Preem’s digitalization

Preem is Sweden’s largest fuel company with 520 filling stations, two refineries, 1,500 employees and a turnover of 90 billion in 2021. As with many companies, Preem’s IT department is a supporting function for the entire organization.

– We have an overall digitization strategy and our own management model based on PM3. For my part, it is crucial that we have control over our processes and support tools to provide the systems that the business demands, says Walter Schyberger, Business Analyst and Quality Assurance Manager at Preem.

Quality assurance of their ERP system

When Walter stepped into his current role about two years ago, Preem was in the middle of the stabilization phase of their newly launched ERP system. Reqtest had been used during the project to both quality-assure the system by structuring, reviewing and prioritizing the project’s business requirements, and also for validating them through testing.

Double registration causes problems

When the new business system went live, Walter realized that they needed to find a better maintenance process to handle the change change requests and bug reports registered in ServiceNow. As a short-term solution, they started registering cases manually in Reqtest to be able to review, prioritize and test them for future releases. But the new process quickly proved to be inefficient, as it took too much time and proposed a risk of human errors.

– We had between 20-30 bug reports and change requests per week, that had to be registered manually twice. First in ServiceNow and reviewed by support desk, and then in Reqtest, where they would be managed. It was cumbersome, could lead to mistakes and very time-consuming, he says.

Several maintenance challenges needed to be addressed: firstly, the double registration was a quality risk as information could be lost or faulty. But the IT department also needed better control over the process, in order to prioritize the changes in relation to budget and business value.

–  We realized that the current way of working was not sustainable and that we needed more structure and control. I quickly saw that Reqtest could help us with this, says Walter Schyberger.

Reqtest integration became the solution

A process started where Preem, together with ReQtest’s senior advisors, developed an integration between ServiceNow and Reqtest. A solution that means that a case is automatically sent to Reqtest after it has been reviewed in ServiceNow.

– It has helped us a lot to avoid the manual processes and the monotonous, time-consuming work. Nowadays, we can manage and prioritize what comes into ServiceNow with the push of a button, says Walter Schyberger.

A more efficient administration is emerging

Another advantage that the integration made possible was traceability. Before the integration, there was no transparency of a case’s status. In order to get information, you had to email or talk to the administrator. An inefficient process where information often was lost.

With the new integration, Preem got a two-way solution that also sends information back from Reqtest to ServiceNow. The communication between the tools provides a uniform and up-to-date picture of all proposed changes and bugs and “checks off” what has been fixed. So that each employee can focus on the right things, and not work in silos.

Supports the overall digitization strategy

Walter sees more advantages with the integration, such as the security that the information is correct and that he can work data-driven in his decision-making. All this is in line with Preem’s overall digitization strategy, which focuses on comprehensiveness, efficiency and clarity.

The integration has also simplified the collaboration between the business and the IT organization.

– An important thing is that the integration has increased the understanding that amendments and incidents take time. But also that one must take responsibility for, for example, the business value an amendment adds. It’s not just sending an email and you’re done. In addition, the employees receive feedback and transparency regarding change proposals and incidents, says Walter Schyberger and continues:

– I am satisfied with the collaboration with Reqtest and that the result was exactly as we had wished. Today this management process is used for two systems, but in the future we want more departments to use the integration, he concludes.