Oshkosh consolidates and accelerates service delivery within and beyond IT

Oshkosh drives new enterprise-wide service delivery

Oshkosh acquisitions lead to strong business growth but fragmented and expensive IT services and tools
Since 1996, Oshkosh Corporation, a leading designer and manufacturer of specialty vehicles, truck bodies, and access equipment, has made 15 strategic acquisitions. While this created significant business growth, it also left Oshkosh with multiple service desks and disconnected IT tools.

According to Greg Downer, Senior IT Director, Oshkosh Corporation, “Our existing IT tools were holding us back. Every division had its own tools and processes. There was no consistency or end-to-end visibility, and the cost was astronomical. It typically took $500,000 to upgrade a single tool–and we had many tools.” 

Oshkosh realizes an enterprise platform vision with ServiceNow
Oshkosh decided it needed to replace its many legacy tools with a unified IT management platform. However, it also had a vision to deliver services across the enterprise–not just in IT, but in other areas such as HR and facilities. Greg says, “This wasn’t about taking small steps. We wanted to fundamentally transform our delivery capabilities. That takes a true enterprise platform. And, once you understand that you need an enterprise platform, there’s only one choice–ServiceNow.”

With ServiceNow, Oshkosh is saving $3 million in license, maintenance, and hardware costs
Rather than take an incremental approach, Oshkosh pursued an aggressive strategy. It decided to go live with a comprehensive ServiceNow implementation, replacing all of its legacy tools at the same time.

“Our go-live included service catalog, mobile, incident, problem, change, knowledge, and configuration–and it was a huge success. We’ve had no major defects since we launched, and we’re saving $3 million in license, maintenance, and hardware costs. Plus, upgrades are now just a change, and not a full-blown project,” explains Greg.

ServiceNow delivers immediate benefits as Oshkosh saves 8,000 hours through process improvements
Greg describes the platform rollout: “With most rollouts, you spend 80% of your time dealing with technology and 20% on business process. With ServiceNow, we’ve flipped that to 20% technology and 80% business process. That allowed us to deliver significant business benefits out of the gate.”

With ServiceNow, Oshkosh has saved 8,000 hours of work through business process improvements. For example, the company eliminated 36,000 unnecessary approvals, saving time and money. Oshkosh was also able to structure its employee onboarding, transfer, and offboarding processes.

Oshkosh employee satisfaction with IT increases 6% in a single year
Oshkosh’s employees are equally impressed with ServiceNow. Alicia Hopkins, IT Manager, Oshkosh Corporation, says: “Within a year of launching ServiceNow, IT’s customer satisfaction rating rose by 6%. That’s incredibly hard to do. Employees now see IT as efficient and responsive, and that perception continues to build.”

That shift in perception is backed by hard metrics. Greg says, “Shortly after we went live, we turned on ServiceNow^® Performance Analytics. That gave us the visibility we needed to drive change and improvement. Before ServiceNow, we struggled to hit our service level targets. Today, we’re exceeding targets for both incidents and service requests.” 

Oshkosh increases efficiencies by connecting and automating additional processes
Oshkosh’s IT organization continues to build out ServiceNow’s capabilities. It has turned on discovery and event management, and plans to follow this up with service mapping in the near future. It has also used ServiceNow to automate laptop software installation directly from the service catalog, saving IT and end-users 2,000 hours of effort annually.

Project portfolio management is another priority. Oshkosh is currently replacing its existing project management tool with ServiceNow. “Like most IT organizations, our people are involved in both projects and operations. It’s the same resources and budget. That means you need to manage work in one place; everything needs to be connected and not housed in separate project management and IT systems. Otherwise, your projects will suffer,” asserts Greg.

Oshkosh adopts ServiceNow across the enterprise for a seamless employee experience
As part of Oshkosh’s vision to create an enterprise service management platform, it will extend ServiceNow beyond IT. Facilities will be first out of the gate, followed by human resources.

Greg says, “IT, HR, and facilities need to work seamlessly together, particularly in areas such as employee transfers. We’ve already had huge success in IT, so bringing HR and facilities on board is a no-brainer. Over time, we’ll grow ServiceNow into a single enterprise destination where employees can get all of their support services.” 

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