Big changes for Navis
For over 30 years, Navis has been in the business of optimizing and connecting the world’s cargo supply chain. Navis serves marine terminal operators, ocean carriers, and intermodal rail operators through its premier software system and applications.
2021 ushered in big changes for Navis – and not just the same big changes that were impacting the rest of the world in the wake of the pandemic, like adjusting to a long-term work-from-home structure.
Navis was experiencing something bigger, with its divestiture from its parent company Cargotec and acquisition by technology investment firm Accel-KKR.
Park Durrett, Managing Director of Accel-KKR, said, “Weaknesses in our global supply chains have been tested during this pandemic and the results have been telling.
These disruptions have created more urgency for advanced technology to better plan, execute, and optimize cargo movement in order to provide a more predictable delivery experience for all shipping partners.
With the addition of Navis to the AKKR portfolio, we’re building on a strong foundation and extending capabilities to deliver greater value and more actionable insights for supply chain stakeholders.”
With the transfer complete by the end of 2021, 2022 saw Navis ready to shake out of old routines and begin its new chapter.
Replacing ServiceNow
In early 2022, Navis’ business solutions manager, Janie Montgomery, was tasked with finding a suitable IT service management software to replace ServiceNow.
“ServiceNow was a choice that was made by our former parent company…. It wasn’t that we had a choice; it was just provided for us,” Montgomery said. So, she said, when the opportunity arose to seek out a replacement, “I had to go out and do my research.”
Montgomery was eager to find something a little more user-friendly than ServiceNow, and better suited to the size and goals of Navis. “ServiceNow is good for enterprise,” she said, “and it has filled, in the past, its niche for really big, huge conglomerations – and we weren’t that big, huge conglomeration.”
“When using the search feature in ServiceNow, the search criteria must be very specific in order to return the desired result. There are even some case-sensitivity requirements.
The interface is antiquated and not intuitive. It looks like a form overlay to a command line backend.” explained Montgomery.
Ultimately, Montgomery and her team found that getting ServiceNow to perform a task or change a configuration was “painful.” They found themselves with solutions that checked the boxes but required a lot of effort from the user.
They needed something more user-friendly to streamline their processes.
So began Montgomery’s search for a new solution for Navis’ IT service management needs.
Her goal was to find a tool that could take care of three main functions: asset management, ticketing, and change requests.
Why SymphonyAI Summit?
Montgomery and other members of the Navis team looked at a variety of different tools to replace ServiceNow, conducting research by reading reviews and participating in product demos. “It was very hands on and very thorough,” Montgomery said of the selection process. SymphonyAI Summit quickly came to the forefront as a top contender.
“It really piqued my interest because of its interface and its intuitiveness… what really sold it to my colleagues was the AI piece.”
Montogomery and her team discovered that Summit’s smart digital agent and AI-powered intelligent routing help resolve issues faster, reduce costs, and increase productivity.
CINDE responds to incoming tickets with personalized, intelligent messages and understands the context in which a user’s intent is expressed and then uses machine reasoning to determine the next best course of action.
Meanwhile, SymphonyAI Summit’s interface is easy to use and understand. “It works fluidly with the end-user and the admins,” Montgomery said.
Additionally, the Navis team noted that SymphonyAI Summit’s search functionality was superior to other toolsets they considered.
They found it easy to pull up what they were looking for because the terms they typed into the search bar didn’t have to be a direct, word-for-word match.
For example, Montgomery appreciated that if she was looking for the name of a customer who had purchased a docking station, she could easily find it by searching “docking station,” because this search would pull up any ticket involving this term. She was relieved that the results were straightforward, and she could easily click through to whatever ticket she needed to see.
At the end of her research process, Montgomery determined that SymphonyAI Summit was the best fit.
She shared her recommendation with Accel-KKR, Navis’ new parent business.
“It wasn’t just a decision made for us. We made the decision not only on what worked for us, but also what would work for Accel-KKR’s future acquisitions,” Montgomery said.
Implementation and Beyond
After the decision was made, Montgomery was eager to get SymphonyAI Summit implemented for Navis, but she kept her expectations tempered, knowing that often salespeople will “promise the world” and underdeliver. She did not find that to be the case with SymphonyAI Summit. Far from it, in fact!
Montgomery found the SymphonyAI Summit engineers and implementation team to be “the best in the league.” “They’re incredible, incredible people. They work with us a hundred – a thousand – percent.”
Any time she had a question, all she had to do was reach out to them, and soon an answer would be at her fingertips.
Montgomery felt that the SymphonyAI Summit team quickly gained a strong understanding of Navis’ position, the shifts it was undergoing, and what it needed to thrive and grow. She found them to be enthusiastic about making her goals a reality. She said that the SymphonyAI Summit representatives she worked with came to feel like members of her own team, personalizing the implementation and working with them cohesively. “They adapt to my way of working,” she said.
The Takeaway
SymphonyAI Summit has changed the way that Montgomery and her teammates at Navis work.
It has streamlined their processes, allowing them to find and perform their tasks more quickly and easily.
The transition has been so successful that SymphonyAI Summit will be used for Navis’ future sister companies under the Accel-KKR umbrella.
