Siemens Healthineers realises efficiency gains and unlocks the potential for future business growth with ServiceNow

Siemens Healthineers required a platform that supports business growth
Siemens Healthineers is one of the world’s leading providers of medical technology and services, enabling healthcare providers to transform care delivery, improve patient experiences, and expand the use of precision medicine.

As an indication of the company’s truly global reach, more than 600,000 Siemens Healthineers’ systems are installed with customers spread across 75 countries. Every hour, over 240,000 patients are “touched” by a Siemens Healthineers system or service, and more than 70% of critical clinical decisions around the world are directly impacted by the company’s technology.

The company’s sheer scale and long history within the larger Siemens organisation prior to its IPO meant the IT landscape underpinning operations was complicated. The business was saddled with a lot of inflexible apps that only had one, or a few, dedicated use cases and the company’s IT infrastructure consisted of disparate siloed systems and services.

As Jochen Hostalka, Head of IT Customer Services and Enterprise Services at Siemens Healthineers, explains: “Our previous IT systems presented a multidimensional picture. It’s a genuinely huge company with a long history, which meant the IT infrastructure had a long heritage. As the IT team, we could see clearly that we had a lot of ‘pipes’, but what we really needed as a business was a platform.”

The complexity of a simple mission: to move Siemens Healthineers’ IT landscape “from onsite to online”
The opportunity to overhaul Siemens Healthineers’ IT landscape came with the formalisation of its new customer service business strategy. The core driver behind this strategy was summarised in the tagline “from onsite to online.”

Despite the deceptively simple statement, the scale of the challenge involved in realising that goal was vast. It was clear that the IT operation needed to become a modern, digital organisation to meet the needs of a truly global business—but this presented big challenges.

“Our set up is very complex, but that meant we really needed to focus on the fundamentals. In the past, we had only tried to make tweaks to our internal IT landscape. The refocused business strategy was a massive opportunity to take a step back and adjust our landscape to properly support the future of the business,” explains Jochen.

As the need to embrace digitalisation took shape, there were two goals that focused the IT team. The first was enabling the business to do more with the resources they had and to boost productivity. The second was changing habits and demands of the company’s customers.

Siemens Healthineers’ customers—hospitals, doctors, radiologists, and so on—are embracing digital IT services in their work, and their patients and “customers” are particularly digitally savvy. As Jochen puts it, “Our customers are more and more online driven, so we needed to be online too.”

ServiceNow optimises and complements existing infrastructure with a new “gene code” for IT delivery
The IT team realised they needed a solution that would add a new dimension to the infrastructure and systems that were already in place, rather than ripping and replacing the existing set up.

“Given the huge complexity of our existing systems and the critical nature of what we deliver to our customers, we couldn’t simply burn down what we had and start again,” says Jochen.

“We needed a solution that would optimise and complement our existing landscape and unlock greater innovation, accessibility, and integration. We needed a solution with a different ‘gene code’.”

Jochen and his team focused on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, appointing Accenture as a strategic partner to lead analysis of the market leading solutions. This four-month analysis, including a proof-of-concept phase, centred around identifying the best technological, financial, and strategic fit with the business.

ServiceNow was the clear preference across all three dimensions. From a technical point of view, there was a strong fit with the technology that Siemens Healthineers already had in place. In terms of strategic fit, the proof-of-concept phase demonstrated that ServiceNow could also match the long-term goals of the business.

But, as Jochen explains, there were other factors that ultimately had a bigger influence on the decision to implement ServiceNow. “The biggest surprise of the selection process was the cultural fit between Siemens Healthineers and ServiceNow,” says Jochen. We have a big focus on efficiency and measurement of KPIs, and we could really see ourselves in how ServiceNow operates. They fit into our service operations seamlessly.”

Initial success with ServiceNow builds momentum leading to further projects across the business and regions
Following the decision to implement ServiceNow, the Siemens Healthineers team quickly set to work on introducing the platform. The first project moved the handling of remote and automated software updates for all of the company’s 600,000 systems to ServiceNow.

The project was completed in 89 days—completely on schedule and budget. “It was a big ‘a-ha’ moment for the business. All of a sudden we realised the power of the platform,” says Jochen. From that initial project, momentum accelerated quickly and the IT team was swiftly managing three or four projects in parallel across the business and across different regions.

Jochen adds, “As people saw the potential of the Now Platform, they got curious and wanted to be a part of what we were doing. The problem we have now is coping with the demand!”

Siemens Healthineers spearheads future growth with ServiceNow
Since implementing ServiceNow, Siemens Healthineers has been able to optimise its IT delivery across the global organisation. Combining the platform with a fully agile implementation methodology has slashed waste with faster resolution times and fewer issues.

The adoption of ServiceNow has also enabled the IT department to be more flexible and tailored in how it meets the needs of the business, reducing conflicts between the business and the IT team.

Most importantly, Jochen highlights the strategic transformation that ServiceNow has enabled, “Our IT transformation project will be ongoing until 2023, but the biggest change ServiceNow has brought is in our thinking. We are running projects now that simply wouldn’t be possible on any other platform. In that sense, ServiceNow is a huge lever to the business—it really is a key element of our future growth.”

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