Axios Systems: Randstad Itsm Assyst Case Study

industry sector : Recruitment

Best Practice IT Ser vice Management

case study : Randstad Discover how the world’s largest employment agency used Best Practice based IT Service Management to build a customer driven Consolidated Service Desk

Job agency giant headhunts Axios for IT Service Management It is hard work being one of the world’s top employment organizations, but award-winning IT Service Management (ITSM) software is making the job easier. The solution is helping manage the IT infrastructure and giving a competitive edge to Amsterdam-based Randstad, which employs more than 200,000 people each day in the fast moving business of temporary and contract staffing. When you talk to senior managers of I-bridge, the in-house organization which provides IT services to Randstad’s 22 companies and 700 branches in the Netherlands, you hear a great deal about control, trust and professionalism. They are qualities which they believe have been provided by their ITSM solution - assyst by Axios Systems. “Our ITSM system gives me a grip on the whole situation. I trust it, and increasingly so do our other departments.” Service Department Manager Dick van der Valk summed up. “Our business is basically matching people who want jobs with employers who have jobs that suit them. We have found that assyst and Randstad are a very good match.”

assyst was already installed at Randstad when van der Valk took up his new role following a switch from marketing to IT, but he quickly decided to make the most of it. “It gave us a secure feeling about how to organize our own department,” he said. “I felt it was a good product and we built on it.” “The main problem we solve is getting the information we need to run a service department,” van der Valk commented. “For me it’s very important to know the kinds of problems we have so we can follow them up. How often does a particular problem happen? Where are my assets? Thanks to assyst we know where everything is.”

The Problems Put simply, the main tasks of Randstad’s computers are to process workers’ timesheets and send the appropriate bills to its customers. Although standardization and greater automation are bringing down the cost of computing by 10-15% a year, IT is more crucial than ever to the organization’s success. In the Netherlands alone, 100,000 temporary workers need to be paid every week. Their wages and corresponding bills sent to Randstad’s clients need to be accurate. “Invoices have an in-built dissatisfaction factor,” van der Valk observed. “I’ve never been told: “That’s a beautiful bill you sent me”! They must be fast and reliable. We pay our temporary workers in advance so have to get the money back from the companies. The timing is very important.” Faced with the challenge of handling ICT services for a successful, growing organization, I-bridge set up a Service Desk, but then found its paper-based system was losing track of incidents and could not cope with an assets register which now consists of some 40,000 physical items. “We had a lot of assets, but we didn’t know exactly where they were,” recalled Peter Smith, team leader of assyst applications management and desk site support.

Over the solution was

assyst

Axios Systems - the leading global Help Desk & IT Service Management solutions provider case study : Randstad

“We needed to conform to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Our staff were not generally acquainted with the ITIL methodology at the time, but introducing a solution like assyst allowed us to educate them as we went along.” Peter Smith Team Leader assyst Applications Management

“Only a good system like assyst could have given us the information needed to get 600 computers back . . . Now we know where all our computers are and what is on each of them, matching hardware and software.”

“We needed to conform to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Our staff were not generally acquainted with the ITIL methodology at the time, but introducing a solution like assyst allowed us to educate them as we went along.” Another major problem was the lack of Change Management.

The solution - voted number 1 in the Netherlands and Axios’ home base of the UK - was initially installed in the individual operating companies which had their own databases and Help Desks. This was achieved by employing assyst’s Customer Service Groups facility which enables databases to be partitioned. Now it serves the central I-bridge Desk which looks after the entire Netherlands infrastructure, including more than 1,000 staff in the two Amsterdam head office buildings. A separate Help Desk in the Legal Department uses assyst to monitor issues relating to employment law. Staff used Web applications to fill in forms showing what equipment was on their premises - the first step towards Configuration and Asset Management on which the organization now relies.

Asset & Configuration Management Change Management Incident Management Problem Management Service Level Management

Van der Valk said his first priorities were to keep his customers happy and then to instill disciplines among his own teams to use the tool.

The Solution

It mainly provides Asset and Configuration, Change, Incident, Problem and Service Level Management.

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Now, however, assyst is being used to maintain discipline in the organization - for everyone’s benefit. Staff, who once had to be persuaded to put information into assyst, now trust it because they see advantages for themselves.

Smith, formerly Change Manager, described the situation before the setting up of I-bridge as “a bit chaotic. People were changing things on production machines and no one knew about it. So if something went wrong, you wouldn’t know where to look. To get a grasp of this we also introduced Change Management via assyst, focusing on the core infrastructure.”

The out-of-the-box assyst solution was selected because it had been designed from inception around ITIL, enabled integration of knowledge bases and measurement of the Service Desk’s performance, allowed Desk staff to be aware of problems before the customer rang, and opened up the potential for substantial time savings.

assyst

At first, however, her positive assessment was not shared by many of her colleagues. I-bridge ICT managers admit it was hard to convince others of the advantages and there was initially stiff internal opposition, notably from technical and financial staff.

