CASE STUDY

Giant Eagle is one of the largest family-operated companies in the

US. Founded in 1931, the multi-format food, fuel and pharmacy

retailer serves more than four million customers across western

Pennsylvania, north central Ohio, northern West Virginia, Maryland

and Indiana at its Giant Eagle, GetGo and Market District locations.

CHALLENGESCurrently, Giant Eagle is in the middle of a multi-year project

to move its data centers to the cloud. As part of this initiative,

the retailer recognized the need to have a firm grip on its asset

inventory from both a hardware and software perspective. In

its legacy environment, the IT team didn’t have active or formal

inventory processes – everything was contained in a collection

of spreadsheets and documents and even the knowledge of

individuals – and they knew this would need to change in order

for Giant Eagle to be successful in the cloud.

HEADQUARTERS Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

INDUSTRY Retail

COMPANY SIZE Approximately 36,000

SERVICES RENDERED Phase 1 ServiceNow Implementation

Giant Eagle Keeps

with ServiceNowIT fresh

CASE STUDY

“We had no CMDB [Configuration Management Database]

and foresaw significant challenges in planning our data

center move to the cloud without configuration management

in place,” Scott Petrak, Senior Director, IT Transformation

and Global Sourcing at Giant Eagle, explains. “We were also

running a change management process that was marginally

effective, but inefficient and labor intensive.”

SOLUTIONUpon recognizing these opportunities for improvement, the

Giant Eagle IT organization began to develop a roadmap for

what it wanted to achieve from a process standpoint.

“Working with a partner, we looked at our IT Service

Management environment with an ITIL eyeglass and identified

a series of short-term, mid-term and long-term needs.

Our strategic needs dictated that we get our arms around

configuration management early on, and we knew we would

need to update our change management processes too in

order to keep everything current,” Petrak says.

Based on this roadmap, Giant Eagle began to evaluate

possible solutions to fulfill its needs. Petrak shares that his

team consulted resources from industry analysts Gartner

and Forrester in order to compare factors like market

position and functionality.

“All of the ratings and assessments led us straight to

ServiceNow. We were really focused on flexibility and

scalability, and we knew ServiceNow was the right match for

that strategy,” he continues.

Next, Giant Eagle knew it would need assistance from a

partner to properly implement ServiceNow, bring its team

up to speed on ITIL best practices and help it execute its

roadmap. The retailer evaluated the partner who helped

it develop its roadmap and select ServiceNow as well as

several other market leaders identified by industry reports.

Ultimately, a recommendation from ServiceNow itself led

Giant Eagle to Cloud Sherpas. “We very quickly realized a

very high attention to our requirements by Cloud Sherpas

when they were the first to engage us on site. We also

appreciated the fact that Cloud Sherpas invested a lot of

time to really understand our needs, which truly showed

when they delivered their proposal for work. Once they

understood our challenges with process design and change

leadership, they immediately suggested that we also engage

Cask as their partner,” Petrak adds.

With the Cloud Sherpas and Cask teams on board, Giant Eagle

began its Phase 1 implementation of ServiceNow, which included

configuration management (including Discovery) solutions,

change management and several custom integrations.

RESULTSGiant Eagle went live with its ServiceNow solution in April 2015.

Petrak reports that the implementation has created a much

more disciplined approach to impact analysis and collaboration

with respect to proposed changes and significantly increased

visibility into the organization’s asset inventory.

One of the biggest benefits Giant Eagle has realized since

adopting ServiceNow is the ability to be proactive around

change management. By introducing a best practice change

process and complete CMDB, the implementation has

helped the retailer achieve its goals around modernizing

processes and better understanding process efficiency and

impact. As a result, the Giant Eagle IT organization can now

be proactive with technology in order to prevent incidents

from occurring in the first place. This proactivity not only

creates a smoother experience for IT and end users, but

also allows customer-facing employees to provide the best

experience possible for shoppers.

CASE STUDY

3525 Piedmont RoadBuilding 8, Suite 710Atlanta, GA 30305

FIND OUT WHAT CLOUD SHERPAS CAN DO FOR YOU

Our focus is on helping organizations meet all their cloud needs, including running business applications

like messaging, collaboration and CRM in the cloud, developing custom cloud solutions using platforms

and infrastructure as a service and integrating existing cloud solutions with other clouds and business

systems. Let us help you leverage the cloud. Visit us online at www.cloudsherpas.com.

2011-2014 Google EnterpriseGlobal Partner of the Year

According to Petrak, the automation provided by ServiceNow

has also made a huge diff erence for Giant Eagle in terms

of ensuring all systems and information are aligned

and keeping people informed of changes and updates.

Additionally, integrating ServiceNow with backend systems

has allowed Giant Eagle to make ServiceNow its system of

engagement and reduce the number of individual tools

users need to manage.

Petrak also shares that the reaction from users and

management alike has been very positive, with both groups

praising the new system’s ease of use and clear communication.

“People have appreciated the additional level of

communication they get via workfl ows from ServiceNow.

From a process design standpoint, we’ve re-engineered

our change management processes to adhere to ITIL

best practices and had strong buy-in because we asked

management to participate in the design,” Petrak shares.

Overall, the Giant Eagle team viewed the implementation

as a hands-down success. Following organizational change

management best practices introduced by Cask, including

regular communication via a newsletter about what changes

to expect and the impact of those changes, Giant Eagle

achieved immediate adoption of both the new processes

and the new system.

Across the board, Petrak attributes this success in large part

to the guidance provided by Cloud Sherpas and Cask.

“Without Cask’s process guidance, we might be still wandering

around the ITIL mountain. The work we did with Cask to

establish strong process designs and their guidance on change

leadership and ITIL were the foundation for our success.

When Cloud Sherpas took the baton from Cask, we lost no

momentum. There was never this ‘throw it over the wall and

hope someone catches it’ moment. The Cloud Sherpas project

manager helped our project manager keep a constant fi nger

on project pulse, proactively mitigating risks and resolving

issues. Cloud Sherpas’ senior account manager touched base

with us bi-weekly to ensure alignment on tactical direction and

the Cloud Sherpas technical team devoted signifi cant eff ort

toward knowledge transfer to our internal team,” he explains.

“I’ve worked on a lot of projects over the years, and this was the

one where everything went right.”

The Giant Eagle team is actively evaluating opportunities to

expand its use of ServiceNow, with an interest in potentially

moving ServiceNow into its retail operations.