Latham & Watkins LLP: Driving Enterprise Service Management for Growth, Effectiveness, Globalization and a Changing Workforce

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1 How We Did IT Latham & Watkins LLP: Driving Enterprise Service Management for Growth, Effectiveness, Globalization and a Changing Workforce ServiceNow is really a platform to create the application you want. Bror Andringa, Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology, Support Services This ServiceNow case study is based on an interview with Bror Andringa, Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology, Support Services. About Latham & Watkins LLP Leading global law firm offers unrivaled legal resources and strategic commercial thinking to provide clients with innovative solutions to complex business and legal matters. Company Size 4,300 IT Headquarters Los Angeles, California Geographies Global Business Law Firm Latham & Watkins LLP is one of the global elite law firms, widely admired for being at the vanguard of the legal practice, client service and innovation. At the heart of the firm is its focus on collaboration and innovation; across jurisdictions, practices and industries, the firm draws upon its deep subject matter expertise, its abiding commitment to teamwork and its tradition of creative and commercial counsel. IT plays an instrumental role to serve the approximately 4,300 legal professionals and staff spread across the globe and it ensures the firm remains innovative in the efficient and effective delivery of legal services. At the same time, IT faces challenges from four different areas: business growth; the effectiveness and efficiency of its internal systems and practices to serve the business; globalization; and a changing workforce. Growth As the firm expands its business with more clients, cases, offices, services and professional and administrative personnel, the volume and complexity of its systems, processes and load also expands. Effectiveness As a distinguished enterprise, the firm is dedicated to providing the best service to its clients and making the firm environment a great place to work so it can attract and retain top professionals. ServiceNow 1

2 Globalization With expansion into new markets, the firm s business and personnel is increasingly decentralized and spread out, complicating the need for corporate controls and consistency of service with the ability to accommodate specific local needs. Changing Workforce As younger people enter the firm, expectations evolve towards a more consumerized model for IT, including self-service and self-help. Key to meeting challenges and business requirements is IT s adoption of Enterprise Service Management. Latham & Watkins LLP turned to the ServiceNow solution to: Streamline and standardize the processes in support of lawyers and staff across the globe Create services that can be accessed from a consumerized self-service portal Automate workflow process to drive services to completion, including approvals Gain visibility into workload, resources, effectiveness and assessment that allows for measures of accountability/the introduction of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) Capture and provide knowledge about work processes to enable self-help, cross functional process improvements and best practices When Latham started using ServiceNow to automate IT services, the firm quickly understood that many business processes could be streamlined, automated and made available through a self-service portal. Five Steps to Create an Automated Service on the ServiceNow Platform In addition to the standard applications that are provided, ServiceNow is really a platform to create the application you want, said Bror Andringa, Senior Manager, Enterprise Technology, Support Services. 1. Sit down with your counterparts and gather the information/ fields that they want to capture and report on. According to Andringa, Often as many as 80% of the fields already exist from other applications. This is also a good time to discuss IT best practices that translate over to other departments. 2. Develop the form(s) for demonstration and approval. Andringa suggests avoiding excessive information to fill in and confusing drop-down choices. Keep it simple, he says. 3. Create and define workflow steps what happens when and based on what? 4. Establish a process sequence from this workflow, linking steps together (e.g. assignment notices and approvals). 5. Pilot with a small and enthusiastic audience/group to work out the details before doing a full scale roll-out. A request is a request is a request, says Andringa. Creating services to automate the request process is easy to master. You track information that is important for the process, and when you have done one, you get better the second time and the third time. You become faster at it, and, more importantly, you incorporate all the enhancements that were developed in the previous ones. For us, it is a continuous cycle of improvement, revisiting the past request processes to incorporate the new enhancements so everyone can benefit from them. Sheila Stanton, Sr. Manager Policies and Procedures ServiceNow 2

