The Current Atmosphere  

This client is a well-established cloud managed services provider with a broad network of teams that support Private, Hosted, and MNO environments. Following multiple mergers and acquisitions, it was moving from serving smaller customers to larger enterprise accounts, with environments and support needs that crossed multiple operations. To meet those needs, the client had to standardize and govern its own service delivery in a way that still preserved operational knowledge. 

A Clouded Operating Model  

The work was already complex, and years of growth had given that complexity too many places to live.  

Major Organizational Change. M&A activity had expanded the client’s business, making it necessary to establish a consistent operating model. Platform deployment would require coordinated change management across the organization.  

Different Teams, Different Ways of Working. Decentralized growth left teams with different processes, tools, and service practices. That variety was creating friction for employees as they tried to manage work across service boundaries.  

Fragmented Tools and Knowledge. Service management and knowledge were also widely distributed across tools, including Atlassian and Salesforce Service Cloud. Manual processes and the lack of standardization were creating operational inefficiencies that affected both employee productivity and client satisfaction. To support the new enterprise accounts, the operating model would need a consistent, accountable way to handle cases too.  

 The project was quickly becoming bigger than a standard ServiceNow implementation. The client needed to coordinate process, governance, knowledge management, and adoption in a single model that could grow alongside its business.  

One Service Horizon  

This engagement aligned with a core area of AHEAD’s expertise.  

• Intelligent Operations: Standardizing service delivery, improving visibility, and establishing scalable governance across cloud operations.  

The work unfolded across three phases:  

Advise  

Through a series of discovery and planning sessions, AHEAD and the client defined four strategic objectives for the new operating model:  

• Create One Service Organization: Break down silos between teams and establish a governed source of truth for people, processes, and technology.  
• Establish a Risk-Forward Approach: Use operational data to inform service management decisions and proactively address potential issues. 
• Implement Embedded Security: Integrate compliance controls directly into service processes.  
• Close the Client Journey Loop: Offer a seamless end-to-end experience from initial engagement to ongoing service delivery, with transparent support throughout. 

Why the Groundwork Mattered: Adoption and training were vital to the success of this transition. These objectives gave the program and its teams a shared direction. By identifying model gaps upfront, teams could agree on process and data ownership and align around a common way to deliver service. 

Build  

Once the strategy was in place, AHEAD and the client brought support teams from across Private, Hosted, and MNO Cloud Customer Operations into the new ServiceNow environment. Training and adoption assessments supported the transition, while operational knowledge was consolidated into a ServiceNow knowledge base. More than 20 Event Management sources were connected to ServiceNow.  

How It Came to Life: The shared knowledge base and operating model gave teams a working customer operations environment they could use. The environment was further supported by a common case handling process that paid special attention to risk, embedded security, and customer handoffs. 

Run  

With case handling and knowledge management live in ServiceNow, AHEAD and the client moved customer operations work into the new process and platform.  

How It Kept Delivering: Teams had a practical starting point for managing customer cases and sharing knowledge. They could also begin rationalizing tools and reviewing overlapping capabilities in Atlassian and Salesforce Service Cloud as part of the broader move toward one service organization. 

Clear Skies Ahead  

The shared platform gave customer operations teams a consistent way to work.  

Success by the Numbers. During the first four days after go-live, the new environment was able to surface work that had previously lacked visibility, leading to a 300% increase in captured task volume. It handled 3,598 tasks on its busiest day, and teams had resolved 74% of incidents by day four. All Customer Technology Services employees completed the required training within one week. 

Visible Operations. The shared environment has improved visibility into operational work. The client attributes the launch volume to easier case capture and backlog work entering the new system. And leadership now has a stronger basis for reviewing service performance and planning future standardization.  

Room to Scale. Subsequent work will extend the new model to Public Cloud operations and continue the client’s transition to governed service delivery. 

What’s Next  

The shared ServiceNow environment and consolidated knowledge mean the client can continue to expand its Intelligent Operations program. AHEAD makes complex environments easier to run and easier to change by connecting platform implementation to the operating model around it. Teams have a way to work consistently; leadership has the visibility to make informed decisions; and the organization has a way to keep improving service delivery as business evolves.  

“The system was stable from the beginning. Couldn’t have asked for more out of our teams.”  

— Client program manager