Vitamix® Puts Automation into High Gear with ServiceNow

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

ServiceNow® NOW, the enterprise IT cloud company, today announced that Vitamix , a world leader in high-performance blending equipment for home and commercial use, is using ServiceNow software-as-a-service to automate services within IT and across the business to accelerate growth.

As Vitamix grows operations, the company is continually looking for more efficient ways to scale and automate the many enterprise services that support its business. This includes IT operations, onboarding employees, production maintenance and facilities management. In the past, employees relied on email, SharePoint and other systems that were not integrated or automated for service delivery.

Vitamix began using ServiceNow to create a single system of record for IT to automate tasks and standardize processes. The company introduced incident management and a new self-service portal, incorporating service catalog and knowledge base. Vitamix then extended capabilities into the following areas:

• Human Resources — The IT team at Vitamix worked with the HR team to develop a collection of catalog items to automate processes across the entire employee lifecycle—from onboarding to separation. Hiring managers leverage the self-service portal to request equipment for new hires and initiate other key processes. A knowledge base of how-to articles gives new employees faster access to resources they need such as how to use their computers, reserve conference rooms, request time off and reset their passwords.
• Operations Maintenance — The IT team extended the service catalog to manage and automate maintenance incidents and requests across its manufacturing facilities. Monthly analytics reports help the team track performance down to individual manufacturing lines, devices and stations, streamlining communications between the product support and manufacturing teams. Automating what once were manual tasks has resulted in significant gains in manufacturing efficiencies.
• Facilities and Space Management — The IT team created catalog items to automate the workflows associated with common facilities tasks such as scheduling campus-wide events and employee moves as well as using the Facilities plug-in to manage work orders for housekeeping and maintenance activities.

“The biggest impact of using ServiceNow is that many of Vitamix's repetitive tasks are now automated and streamlined, allowing our business users to deliver more strategic impact,” said Heather Brizzi, service desk manager, Vitamix. “As a company that manufactures high-performance products, we are driven to achieve high performance in our operations—especially in the way we get work done. With ServiceNow, our IT team is helping Vitamix achieve that goal.”

To speed automation, the IT team also integrated ServiceNow and Cisco Agent Desktop. This allows a new query record to be automatically created before a call by an employee to the support team is even picked up. The support team also has visibility of a caller's previous incidents and requests before engaging, which has led to improvements in overall customer satisfaction.

Vitamix is currently reviewing the next release of ServiceNow to take advantage of its newest features and advances. Vitamix plans to continue extending the capabilities within ServiceNow to automate other services including preventative maintenance for both production and facilities equipment.

About Vitamix®

Vita-Mix® Corporation (“Vitamix”) is a privately held family-owned and -operated company founded in 1921 that manufactures high-performance blending equipment for home and commercial use. The company's commercial customer list reads like a “Who's Who” of major restaurant chains, and gourmet chefs say their Vitamix machines are as important to them as their knives. A recognized leader in marketing and product innovation, Vitamix founder William G. “Papa” Barnard created one of the first infomercials in 1949 to demonstrate how the Vitamix blender could help people improve their health with whole foods, and the company developed the first true commercial blender in the early 1990s, which ignited the smoothie movement. Vitamix, whose products are known worldwide for their performance, durability, and reliability, continues to win awards for product innovation and is a recipient of the president's prestigious “E” Award for Exports. Headquartered in Olmsted Township, Ohio, 19 miles from Cleveland, Vitamix products are manufactured in Northeast Ohio and sold in approximately 100 countries. For more information, please visit www.vitamix.com.

About ServiceNow

ServiceNow is the enterprise IT cloud company. We transform IT by automating and managing IT service relationships across the global enterprise. Organizations deploy our service to create a single system of record for IT and automate manual tasks, standardize processes and consolidate legacy systems. Using our extensible platform, our customers create custom applications and evolve the IT service model to service domains inside and outside the enterprise. ServiceNow transforms IT from the department of no to the department of now. For more information, visit www.servicenow.com.

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