3 When Latham started using ServiceNow to automate IT services, the firm quickly understood that many business processes could be streamlined, automated and made available through a self-service portal. Custom Application: Financial Information Center One of the first enterprise services Latham offered outside of IT was a system for entering and processing requests for the firm s Finance department. Using ServiceNow, IT created an application with a customized portal to manage all the bespoke financial report requests. The custom application: Routes the requests for approval Tracks their progress at any given point in time Manages the process to an established service level agreement for processing time Provides alerts for any delays Prioritizes fulfillment Surveys the requestor to determine overall quality of service To create the service, Latham used the ServiceNow platform to set up a form to capture information, designate a workflow with each step specified, automate the workflow, set alerts and triggers and develop and integrate a survey to access the process for each user. Finance Manager Sang Le notes that the monthly activity reporting has been enhanced with greater detail and the survey process built by Eitan has taken our legacy process down from weeks to an hour. Prior to the design, Elissa was performing the entire survey process manually. Custom Application: Attorney Support Service Latham set a goal to provide secretarial service to all first year attorneys, but to provide the support regardless of proximity. Recognizing that the model of having a secretary right outside the door of each attorney was extremely limited, the firm set out to create a new model. The Firm Associate Support Team (FAST) Program was launched in the fall of 2013 and has become integral to Latham s junior associate onboarding efforts. Global HR worked with IT to create a ServiceNow application that changed the way secretarial services were allocated. The Administrative Support Work Order application enables attorneys to put support requests directly into ServiceNow through s that are automatically converted into service requests. Matching a secretary with the appropriate skill level and current availability to the need fulfills the requests. The secretary may not be located on the same floor, building or even city. Providing a virtual pool of secretarial resources ensures that assignments can be completed quickly and by someone with the most suitable skills. As a result, there has been a marked increase in the amount of legal work that secretaries can support. In fact, Latham was able to increase the secretary to lawyer ratio by more than three times the firm s average through the FAST program. This has paved the way for a relatively small number of secretaries to support a large lawyer population. In addition, secretarial resources can be effectively managed with a higher level of utilization. The application works across the globe at any of the 32 offices worldwide so that late night requests from one region can be fulfilled by resources in another part of the world that is still in normal business hours. When the FAST program was piloted, only six percent of service tickets resulted in cross-office collaborations between associates and secretaries. But as secretaries became more comfortable with the technology, and associates more confident in the virtual team, both associates and secretaries began to embrace projects completed across offices. Now, nearly 25 percent of requests are handled by a secretary from a different office than the associate. Equally important, the entire process now offers visibility across the firm. Management can fully understand workload, capacity, workflow and skillset needs and availability. Through information gained, they can better plan staffing needs. Shelia Stanton, Senior Manager of Global HR, calls it revolutionary. ServiceNow 3

4 Products Incident Mangement Problem Management Change Management Configuration Management Service Catalog Project Portfolio Management Custom Application: Global Document Services The Document Support Work Order application is another application for managing the Global Document Services requests from lawyers and secretaries alike. With it, users can create work orders for document-related tasks, such as document assembly, scanning, proofreading, printing and more. The service ensures that requests from any floor or office can be fulfilled with available resources from NY and LA where GloDOCS resides. The service also captures the time it takes to make billing for the service more simple and accurate. Highlight Business processes and resource management across the enterprise are more efficient and effective, allowing for a new level of visibility and actionable insight Challenges Resources and processes increasingly difficult to manage due to the firm s growth Service inconsistencies across their global presence Inability to provide self-service and self-help in areas of support A self-service portal all employees can use for their IT needs and issues Results Streamlined and standardized global processes across the firm Consumerized self-service model Gained visibility and measurability into workload, resources, and effectiveness Empowered IT to become a greater partner to the business Custom Application: Facilities Another application Latham created on the ServiceNow platform was to track the requestfulfillment process for facilities. It is now a robust, automated process that manages the tasks in almost all of the offices including user requests, security and maintenance tasks (ad hoc and scheduled). For those areas where the ownership of services differ per office (e.g. printer consumables), ServiceNow is set up to either create work request for Facilities or Incidents for Technology automatically. A Sample of Other Custom Applications: Global Operations Services Center for tracking and content sharing incl. Reception services across the globe Global Billing Request for management of the fulfillment of these requests Rate Analysis Incident for tracking attorney rate-related requests Reference Requests for library/information resources request management Practice Support Project Project Management tool for the Practice Support group ServiceNow 4

