Investment bank enjoys 27% productivity increase in 6 months

The Challenge
Going “live” with any new technology is just the first step in delivering its full strategic benefits. To deliver maximum value, technology must interface effectively and seamlessly with other platforms and tools, as well as the processes and activities they support.

To overcome these common challenges, the implementation of the new ITSM platform marked just the beginning of our client’s journey to achieve its future Target Operating Model. The key was to have a clear and documented roadmap for enhanced functionality and benefits to deliver Continuous Service Improvement (CSI).

The Solution
AutomatePro partnered with KA2 to ensure that the KA2 Smarter Framework delivered an evergreen solution, transitioning IT operations from predominantly manual to predominantly automated processes driven by intelligent software. With AutomatePro at the core and in line with the overall CSI objective of the Smarter Framework, KA2 focused on two key areas to achieve sustainable benefits for the bank, Processes & Workflows and Supporting Technologies.

Effective testing is a key component to achieving an optimal evergreen cost-efficient operating model and improving DevOps agility. Testing on the ServiceNow platform commonly becomes a very time-consuming, inefficient and resource-dependent overhead. To overcome this challenge, AutomatePro was selected so that automated testing can become an integral part of the platform development strategy.

AutomatePro offered the right solution for the bank to effectively support both KA2 and in-house development activities and provide a robust foundation for the overall testing function. AutomatePro’s suite of automation products met the bank’s need to provide fully auditable testing results and ensure that the results were traceable back to business requirements.

Additionally, the software introduced automation in the testing phase of the release lifecycle and improved other manual and time-consuming tasks, such as the creation of system documentation, user guides and requirements documents. Importantly, the tool could operate in an agile development environment with new functionality being released into
production every few weeks. Utilising a set of the bank’s use cases, AutomatePro conducted a comprehensive demo and the product’s benefits became quickly evident. As a result, KA2 managed the rapid implementation of the AutomatePro software, which immediately helped the ITSM team to build the automated test cases alongside the agile development process. Regression tests ensured that there were no unintended consequences of the many changes being introduced, with full regression testing  scheduled on a regular basis.

The Benefits
By introducing the right automation solution, the client was able to drive up productivity, while driving down costs. The combination of KA2’s highly skilled team of developers and solution architects with the AutomatePro tool at the core, helped our client achieve a 27% increase in developer productivity within the first three months of implementing the automated testing strategy, with a realistic target of 50% productivity improvement by the end of the project.

In real terms, this level of improvement has enabled a monthly release cycle moving to a ‘release when ready’ model. This was all achieved with 45% fewer development resources. The use of AutomatePro ensured that defects were promptly identified and fixed prior to release. Additionally, the tool enabled rapid end-to-end testing, significantly reducing the time involved compared with manual testing and removing dependency on other support teams.

The release success is 100%, with no failures caused by inadequate testing. Importantly, the bank has been able to meet its audit and compliance requirements, showing full end-to-end testing evidence for change approvals using the “test and trace” functionality of the AutomatePro solution.

The solution now safely enables the building and onboarding of further capabilities and scoped applications in the ServiceNow platform and AutomatePro test cases are an integral part of the early development lifecycle.

Based on the success of its ServiceNow platform and the workflows it supports, KA2 continues to guide the bank to improve operations and quickly adopt the technologies needed to fulfil its digital strategy.

Outcome Highlights:

• Automated and standardised testing for ServiceNow releases, with fully auditable supporting evidence to ensure all change and regulatory controls are consistently met.
• Radically reduced the dependency on business users for time-consuming UAT, and rapidly accelerated the release of new features and capabilities into production.
• Significantly improved the release lifecycle moving to an agile ‘release when ready’ DevOps operating model, whilst building a sustainable lean resource and cost-efficient operating model.
• Rapidly achieved a 27% increase in development productivity with 45% fewer resources, allowing focus on delivering improved and increased content per release and achieved excellent user satisfaction levels across the organisation.