Case Study

We came up with our Active Directory single sign-on

development and rolled out ServiceNow to 70,000 users
at once. It was amazing how easily we could customize
and adjust the processes for incident, problem and
change management to our business needs.
This ServiceNow case study is based on an interview with Fernando Gordoa, manager of support
tools for global IT at Flextronics International.

Big Wins for IT through

Consolidation and Automation
Highlights

Global IT team transforms

service delivery with
orchestration, asset management
and content management
Organization

Flextronics International
Business

Electronics manufacturing services

Headquarters

Singapore
Geographies

Global
Modern ITSM Software

ServiceNow Incident
Management Application
ServiceNow Problem
Management Application
ServiceNow Asset
Management Application
ServiceNow Change
Management Application

Flextronics believes that impossible is where breakthrough begins. Delivering quality

IT service to 70,000 users in a dynamic technology company is a constant exercise in
increasing workflow and task automation, simplifying asset management and simplifying
the user experience.
Flextronics is a provider of electronics manufacturing services (EMS) with facilities in 30
countries on four continents that has spent three years evolving its IT operations with
ServiceNow. In addition to CRM, human resources and application development, the
company has prioritized moving IT to the cloud.
Fernando Gordoa, manager of support tools for global IT at Flextronics, describes
how the company is improving service delivery and driving faster execution through
consolidation, asset management and orchestration (runbook automation).
Too many IT service products in the mix
In the aftermath of a large acquisition, Flextronics found itself with two main IT systems
in place and many individual tools at over 200 sites worldwide. As a result, the functional
team was experiencing difficulty tracking service level agreements (SLAs) for all the
various tools and services and lacked a single point of contact for service requests.
Flextronics needed to standardize IT.
As the team evaluated the market, they were pleased with the usability, short
implementation time and ease of development for ServiceNow. Moreover, because the
Flextronics CIO had already moved human resources management software to the cloud,
the enterprise IT cloud from ServiceNow would blend nicely with the mix of business
functions being transformed.

Knowledge Management functionality

Six-month implementation and big wins

Flextronics IT embarked on a six-month implementation of ServiceNow that included
incident, problem, change, and knowledge management plus service catalog and request
fulfillment. After six months, they had a consolidated IT system of record for providing
support to the entire organization.

Content Management
System functionality

ServiceNows out-of-the-box functionality allowed a successful go-live to approximately

70,000 users all at once.

ServiceNow Orchestration
(Runbook) Application

We wanted to roll this out quickly and then continue improving and adding functionality
once it was in place, says Gordoa. It was a big win to get our users onto a single
system of record in less time than we spent struggling with the previous product.

ServiceNow Service Catalog &

Request Management Application

Implementation Timeline

Six months

www.servicenow.com

Big Wins for IT through Consolidation and Automation

Gordoa points to three even bigger

wins to come out of Flextronics
ServiceNow implementation:
Big Win #1: Increased automation
Although orchestration was not on
Gordoas original wish list, its potential
for automating dozens of IT service tasks
eventually became enticing. Gordoa
began conducting road shows to his
internal customers the infrastructure
teams, the server teams, and the
support sites demonstrating how
orchestration could help them manage
their processes with far less effort and
greater consistency and accuracy. As the
concept caught on, it became easier to
justify using ServiceNow for more than
managing incidents and requests.
Flextronics has used orchestration to
automate several types of tasks:
t Active Directory (AD) IT started
by automating the creation of user
accounts in AD, then progressed to
accounts for services, administrators,
external users, distribution lists,
conference rooms and shared
playbooks all in less than a year. Next
they plan to automate the processes
of changing passwords, unlocking
accounts and deleting accounts.
t Email Again, Gordoas team started
small, with simple with email account
creation for employee onboarding, and
then moved to account provision based
on server size. Now they use their
own discovery tool to automatically
load-balance accounts depending on
the storage capacity and number of
connections to the server.
t Virtualization From the easy task of
automatically cloning a virtual machine
(VM), IT advanced to using automation
for modifying configurations, granting
administrator rights to the VM and
adding it to a domain.

t Monitoring In a new initiative, IT

plans to automate the provisioning of
monitoring services from ServiceNow
itself. Currently, infrastructure owners
must submit a request for monitoring,
which a technician fulfills manually.
The goal is to save time and effort
and reduce the error rate to zero by
automating the process.
ServiceNow gave us some guidance
on the process, says Gordoa, and our
infrastructure team has helped us with
scripting, but the potential was in our
hands. The possibilities are endless.
Big Win #2: Streamlined
asset management
With tens of thousands of computers,
Flextronics was looking for a way to track its
software assets accurately. They integrated
the ServiceNow Asset Management
Application with their in-house discovery
tool and then customized the app for their
particular needs. They can now see and
report on the computer and user associated
with any software license at any location
a huge improvement in insight.
Next, Gordoas team has begun work on
hardware asset management. They have
defined a global process for all activities
requests, revocations, transfers, loans,
etc. of hardware worldwide. They are
integrating their discovery tool and building
their own catalog items to manage every
category of asset.
Big Win #3: Improved user interface
Flextronics IT has rounded out its
ServiceNow implementation with a
company branded front gate for end
users built using the platforms Content
Management System (CMS) functionality.
Once ServiceNow had become the single
system of record, Gordoa looked for a way
to offer all of its capabilities from a central
portal. Inspired by ideas from the annual
ServiceNow Knowledge conference, he

Case Study

Change is
a business
requirement for us.
ServiceNow lets us
anticipate business
needs and react
to them quickly.
ServiceNow enables
us to be fast and to
be good at providing
solutions to the
business.

Big Wins for IT through Consolidation and Automation

engaged a developer to use the CMS to

create the user interface. The resulting
front gate features an HR chart, an
IT chart, service catalogs for both end
users and IT, and a wizard to help users
determine whether they need to submit
an incident or a request. The portal is
also available in different languages to
encourage adoption.
Saving money and
realizing business value
ServiceNow has saved Flextronics time
and money by automatically creating an
average of 400 email accounts, 200 Active
Directory accounts and dozens of virtual
machines each month.
Looking at just the first year with
ServiceNow orchestration, Gordoa says,
we have recovered more than our original
investment. Its a combination of soft
and hard savings in areas like time, labor,
footsteps, re-work and compliance.
Whats more, ServiceNow has helped
to improve:

t Constant innovation Gordoa

considers ServiceNow his best partner
because every release contains new,
cool things that enable constant
innovation. He takes these back to the
business and uses them not only to drive
to faster execution in service delivery, but
also the ability to do new things.
t Consolidation Flextronics now
has a centralized place for managing
all requests from everyone, reaching
beyond IT to HR and Facilities.

Case Study

ServiceNow is
adding a lot of value
to our team and
to the organization
right now.

t Relationships Flextronics has had

many conversations with the product
development group at ServiceNow
and now participates in the pre-release
program. It tests upcoming functionality
rigorously, provides feedback and gets
the inside track on future versions of
the platform.
Gordoa summarizes, ServiceNow is
adding a lot of value to our team and to
the organization right now.

t Reaction time In Flextronics

changing market, the ability to
anticipate business needs and respond
quickly is a business requirement.
ServiceNow enables IT to provide
solutions to the business fast.

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