When the United Arab Shipping Company identified a need to better manage and support its mission critical applications, such as TRUST, its integrated Liner Management software, the company turned to Quintica to help it map a path to efficiency. The United Arab Shipping Company (UASC) has, for 37 years, served as a primary choice for shipping for companies looking to link the Middle East to the rest of the world. Due to the high demands of its global footprint, the company relies extensively on its IT infrastructure, with particular reference to the aforementioned TRUST system, which assists in the management of all of its shipping activities.
The TRUST platform provides the company with a consolidated state-of-the-art ERP platform for its global network.
The business need
It was because of the importance of TRUST to the business that UASC began a process to identify a partner that could help it build an environment that would better support and maintain the infrastructure, all the while adhering to, and implementing global best practices.
Working together UASC and Quintica uncovered, by means of a series of IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practice workshops, that the entire support process within the shipping giant was flawed. Data was manually inputted from both a user and an agent’s end into the tracking system, leaving it wide open to error.
Data was being repeated, tasks weren’t being completed and incident status was nearly impossible to track because of an admin (input) backlog. Literally everything was being managed by email, nothing was being reported on and as a result there was simply no adherence to SLA’s.
Armed with these findings, a team from UASC and Quintica began a project that would see the transformation of its service desk, the adoption of ITIL best practices and the implementation of BMC Remedyforce, to provide transparent IT Service Management (ITSM) functionality via the cloud-based Salesforce.com.
The main goal behind the project was to improve incident handling, save time and enhance the productivity of the service desk agents who wouldn’t have to re-enter incident data, as well as increase the number of users who have access to the system via its self-service capabilities, and then ultimately reduce the volume of calls to the service desk.
A logical choice
According to Kris Vedat, head of service level management at UASC, the company chose Remedyforce, under advisement of Quintica, over competing solutions for three key reasons: cost, functionality and BMC Software’s position as a market leader.
“The cost side of the equation was very compelling,” Vedat explained. “On-premise solutions are a high-dollar investment and they can take a long time to implement. Remedyforce is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, so it offers an OpEx model instead of CapEx. With Remedyforce, we were up and running in a few weeks. It gave us all the functionality we needed and it is scalable enough to support our future needs. In addition, BMC’s pricing is very favourable compared to other solutions we evaluated.”
Another advantage of the Remedyforce platform for UASC is that it is built on the cloud-based Salesforce.com platform. Because UASC uses Salesforce.com for its customer relationship management efforts, the support team was already familiar with the underlying platform, which meant that there was little barrier to entry on a training front and users were able to log into Salesforce.com and Remedyforce with a single sign-on.
Unlocking potential
When the project began, the company demanded that there be as little disruption to its services as possible and took it under advisement from Quintica to follow a phased approach to roll-out and implementation. The first areas identified included incident and service level management, as they were seen as quick wins for the business.
At the same time Quintica conducted ITIL foundation training for staff, in order to provide an understanding of the standards-based project approach they would be following. Management were then given specifically developed simulation training, where the Quintica team developed training materials that would simulate, through gamification, the benefits of an efficiently run and managed environment.
The process
After the building blocks were in place and the solution mapped and decided upon, the teams began rolling out the system. The first site went live in just five weeks with the next following a mere four weeks later,
“Changing the mind-set of users was perhaps the biggest challenge we faced in ensuring a successful rollout,” Vedat noted. “Our users were accustomed to the freeform nature of email, and they had to adjust to filling in forms, which is a more structured approach. But when people began experiencing the advantages of the new solution over our previous manual system, they readily embraced Remedyforce.”
With the new system users can now enter incidents directly into the system, which immediately yielded positive results. They also set a goal to encourage users to make use of the self-service system and its online solutions knowledgebase and FAQ, targeting that 10% of tickets be self-service tickets in the first year. In the first month the team had already reached 5% of tickets being self-service. Tickets are now also automatically assigned and users can view their progress at any time.
To ensure the continued improvement of the system and staff buy in, regular awareness sessions and WebEx training and enablement sessions are being held.
A new face for service
Today, through the help of Quintica, its ITIL framework and its new Remedyforce solutions, the UASC is able to set, meet and maintain service SLAs for the entire business. Ensuring the continued proficiency and efficiency of its TRUST system as well as heightened levels of customer service.
According to the company, the team has also established SLAs with its vendors, who handle second-level support and Remedyforce enables the staff to track vendor performance against SLAs based on contractual obligations taking appropriate action when SLAs are missed.
Looking ahead UASC says it wants to expand its use of Remedyforce, it will also look to introduce its service catalogue to the rest of the IT organisation.
“We are at the beginning of an exciting journey. We are now well positioned to exploit the full capabilities of Remedyforce, and the solution is enabling us to move up the ITSM maturity ladder so we can increase efficiency while also keeping costs under control,” concludes Vedat.