Automate IT risk management with ServiceNow

The company offers a wide range of financial services and supports customers, for example, through financing or leasing concepts for equipment, large industrial plants or attractive infrastructure solutions — with a focus on projects that play a key technological or economic role.

Risk management stakeholders (customers, employees, etc.) are spread across a wide range of countries around the world. Since application, project and process risks are dealt with with this risk management process not only within the company but also with customers, the project took place in a very international setting.

The financial services provider became aware of exccon by participating in a webinar on the topic of “Risk Management with ServiceNow.” The online event was followed by further discussions on offers. exccon impresses compared to competitors with its realistic time planning and proof of reference projects.

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The financial service provider's risk management was not tool-supported, but organized purely manually and was therefore sometimes inefficient, time-consuming and error-prone. Monthly reporting via email was complex, as Excel lists had to be manually compared each time. The C-level had no direct access and the regulatory requirements could only be met with a great deal of effort.

The project goal was to transfer the manual Excel risk register to the existing ServiceNow instance and to standardize and automate the entire risk management process via workflows. Risk assessment, risk response and transfer to monitor state should be included in order to be able to monitor the status of all operational IT risks in real time using dashboards and reports. The IRM entities for IT applications were created using business applications, which were imported to the company's ServiceNow instance via an interface developed in the project. The task was also to connect a directory service to be able to classify users into groups and to be able to assign appropriate authorizations in the tool, as well as the setting up of a multi-level approval concept with automated notifications. There should be an opportunity for meaningful time management with reminders and reminders. In addition, the interfaces should be implemented in such a way that they meet the company's security requirements.

Based on Create Now, the project included the following phases: Initiation, Planning, Implementation, Deployment, and Go Live. Through precise planning and structuring as well as the application of an agile project management method (agile development using Scrum), we were able to successfully complete the project within the planned period of 9 months.

Part of the initiation phase was the joint kick-off, the definition of the target state, the preparation of the required use cases and the detailed project plan.

In the planning phase, the user stories were then created and refined and validated in workshops.

The implementation of the user stories was supported with agile methods and implemented in individual sprints. In this phase, unit tests were also carried out with various stakeholder groups, UATs were planned and training materials were created.

Completed user stories were gradually installed and tested in pre-production environments before deployment into the production environment. Findings from the UATs were concluded with defects and new feature requests and the go-live was completed in two steps with accompanying training.

After Go Live, individual findings were concluded within Post-Go Live Support, so that the completion of the project could be successfully carried out with feedback and review sessions and celebrated with a wonderful go-live cake from ServiceNow.

• Work significantly more efficiently through automation
• The effort required to administer the risk management process has fallen sharply, particularly when it comes to reporting
• Senior management now has access to reporting at any time
• quick and easy compliance with regulatory requirements