5 This is not an IT tool anymore, but rather a platform for the entire enterprise. Bror Andringa The Art of Creating Services Once an organization introduces an automated service, the idea catches on quickly and stimulates ideas and demand for other services. According to Andringa, It sells itself. He also believes that creating the application on the ServiceNow platform is relatively easy. The more time consuming part is working with the various groups that fulfill the services. Helping them understand and develop a workflow for a service is most of the work, notes Andringa. But it s also the most Carolyn Ryan, Special Projects Coordinator interesting part of a project. The role of IT changes to become more of an advisor and expert on prescribing workflow and supporting business processes. It s what I really like about my role now, he says. After determining a workflow, Andringa recommends to cut it up into pieces that make logical sense. With each, it s important to know who does what for each step and examine possible outcomes. Interestingly, in thinking through a work process, the constituents sometimes discover inefficiencies and impediments that can be improved. Just thinking systematically about process, the participants may see a better way of getting things done. These changes can be incorporated into the automated workflow run on ServiceNow. Latham s ServiceNow developers have a lot of enthusiasm when designing and implementing features within the tool because of its nearly limitless capabilities. Eitan Thal, the firm s lead IT Service Management developer, states, If you can think it up, we can probably build it. Once the overall automated service has been developed, it s important for the entire team to collaborate on testing it. Besides providing a more comprehensive testing process, the users and managers gain familiarity early on with the new approach and become more comfortable with it. Tips for a Successful Rollout Process 1. Identify specific needs or challenges to be solved 2. Map out an overall project with a timeline and milestones 3. Propose the new streamlined and automated process 4. After buy-in, develop the new service automation application, linking the four Ps (Processes, Products, People and Partners) 5. Demo application and incorporate changes based on collaborative sessions with service owner and stake holders, 6. Fully document the new process and create training materials 7. Introduce the service as a pilot; keep the pilot group small and engaged 8. Ease adoption by keeping it simple; make sure there is strong motivation for use and inperson training and support 9. Be nimble and responsive throughout the entire process ServiceNow 5

6 Adding Visibility and Understanding Besides making business processes more efficient and effective, Enterprise Service Management brings a new level of transparency and actionable insight such as the following: Complete visibility of the status of each request At-a-moment understanding of workload and available resources Ability to see trends in needs and requests Provide instant feedback on each transaction, enabling assessment and coaching Establish, monitor and report on metrics Establish, monitor and enforce Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for response time, closure, etc. If you can think it up, we can probably build it in ServiceNow. Eitan Thal, Lead ITSM Developer Changing the Role of IT At Latham, the role of IT has changed from managing infrastructure and attending to incidents and problems to being a partner to the business, directly responsible for initiatives that change the way the firm works. By implementing enterprise service management applications and creating and running automated services, IT changes the way work gets done. Enterprise Service Management applies the process expertise of IT to business problems in a systematized fashion. I m most proud of the fact this this is not an IT tool anymore, but rather a platform for the entire enterprise, said Andringa. Every department is now reaping the benefits from these streamlined and automated processes, bespoke to their business and driving further the maturity of their operation and raising their service level and that of the firm as a whole ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow believes information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. This publication could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. The information is subject to change without notice. Changes are periodically added to the information herein; these changes will be incorporated in new editions of the publication. ServiceNow may make improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/ or the program(s) described in this publication at any time. Reproduction of this publication without prior written permission is forbidden. The information in this publication is provided as is. ServiceNow makes no representations or warranties of any kind, with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. ServiceNow and the ServiceNow logo are registered trademarks of ServiceNow. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. ServiceNow 6