Case Study: AstraZeneca's Global Digital Transformation with ServiceNow

In the rapidly evolving biopharmaceutical industry, digital change is not a choice but a necessity. Organisations are always searching for smarter means of making their work run more smoothly, improve services, and enable their international employees to enjoy a seamless, best-in-class experience. One such top organisation that understood this requirement was AstraZeneca. They embarked on a sweeping digital makeover, one that would update their IT service delivery and dramatically increase efficiency in their enormous worldwide operations.

To achieve this ambitious goal, AstraZeneca adopted the power of ServiceNow's superb cloud platform. Their charge was simple: consolidate all the services, automate key processes, and ultimately deliver better user experience across their worldwide employees.

AstraZeneca's Digital Refresh: A ServiceNow Success Story

AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical giant with more than 51,000 employees across the globe, knows that innovation in their business is not all about scientific progress. To continue bringing life-changing medicines to the world, world-class operational perfection in their extensive global footprint is needed. AstraZeneca knew that their IT service delivery model was struggling against overwhelming hurdles.

They were contending with a dirty knot of multiple third-party IT service providers, resulting in inconsistent support and a broken experience for their users. Most routine tasks in IT and other business operations had manual aspects to them, taking up valuable time and multiplying the chances of errors. To all of this, employees did not have much self-service capability, so even simple requests required direct IT intervention, clogging up resources. "It was ugly and painful," Johnson says. One of the largest underlying challenges was data silos, where critical information is dispersed across systems, so getting a full picture to make decisions is hard. AstraZeneca saw that they needed an integrated approach to truly advance their digital capabilities.

The Transformation with ServiceNow

To meet these urgent requirements, AstraZeneca implemented ServiceNow's cloud platform. Their strategic choice was to streamline and standardise their IT service delivery, in effect taking an aggregate of disjointed systems and replacing them with a unified end-to-end platform. It was not about IT; it was about building a more integrated and efficient operational foundation across the entire organisation.

One of their principal approaches was implementing an easy-to-use self-service portal. The new portal provided employees with the option to find answers to repetitive questions and resolve trivial issues without requiring direct IT help. Besides this, AstraZeneca focused a great deal on automating important workflows. By eliminating manual steps in various IT and business processes, they were looking to enhance efficiency and significantly decrease the requirement for human intervention.

Furthermore, AstraZeneca saw ServiceNow's potential. They moved beyond the standard IT service management use of the tool, linking it with other important areas such as finance and facilities management. Doing so facilitated an integrated shared services model more effectively, making requests more transparent and accountable, such as in the handling of finance-related requests.

Rolling Out the Digital Backbone

AstraZeneca's ServiceNow digitalisation was achieved at a remarkable speed and accuracy, integrating the primary functionality in just four months. It included an international deployment of the ServiceNow platform to their entire workforce, with 51,500 employees and IT partners worldwide.

In addition to the fundamental features, AstraZeneca also initiated the development of custom applications, most notably for finance request management. These custom applications added further transparency and accountability in financial operations. Throughout this ServiceNow deployment solution, the team leveraged ServiceNow's end-to-end analytics platform to stay on top of service performance in real time, identify emerging trends, and continuously uncover areas for improvement. This data-driven approach did not only ensure that the platform was rolled out but continuously refined to meet emerging business needs.

Tangible Outcomes and Enhanced Efficiency

The effect of ServiceNow throughout AstraZeneca's business was enormous and instant. After its implementation, the organisation experienced significant advantages:

• Increased Efficiency: Smooth processes throughout IT and end-to-end business functions resulted in quick problem repair times and a drastic decrease in operational expenses.

• Enhanced User Experience: The user-friendly self-service portal enabled employees to take charge, with greater control of their IT and service requirements, greatly decreasing their direct IT support dependency. It generated more independence and satisfaction.

• Data-Driven Insights: Through the integration of data from traditionally siloed systems, AstraZeneca obtained actionable and unified insights. Decision-making across different departments was made more intelligent as a result.

• Scalability for Growth: The flexible and unified ServiceNow platform remained responsive, with the ability to nimbly add new business functionality and services as AstraZeneca's requirements developed.

The Road Ahead: Continuous Innovation

With this incredible success in the initial deployment, AstraZeneca is not resting on its laurels. AstraZeneca is taking this change not as an end in itself but as a solid base on which to further drive digital innovation. Its vision for the future is to:

• Scaling AI Capabilities: AstraZeneca will enhance AI capabilities in the ServiceNow platform through custom AI solutions. This will enable more tasks to be automated and make user interactions smarter and more efficient.

• Scaling of Service Integration: Because the ServiceNow platform is so flexible, it is easy to scale it up to incorporate additional departments. AstraZeneca wants to scale the integration to build a full end-to-end enterprise service model for the company.

• Commitment to Continuous Improvement: Acknowledging that technology environments and business requirements continuously change, AstraZeneca will continuously evaluate and improve their processes. This commitment will keep the platform nimble, responsive, and continue to provide maximum value.

AstraZeneca's ServiceNow journey is an example of how a global biopharmaceutical behemoth can strategically harness technology to overcome sophisticated operations challenges, drive significant business employee experience, and create a solid digital foundation for growth.