDB and Asset Management as a second phase. Inetum UK&I are also providing a platform management service that helps train and develop internal capabilities for the customer, to ensure they can be self-sufficient in the future if required.

For more information and a free consultation on how Inetum UK&I could potentially help your business, please contact one of the team.

The post Leading fashion retailer gains full transparency into their operational footprint appeared first on ERP Today.

The implementation includes Oracle Retail Merchandising Cloud Services, supported by AI-driven Oracle Retail AI Foundation, to optimize inventory planning, allocation, and forecasting.

Joris Aperghis, CEO of WE Fashion, emphasized the significance of this partnership, stating, “As a longtime partner, Oracle was a natural choice for transitioning to the cloud. Their solutions ensure enhanced business continuity, cybersecurity, and innovation, equipping us to adapt to market demands and better serve our customers.”

Oracle’s technology will help WE Fashion automate key processes, such as pricing and stock management, while making data-driven decisions to meet customer needs. Additionally, Oracle’s Retail Supplier Evaluation will enable WE Fashion to track sustainability metrics, including greenhouse gas emissions, to support its ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) commitments.

Oracle Fusion Cloud Warehouse Management will further enhance efficiency in WE Fashion’s distribution centers, ensuring demand-driven fulfillment and improved inventory visibility. Oracle’s Consulting teams will assist in the deployment of these solutions.

Alex Alt, Oracle Consumer Industries’ EVP, highlighted the benefits, stating, “These technologies, powered by AI, will help WE Fashion make informed decisions and respond swiftly to evolving consumer trends.”

Established in 1962, WE Fashion serves customers in over 25 countries through 133 stores, online platforms, and various distribution channels. This transformation underscores the retailer’s commitment to innovation and sustainability, ensuring it remains agile and customer-focused in a competitive retail landscape.

What this means for ERP Insiders

AI-driven optimization improves efficiency and agility in retail. The use of AI enables organizations, especially in retail, to not only personalize customer engagement, but also improve decision-making. For example, retailers can leverage AI to predict inventory demand and avoid overstocking or stockouts. While Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can manage tasks like data entry, invoice processing, and scheduling, AI in logistics dynamically optimizes delivery routes, helping companies reduce fuel consumption and delivery times. Customer engagement can also be enhanced by utilizing AI on e-commerce platforms to personalize product recommendations, boost sales, and ensure customer loyalty.

Unified platforms enhance the omnichannel retailing experience. Studies show that 73% of consumers use multiple channels that include online and offline touchpoints during their shopping. Additionally, 76% of consumers prefer to use their mobile devices to shop, making it imperative for retailers to be able to offer a seamless shopping experience across platforms. Solutions like the ones provided by Oracle allow retailers to unify online, in-store, and mobile shopping experiences, providing consistent services such as click-and-collect, flexible returns, and inventory visibility.

The need for real-time inventory visibility and security is growing. Research shows that 94% of retailers believe that effective omnichannel operations can be achieved through real-time visibility of inventory across all channels as consumer demand for convenience grows. For example, Oracle Cloud SCM (Supply Chain Management) ensures real-time inventory tracking across multiple locations, enabling better fulfillment and delivery options. As more retailers cater to a global consumer online, the need to stay compliant with global data protection laws and standards such as GDPR and PCI DSS is also increasing. Technologies like Oracle Cloud provide robust data security features that ensure safe transactions and customer data protection.

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