One of the biggest issues facing retail and hospitality companies with multiple locations is how to track maintenance requests or to process staff queries efficiently.

Outdated software, the use of spreadsheets to record data, and a deluge of email correspondence –  which all has to be manually audited – can quickly lead to frustration and jobs being missed. On top of this, keeping up with health and safety and other compliance issues found within the retail and hospitality industries can also be a complicated process.

Legacy systems with outdated software can make reporting and recording staff requests or inventory management almost impossible and can lead to frustrations for employees and managers alike.

This can also mean managers spend more time dealing with unresolved staff issues than they do in customer facing roles, which can damage the long term viability of a business.

Out of date legacy systems can also mean broken equipment goes unreported as employees may have little or no record of whether faults have been identified and sent to the maintenance team for repair.

In one case study for ServiceNow, a large US restaurant chain was finding their manual auditing process – using emails and spreadsheets – were unwieldy and time consuming. The company was also worried about the impact on process owners.

According to the chain’s Director of Internal Audit: “From an auditing perspective, you don’t want to be intrusive. But you also want to be able to ask what’s going on in the organisation. When you’re busy shuffling papers, you can’t do that.”

The company chose to switch to ServiceNow and chose a solution which included Governance, Risk and Compliance, IT Service Management and a Self-Service Portal and saw immediate benefits.

Rather than the team sending out email requests and chasing down responses, ServiceNow automatically sends requests to process owners, who then upload results directly into ServiceNow. If a response doesn’t show up on time, ServiceNow takes care of reminders and escalations.

Process owners also benefit, since ServiceNow spreads audit activities evenly over time – breaking down work into small manageable packets, rather than large disruptive blocks.

A broader vision

One other benefit of using and adapting the ServiceNow technology, has been a gradual cultural shift within the restaurant chain’s outlets. Employees are able to see what they’re doing not as a series of discrete fires that have to be put out, but as a continuous process.

“We saw right away that ServiceNow gave us everything we needed – and it was flexible and simple to use. And, because ServiceNow’s GRC application runs on our existing ServiceNow platform, we could roll it out quickly and economically,” added the chain’s Director of Internal Audit.

Following the switch the company’s internal audit team now spends 70% less time managing audits,  requests are sent to process owners and the ITSM solution automatically handles reminders and escalations and the Self-Service portal provides easy access for support needs ranging from IT help through to cash operations and ordering custom beers and other inventory.

Employees at individual restaurants no longer need to navigate the company’s corporate structure – the self-service portal automatically routes requests to the right person, saving huge amounts of time. The company also has plans to use ServiceNow for HR case management, contract management and other applications.

The Director of Internal Audit is enthusiastic about the future of ServiceNow within the organisation: “ServiceNow makes it easy to execute on your vision. With as little as a few days of development and testing, you have what you need.”

As a ServiceNow trusted partner, Technosys’ ITSM solutions give your organisation  end-to-end visibility into processes and infrastructure through a single system of record.

This allows for consolidation and automated service management processes, increased efficiency, lowered costs—and allows managers and staff to devote more time to innovating and creating the consumer-like experience that users expect.