Over the years, ServiceNow has assisted hundreds of companies with their IT operations, whether it be installing new software, replacing outdated legacy systems, or assisting with business process improvement. One such company that has benefited from ServiceNow’s intervention is NXP. Established in 1853 under the trading name Phillips Semiconductors, NXP is a leading semiconductor company that handles embedded applications in the connected vehicle, end-to-end security, and smart connected solutions. With over 44,000 employees in more than 35 countries across the globe, it’s no wonder that a company of this size requires a centralised, easy-to-monitor IT operation!

Equally, a rapid shift in development and growth has seen NXP’s business processes changing dramatically, facilitating the need for a streamlined IT infrastructure that is easily accessible for everyone. Prior to this, in the words of Sebastiaan Laurijsse, the Senior Director IT Infrastructure Services at NXP, “Responsibility for IT lay with local support teams that had their own engineers. For support, members of staff had to approach the local IT department, whose services they could enlist for getting problems solved or for a new notebook.” As you can see, NXP faced a challenge in streamlining its processes and ensuring efficiency across its network. Let’s look at how ServiceNow assisted them in this complex procedure.

IT Service Management
NXP implemented ServiceNow as their IT service management system, with the aim of using its technology to monitor and control all of their IT operations. The first thing ServiceNow was required for was monitoring and problem analysis, as well as incident registration and big data analytics, with the aim of increasing efficiency through configuration management, which would maintain the consistency of NXP’s product performance.

Sebastiaan Laurijsse’s main reason for choosing ServiceNow was its potential for genuine integration. On the subject he said, “ServiceNow has enabled the seamless integration of partial solutions onto a single platform. What’s more, because the system is open and flexible, we can define our own workflows easily. The result is that we can control all IT processes and this has been instrumental in setting up a global IT service.” High praise indeed!

R&D IT Infrastructure
One of NXP’s biggest departments is Research and Development (R&D), which accounts for approximately 14% of the company’s annual turnover. Following the successful implementation of ServiceNow in IT operations, it was an obvious next step to use it to reimagine the IT infrastructure of NXP’s research and development department. However, this wasn’t as simple as just changing a few processes; NXP’s R&D department has nine data-processing centres with thousands of servers used to simulate, among other things, how different products behave under specific conditions. As Sebastiaan Laurijsse’s puts it, “R&D is critical for NXP.” This means that the pressure on the department is huge, so the eventual solution had to be fast, accessible, and efficient to be a success.

To fully integrate these complex systems into a ServiceNow framework, everything had to be reduced into workable components to fit the Now Platform – ServiceNow’s business process automation. After a lot of work, this has been turned into a platform for the management and orchestration of the R&D process, creating a continuous process for new product development with the aid of big data analytics, and test and release automation – precisely how Sebastiaan Laurijsse envisioned it! On the overall process, he said, “It is important for our development processes to be traceable, repeatable, and for there to be as few disruptions as possible. Autonomous IT Operations and Total Quality are the ultimate goal. In this respect, the managed IT services does not just facilitate the primary work processes, but manages the entire process and automates it.” From this, it’s easy to see Laurijsse’s delight with the finished product, as well as his hope for further development in the future.

With the Now Platform fully operational, NXP can orchestrate all of their processes in a single place. This ensures that everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing and significantly reduces the risks or errors cropping up. If, by chance, errors do occur, the system is primed to detect them and instantly work to resolve them, meaning that the business can continue to work as normal without any loss of effectiveness or efficiency. “The Now Platform is open and enables us to organise and orchestrate work processes in a flexible manner. We can easily connect to other systems that are important for the work processes and we can make all R&D IT data available through or via the ServiceNow platform,” stated Sebastiaan Laurijsse.

Overall, ServiceNow is playing a key part in streamlining and speeding up the R&D department at NXP. On top of that, the increased effectiveness of the IT operations means that the quality, speed, and efficiently of the company has skyrocketed, leading to better product development and consistently meeting customers’ requirements.

If you want to find out what ServiceNow can do for you, check out our range of services online, today.