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Intelsat

End client: Intelsat is one of the largest satellite telecom service providers. For more info on Intel sat

Challenges: Inventory management was being managed in an older platform with unorganized CMDB.

A Case Study

Solutions:

Implement SNOW CMDB best practices and organization-wide CMDB governance model.

  • Implemented a combination of SNOW Discovery tool and Integrated with Legacy IBM Netcool
    system for automated inventory discovery management.
  • Created CI management lifecycle
  • Implemented ITSM and ITOM models. Service Transition and Change Management Models

Tools:
ServiceNow, KAFKA, Discovery, IBM Netcool, SFDC, SQL Server, REST API, JSON

Customer:

Intelsat S.A. is a Multinational Satellite Services Provider:

Intelsat S.A. is a multinational satellite services provider with corporate headquarters in Luxembourg and administrative headquarters in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States.

Intelsat was originally formed as the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT). From 1964 to 2001 it was an intergovernmental conglomerate that owned and managed a group of communication satellites that provided international broadcast services.

International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, or Intelsat, is created to own and manage a constellation of communications satellites providing international broadcast services.

Challenges:

  • As an organization widely recognized for its innovation, Intelsat knew they wanted to replace their outdated systems with a cloud-based solution that would allow them to be proactive and work more efficiently. There was a lack of consistency with their Remedy ticketing system—not all of their IT teams tracked work within their system and all tickets were tracked as incidents, making it difficult to understand the cost of work or services provided.
  • Prior to the implementation of ServiceNow, Intelsat’s Inventory management was being managed in an older platform with unorganized CMDB, which was developed and maintained internally for many years. This solution was somewhat dated—all data was entered manually and the only integrations were for telecommunications (paging and emailing) purposes.
  • Intelsat began developing breakthrough solutions that advance and secure boundless applications. with over 1700 IT employees taking the ITIL Version 3 Foundations Course and Certification in preparation. They wanted to modernize and transform the way they were doing inventory management, and needed a comprehensive ITSM tool to enable productivity and process improvements in order to do so.

Challenges- Timelines:

THE INTELSAT’S LEADERSHIP AND INTERNAL IT TEAMS DEVELOPED AN AGGRESSIVE
PROPOSED TIMELINE:

Q1: Implement a base set of ITIL functions, including:

  • Event
  • Incident
  • Problem
  • Request
  • Change
  • Discovery/CMDB

Q2: Implement Events and Incidents and Associated CMDB to begin the process of recording metrics.
Q3: Complete installation of all modules and retire the previously used Remedy toolset.
Q4: Ensure that the Intelsat team could allow for continuous service improvements and metrics.

Challenges:

  • Intelsat wanted to stick to their accelerated timeline without having to settle for a customized version of ServiceNow, which proved to be a challenge. A typical CMDB project can take 12 to 18 months before a team can be fully self-sufficient, with larger enterprise organizations utilizing multi-year projects to get into a steady state.
  • In their initial attempt at the CMDB implementation, the Intelsat team ended with a limited CMDB after just four months of training and process planning. Combined with their lack of previous ServiceNow experience, the team was faced with many roadblocks.

Intelsat enlisted Hummingbirds for their second round of implementation, identifying three primary areas of difficulty:

Challenges:

  • When Intelsat first started their ServiceNow journey, they were unsure what their requirements were. The initial implementation was slated to start with 20 IT requests so that no workflows were lost in the transition from Remedy, but these workflows were not very well developed at the time, and requesters had a tough time understanding what information was needed on the forms. With no formal governance process or service catalog in place, the team needed assistance gathering those requirements for development to ensure they were understanding the needs and asks from form owners and requesters.
  • ​Implementing ServiceNow with the mindset of defining structure and processes while simultaneously developing and implementing a new platform proved to be a challenge. There was a large learning curve for teams to adapt their processes to work within the tool, rather than changing the functionalities of ServiceNow to fit within their previously-determined processes. Additionally, without determining ownership over the different processes in the early stages of the ServiceNow implementation, there were difficulties with decision making and structure in regards to managing workflows. Nothing was normalized or standardized within their previous platform. They had attempted to create workstreams in ServiceNow for each of their processes and review decisions needed, but it was difficult to build out and implement workflows from scratch.
    •
  • Intelsat was transitioning from a fully-customized tool that was developed and maintained internally to a new,
    more powerful platform with countless capabilities.
  • ServiceNow required more time and hands-on experience to understand, and employees had to unlearn
  • former best practices in order to understand how to properly develop and customize the new system.

