Axios Systems: Swisscom Itil Itsm Case Study

Customer Success Story

From trouble-ticketing to modern Service Management Cutting-edge technology is the life support of the Swiss telecommunications group, Swisscom. When its landline division decided to upgrade its IT Service Platforms Operations department accordingly, a choice was made in favor of the de facto industry standard, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and the entirely ITIL-based IT Service Management (ITSM) solution,

www.swisscom.ch Industry Sector: Telecommunications The introduction of assyst by Axios Systems has brought the following business benefits to Swisscom:

assyst from Axios Systems.

The organization Swisscom is the leading telecommunications company in Switzerland with some 17,000 full-time employees. It provides all of Switzerland with comprehensive services and products for mobile, landline and IP (Internet Protocol) based speech and data communication. Five million mobile customers, 3.7 million landline customers and more than 1.4 million broadband customers receive services from Swisscom every day. Under the brand name Bluewin, Swisscom offers comprehensive Internet and broadband services for the residential market. As the latest service offering, Swisscom offers Internet-based television, radio and video services on-demand under the name of Bluewin TV for more than 65,000 customers.

..ITIL-based IT Service Management in one single solution

The Swisscom division Netz & IT (NIT) with almost 4,300 employees (including external), is one of the largest companies within the Swisscom group. NIT offers all net and IT services in a one-stop shop and is responsible for IT platforms as well as landline and mobile structures. It plans, builds and maintains net infrastructure and sells its net and other services to resellers.

..Integrated and intuitive process flows; solution support for transition from process to process

Two-hundred employees in the IT Service Platforms Operations department within Swisscom Netz & IT act as the expert escalation point for support calls from customers regarding IT services, which are being captured by the Swisscom Customer Care (CUC) department.

..Sarbanes-Oxley compliant change recording ..Improved information flow and faster resolution of support calls ..Enhanced trend analysis and reporting capabilities ..Open data model and standard interfaces, which enable easy application integration

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The challenge In order to guarantee the stability of the technical infrastructure and to deliver a continuously improving service to its one million plus broadband customers, the IT Service Platforms Operations department introduced ITIL Service Support processes two years ago. To support the activities resulting from these new processes, the department chose Axios Systems and its ITSM solution,

assyst.

The background As in all service organizations, the IT Service Platforms Operations team at Swisscom was under enormous pressure to justify performance and resources. It was difficult to accurately record service cost and delivery. Furthermore, in some instances, entire processes or relevant process documentation was missing, or in disjointed, individual modules.

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“As a partner, Axios Systems has shown competence and flexibility in this project.”

Martin Blocher System Owner

Customer Success Story Swisscom decided to introduce systematic Service Management, which was accompanied by the step-by-step introduction of the ITIL process framework. The first two priorities were the compatibility of the change handling process in accordance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirements (a US law for organizational financial and accounting disclosure regulations) and the systematic collation of hardware and software asset information. Therefore, the original solution specification was also focused on the Change and Asset & Configuration Management functionalities of the short-listed software solutions.

assyst by Axios Systems impressed Swisscom not only with its functional fit with the stipulated requirements, but also with its potential to ultimately deliver the entire spectrum of ITIL disciplines in one integrated solution. “As a partner, Axios Systems has shown competence and flexibility in this project. Axios Systems is 100% focused on IT Service Management and has understood and delivered our special requirements and wishes,” states Martin Blocher, System Owner at Swisscom.

ITIL step-by-step The first ITIL disciplines implemented were Configuration Management and Change Management in order to meet the company-wide deadline for compatibility with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirements. A crucial component was the systematic auditability of all changes. With the help of

assyst Change Management, approximately 4,000 changes are now logged annually and reported weekly with Crystal Reports. Changes are divided into three categories: • Category 0: one service affected and no impact to end customer • Category 1: one service affected with impact to end customers • Category 2: several services/systems affected; the Change Advisory Board, structured according to ITIL, is called





These can now be analyzed more effectively than before with regards to their potential impact for IT and the organization as a whole. “A new awareness has come about in the organization with regards to how changes affect systems, and all changes to the IT infrastructure are now being logged systematically,” Blocher says. Incident Management was implemented as a second step to coincide with the launch of the product Bluewin TV in the marketplace. The aim was to capture the support calls of the new TV customers consistently until resolution was reached by the IT Service Platforms Operations. A key component for Swisscom here was the fully-automated interface, which Axios developed with Vantive, the CRM tool in use. One thousand five-hundred employees in the CUC division deal with customer queries, which can vary from a question regarding a mobile phone service to a question about subscriptions to an unsuccessful change of an e-mail account. In the case of support calls reporting service disruption, a number of supplier systems are in use. Around two percent of such calls are escalated as Incidents every month to the teams within IT Service Platforms Operations.

