Customer case

Centralizing global vendor communication with ServiceNow CSM

The challenge

From scattered inboxes to a unified global vendor service model

With operations in more than 45 countries and a vendor network exceeding 65,000 global partners, Sulzer Ltd., the Swiss industrial engineering and manufacturing leader, was facing a serious challenge: managing vendor invoicing queries had become unmanageable. Each country operated its own mailbox with a dedicated team to handle vendor inquiries manually via email. But as transaction volumes surged, the process became overwhelmed. There was no shared tracking system, no way to monitor response times or ownership, and no global visibility. As a result, queries were sometimes duplicated, delayed, or missed entirely. In more complex cases, inquiries had to be escalated internally, but without a clear visibility or structure, this only added to the confusion. Other business challenges included:

Lack of transparency and traceability in handling vendor queries.
Inability to track the status or ownership of queries across countries.
Risk of lost or unanswered queries due to fragmented email-based communication.
Need for a scalable solution that could support global operations without introducing entirely new platforms.

Partnership and platform choice

Sulzer selected ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) as a natural extension of their existing ServiceNow platforms (ITSM, ITBM, Agile). The Cloud People was chosen as the implementation partner to ensure both technical expertise and long-term support.

Implementation approach

The project began with a three-day workshop to map processes and design CSM workflows. An agile approach was applied with user stories, testing, and validation. A key challenge was the integration between Sulzer’s data warehouse and ServiceNow – their first cloud-to-cloud integration – which, after extra effort, provided fully automated import of supplier data.

Phased rollout

To reduce risks around year-end, Sulzer opted for a phased rollout. A first, limited-scope go-live allowed for testing, collecting feedback, and making adjustments before the global rollout

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The outcome

Results and impact

Since go-live, Sulzer has achieved significant improvements in handling supplier requests, including full traceability across countries and departments, better SLA follow-up, and a real-time workspace providing visibility on all cases. Supplier communication is now streamlined and scalable.