Solutions:

  • Working alongside Hummingbirds Innovations the Intelsat team was able to work through numerous reimplementation of all of their ITSM modules. Each module was broken down individually to understand the areas of improvement, allowing for in-depth reimplementation processes.
  • Additionally, Hummingbirds Innovations spearheaded the training of their current staff and remained on staff with the ITSM team for two years. From improved and more accurate data reporting to refined service portals and intake incident processes for the service desk, Hummingbirds Innovations was able to implement, adjust, and reimplement solutions to help Intelsat address their specific needs.
  • Utilizing and building off of the out-of-box ServiceNow solution opened up an array of opportunities for the Intelsat team. In total, seven active modules were implemented into Intelsat’s platform, including three different knowledge bases and a mobile app launch.
  • Throughout the implementation process, Hummingbirds Innovations was able to guide Intelsat step-by-step as they worked together to reimplement their modules to the out-of-the-box tables and toolset, providing a beneficial learning experience and allowing the team to understand how to configure modules as needed.

Results:

  • As of August 2018, all custom tables have been 100% removed from the Intelsat platform, with the team now fully utilizing out-of-the-box tables. CMDB has successfully implemented through the incorporation of ServiceNow Discovery and Microsoft’s System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM) plugin, resulting in more than 7 million new records in Intelsat’s CMDB.
  • All of the platform improvements have led to increased user adoption as Hummingbirds Innovations worked to expand the ServiceNow solution set to other organizational business units. Employees now have the ability to automate workflows, utilize approvals, and build dashboards to view and understand data.
  • Integrating Qualys with ServiceNow dramatically improved the company’s productivity. The client’s staff no longer had to manually search Qualys and generate ITIL tickets for Vulnerability Response, a process that took an average of thirty minutes per ticket. Now, vulnerability tickets are automatically created and closed by the Qualys integration, completely alleviating IT staff of the ticket assignment
    process. As the company’s staff created an average of 25-30 tickets per month, Hummingbirds Innovations solution saved the company up to 15 hours of manual work per month.
  • The client deemed this a highly successful partnership and engaged Hummingbirds Innovations for additional services to implement ServiceNow Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) in their instance.

Results:

  • Their newly developed Knowledge Management module provided the solutions needed to maintain a single source of information across multiple departments. Three knowledge bases were developed for Intelsat; an IT knowledge base; a portal knowledge base; and a portal emergency alert knowledge base allowing approved users to quickly send emergency alerts to the team via the service portal. There are currently over 1,900 published articles across all three of the team’s knowledge bases.
  • The volume of intake that Intelsat processes on a monthly basis have also keep increased exponentially with the incorporation of ServiceNow. Within the Incident Management module, there were nearly 24,000 incidents created, with more than 200 request forms being utilized throughout this process. More catalog requests and enhancements have also led to an increase in demand for ServiceNow development and information on new modules from numerous non-IT areas within the company, with over 15,000 requested items submitted over the course of one
    month.
  • As a result, Hummingbirds Innovations current role is to continue optimizing the recently -implemented solution
    set, with a focus on increased efficiency and cost savings. An HR Service Delivery suite is planned for development,
  • allowing Intelsat to optimize and automate HR processes and keeping access to all services in a single, easy -to-
  • access platform. A Virtual Agent module is also in the works, further simplifying the process of obtaining information
  • through automated systems.
  • Hummingbirds Innovations developers are no longer on staff full time, but Intelsat continues to foster along-term
    partnership for projects and development. When overwhelming timelines are introduced that cannot fit within
    Intelsat’s bandwidth, Hummingbirds Innovations is able to step in and assist.