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Customer Success Story Due to its unique integration capability, assyst is the only system, with which an Incident can automatically be created with a single button click from within Vantive. The data required is automatically imported from Vantive. The incident is assigned by the interface to the correct resolution group within IT Service Platforms Operations and populated with the correct service information. CUC employees can view the Incident Status as well as all Incident details at any given time, without having to open up the assyst application. The benefits, such as time saved and improved customer service, were immediately obvious and have generated much positive feedback from the CUC team. The ability to logically connect events is regarded as particularly valuable. For example, in the case of a serious disruption, a problem record is automatically created to establish the root cause and all related calls can be linked to this record. The CUC employees can see the links as well as the underlying problem record and therefore are able to give the customer status updates. After the problem has been resolved by IT Service Delivery, all linked Incidents are marked. The CUC employee informs the end customer and closes the Incident in Vantive, which in turn closes the Incident in

assyst.

Vantive CRM Switch from lookup hit list to event detail

Finance Repository

Lookup – free text search engine

assyst Vantive Interface

Crystal Report Webserver

assyst CMDB Incidents, Changes, Problems, CIs, Services, Organization, Users, Suppliers, ...

Office

Password Change & Reset Utility

assyst Windows Client

assyst Web Client

“We learned ITIL through the assyst solution.”

HR Repository

Home (RAS) MS Terminal Server

Interaction between people and application

“With the help of the strongly ITIL-based processes of assyst, we can now show our customers that we employ Best Practice IT Service Management guidelines.”

The diagram depicts the connections and interactions between assyst and the various applications such as the Vantive interface and the free text search engine Lookup. “With the help of assyst Incident Management, we can now benchmark ourselves against other organizational units, which are involved with products of Swisscom IT Service Platforms Operations products. Another great advantage is the ability to use Incident Management with minimal configuration effort, both in terms of process and application, for other products or services of the IT Service Platforms Operations,” Blocher reports. Problem Management was introduced in a third phase across the organization, whereas Asset & Configuration Management was started in parallel from the outset with a comprehensive asset audit project and was continuously updated and developed throughout. Finally, Service Level Management and Release Management will be implemented next.

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“Axios is very customeroriented – that is a very important aspect for us. The contact and cooperation begins and ends with the customer. Axios has the same attitude. We feel in good hands with Axios.”

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Customer Success Story assyst is that we can establish links very easily, not only in the assyst data model, but also within the assyst application and work with them. This makes every “One of the biggest benefits in

user’s work considerably easier,” Blocher says.

Further benefits In addition to the original Windows client, Swisscom also implemented the latest version of the

assyst Web client. The choice of system is up to each user. The overwhelming result was that, only a few months after the introduction, 90% of the users had switched to the Web client. In particular, the users praise the improved user-friendliness with equal functionality. The user interface was designed by Swisscom, in cooperation with Axios, to be ergonomic and therefore has high user acceptance.

“Another advantage is the openness of the software solution, which allows us to integrate it very easily.”

Martin Blocher System Owner

Furthermore, Axios Systems has developed a free text search engine following suggestions from Swisscom. Topical search terms are entered into a Google-style interface and the required event can be clicked on from a hit list and automatically opened in assyst. The functional architecture is based on indexed data tables. The search for data objects is performed against the index, so that all event information in entry fields, as well as free text fields and attachments can be completely searched. “We could not live without this search engine anymore,” admits Blocher. “This functionality has improved the acceptance of the application even further.” The customer feedback was so convincing that the Axios product management team has included this functionality into the next version of

assyst as a standard feature.

Swisscom is very happy with the choice of Axios Systems and assyst. “We have gotten to know Axios Systems as a dynamic and flexible organization that is accommodating to our special requirements and wishes,” Blocher says. “Another advantage is the openness of the software solution, which allows us to integrate it very easily.” Blocher continues, “We have achieved a complete ITIL implementation in only 24 months and we are very proud of that. assyst and Axios have helped us along the way, which was not always easy. This solution, which is closely aligned to ITIL, allows a very precise mapping of processes and their interdependencies. The experts at Axios have implemented our special requests with great commitment.” “Together we have achieved something both parties can be proud of,” says Blocher.

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