Turnover of staff in branches means a particularly high number of problems related to new users, printers, lost passwords and core applications. Randstad uses more than 300 different software applications, largely because of the network of operating companies, although this is currently being rationalized. Staff on the main Service Desk handle 1,500 incidents a week, taking calls from employees throughout the Netherlands. Around half the incidents are fixed first time with the remainder referred to second and third line support teams specializing in areas like networks, applications, desk site support and development. Hardware maintenance for outlying branches is handled by subcontractors. Calls can be routed to suppliers via assyst.

The Benefits I-bridge managers agree that standardizing on one good ITSM solution brings a host of benefits. “In the first place I like assyst because of its functionality,” said Senior Applications Manager Erica Fliers, who led the project team which took the original decision to purchase assyst.

Dick van der Valk IT Service Department Manager Randstad

“We’ve come from a technical ICT department where people were really only interested in boxes,” Smith said. “Their motto was ‘I’m fixing this. Leave me alone!’ We had to make a big turnaround to being a service department with the direction shifted towards the customer. That’s a 180 degree turn.”

The technical department, previously accustomed to ordering its own equipment, now needs to do so through assyst. All equipment must pass through the warehouses from where it cannot be released without being logged in the system. Finance staff had their own tools and databases. “We stopped all that and now they all trust

assyst,” van der Valk said. One of the most striking examples of the benefits of sound Asset Management was recovery of more than 600 PCs. To prepare for the Service Department’s ‘User Pays’ policy, van der Valk sent all operating companies a schedule of equipment audited as being on their premises, advising they would be charged monthly for future support of each unit. The PCs which returned - representing about 10% of the total - were re-used elsewhere, achieving a substantial saving because new machines did not need to be purchased. “Only a good system like assyst could have given us the information needed to get 600 computers back,” van der Valk stated. “Now we know where all our computers are and what is on each of them, matching hardware and software.” The machines are being linked to core applications, showing which staff could be affected if a system goes down. The tool also helps ensure proper software licenses are paid and keep track of tenders issued by large organizations for contract staffing. Management also plans to use it to help negotiate with suppliers and monitor Service Level Agreements, and record problems incurred by a team of 30 working on development of new core business applications. Crystal reports are generated and distributed to operating companies’ senior managers.

The Future “Randstad’s marketing strategy is very good, but when all is said and done it just delivers the same temporary workers as its rivals could have done.” van der Valk said. “We’re in a very competitive market with low profit margins so we need to be efficient and flexible in order to prosper.” The organization has embarked on a major centralization program, with branches using Internet Explorer to access core applications - a thin client system which managers say will give staff all the information they require when and where they want it. Sharing the database will also allow better matching of a branch to an employee who lives closer to it. Payments to staff are being outsourced. The central IBM AS/400 system is being phased over to Oracle.

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Benefits Increased confidence in IT Systems and Service Management Improved IT team morale and staff retention Improved efficiency and effectiveness of IT Service Provision Rapid Return on Investment through Asset discovery Improved Management Information

case study : Randstad

B enefits & The Future “ICT now is no longer just a supporting asset in the business,” Smith said. “We are moving towards using ICT to actually carry out the business.” For instance, staff can now use Web applications to produce their own timesheets and submit CVs. ICT is giving Randstad a competitive edge. “The way we deal with our customers and our own administration methods are changing and are a lot better, and that is due to a system like assyst because we can extract from it the information we need,” van der Valk said. “We don’t use assyst to the limits yet but are taking a good look at what is inside and using it to help build up our organization. This makes my job a lot easier. I can say ‘Can we do that in assyst and, if so, how?’ That makes life simple because we don’t have any other tools and I’m not prepared to look into any other tools. I trust the assyst structure.” “The more my team know about the tool, the more they appreciate it,” Smith added. “It is helping a lot. They can see what they are getting out of it. Acceptance is growing - and with it a new professionalism.”

The Company Randstad Holding nv (www.randstadholding.com) is one of the world's largest temporary and contract staffing organizations. It is the market leader in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the south east of the United States. It is also active in Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain (where it has the second biggest market share), Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In 2003 the group generated revenues of 5.3 billion ($6.5 trillion US Dollars), employing an average of more than 206,000 people each day. Set up in 1960 by Frits Goldschmeding in a one-roomed office in Amsterdam, it now has 1,600 branches and 642 in-house locations at customer sites in Europe and North America. It is divided into three segments: mass customized staffing (Randstad, Tempo-Team and other group companies), large scale staffing (Capac and Randstad Inhouse Services) and professionals staffing (Yacht). Mass customized staffing offers a total package, including general administrative, industrial, production and secretarial staffing services as well as tailor-made concepts for specific sectors. In-house services offer clients direct access to flexible personnel management. Professionals staffing under the Yacht brand concentrates on highly qualified professionals in finance, management and information technology. Some 40% of total revenues are generated in the Netherlands where it has some 700 branches but the company plans to reduce this proportion to 30%.

“The assyst solution has acted as the key enabler for sustained annual six figure financial savings by the ability to track assets, their specification and suitability for re-use.” “assyst was the first choice of all of the stakeholders - a unanimous decision."

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