Digital Transformation
Automation is Everywhere!
As you navigate everyday life, have you taken a moment to stop and think of how many things are automated. Almost every stoplight you pull up to has a sensor that ensures that the system controlling the traffic light knows you are there and then plans to change the sequence of red and green lights accordingly. More and more people have thermostats that are connected to the Internet that learn the behavior of the inhabitants and create a custom schedule to use as little energy as needed daily but keep the environment to their liking. Toll booths are becoming a thing of the past as cameras and RFID chips are being used to collect fees that were collected by humans in the past.
Over the last three years, we have been looking for ways to automate tasks as well. Why would we want our valued customers to have to wait any longer than needed to get an issue or task resolved? As we provide a varying array of services for different customers, we needed to make sure that we built a foundation that could scale across all the services. The foundational piece needed to be user friendly to the customer while being able to integrate with the enterprise-class solutions that we utilize to deliver NextGen managed services. After a long analysis of the options, ServiceNow was chosen as the foundational piece of the platform. As each customer is brought onto the platform, we work to understand their business and where automation of common IT tasks will provide a reduction of time to resolution and a more consistent outcome.
As an example, resetting passwords is usually a high-volume type task for most organizations. Historically the user would need to open a request with the helpdesk and then wait for someone to get back to them with a temporary password. With automation, the user can reset their password on their own within a minute after logging into the Thrive customer portal. As Thrive continues to build out more automation, Office 365 licensing and management, tasks will be incorporated into the customer portal. For instance, creating a new user may happen by filling out a form. Once submitted, the accounts and licenses will automatically be created and assigned to that user.