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November 20, 2024

Harnessing ServiceNow and AI for Business Transformation

By Stephen Howe, Chief Technology and Information Officer and John Watson, President, Bell Business Markets, Data Engineering & AI, and FX Innovation

With a rich history spanning over 140 years, Bell’s vast IT landscape - encompassing hundreds of applications and legacy systems - presented opportunities for optimization and streamlining.

ServiceNow provided a comprehensive solution for Bell to help achieve its goals. Its ITSM module offered valuable insights into Bell's applications, including ownership, security posture, patching levels, and physical and virtual locations. This newfound visibility enabled us to better understand our application footprint, drive an application decommissioning program and implement an effective change management process, all of which led to significant cost savings.

In addition, the benefits of ServiceNow were evident across various teams. For instance, Bell's HR team implemented ServiceNow's HR module to streamline the onboarding process for its employees. This shift from manual Excel tracking to a digital platform resulted in a 25% reduction in operating costs and improved employee experience.

Recognizing the potential of machine learning and AI, we established our Data Engineering & AI team in 2017, dedicated to developing bespoke solutions to enhance customer experience. This initiative resulted in over 40 AI deployments and modules, and we are proud of our work. However, scaling AI within legacy systems presented a major hurdle. The combination of our AI experience and ServiceNow has further accelerated our business transformation.

Over the last year Bell has become a major customer and systems integrator of ServiceNow, extending beyond internal operations. We’ve grown our investment and are deploying one of the largest implementations in the country. We were so impressed with the platform and its capabilities, that we acquired two of the best independent ServiceNow systems integrators – FX Innovation and HGC Technologies – creating the largest team in Canada with deep platform expertise. This has given us leading capabilities to help our customers transform their businesses and fully deliver the power of the platform.