Supporting the Department of Commerce’s ongoing enterprise transformation

ICF brought its ServiceNow expertise and agile delivery methodology to modernize how the DOC intakes, manages, and responds to high-profile correspondence cases. We delivered the Executive Correspondence System (ECS)—a solution that established a single, centralized, online platform for tracking and managing correspondence cases.

Challenge

The DOC sought to modernize its legacy correspondence case management solution to more efficiently and securely track and manage correspondences from the White House and Congress. The new solution needed to support evolving security needs, streamline manual workflows, and improve reporting capabilities.

Solution

Our human-centered design (HCD) modernization process obtained necessary input from multiple bureaus and offices at the DOC to deliver a streamlined solution. The HCD-focused discovery effort identified opportunities to improve the efficiency of the DOC’s business processes through automation.

We leveraged ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management (CSM) module to build a business application that automates and streamlines correspondence processing including case creation, task assignment and tracking, and managing correspondence responses, while providing an exceptional user experience.

The modernized ECS solution streamlined the DOC’s correspondence management processes by leveraging scalable architecture and automation to:

• Increase coordination and collaboration across all DOC bureaus as they respond to and fulfill correspondence cases by incorporating automated communications, notifications, and task reminders.
• Reduce time spent on collecting and creating cases by constructing an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.
• Increase operational efficiency by utilizing automated workflows to process priority cases more quickly.
• Drive efficiencies by utilizing task management and incorporating service-level agreements (SLAs) to process and close cases in a timely manner.
• Provide valuable insights to leadership through reports and dashboards with key performance indicators that deliver real-time visibility into the volume, type, and status of cases.

ECS increased data integrity through field validations and conditional logic. It leveraged ServiceNow’s Flow Designer to streamline the review process, automate manual workflows, and increase operational efficiency. The solution also tracks SLAs and advanced reporting capabilities—including real-time analytics and metrics dashboards—to track progress against key performance indicators (KPIs).

ICF supported DOC in obtaining authority to operate (ATO) at a FedRAMP high-security level for the new ServiceNow platform and ECS application. In addition, to facilitate adoption, ICF provided change management and training to support rapid new-user onboarding and deliver ongoing access to training materials for all users.

Results

The ECS successfully launched in August 2021—less than one year from project launch—to over 200 DOC users and resulted in an 86% reduction in record processing time compared to the legacy solution. The scalable architecture of the solution—made possible by ServiceNow CSM—provides the DOC with flexibility to expand the application for use by other bureaus and offices in the future with minimal additional configuration.

The solution leverages ServiceNow's platform capabilities—CSM module features. Its custom integrations with existing ICF tools provide DOC with an industry-leading, commercial-off-the-shelf, low-code solution; with an ease of use that allows for new workflows and business rules to be spun up rapidly. Using ServiceNow ensures maximum value is delivered to the client in the shortest time with long-term scalability.