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Background
ESAS was founded in 2000 as a pure field services organization. By 2016, it had become the market leader in IoT/ICT services in Benelux, with more than 1,500 service engineers and more than 17,500 onsite service visits per working day.
ESAS’ portfolio encompasses field services, remote services, outsourcing, automation and software. It continues to invest in its customers’ IoT/ICT service management by working on strengthening internal structures and standardizing the range of services on offer.
Standardizing to drive growth
Daniel Van Hove, Chief Commercial Officer, says: “ESAS is known for its continuous and disruptive service innovation brought by Service Cruiser. We expect the same cutting-edge innovation from our software tooling providers.”
There was a strong need for a state-of-the-art service management solution, in particular for remote services. ESAS wanted to be able to offer new customers an attractive own solution for remote services, and wanted to reduce the dependency on proprietary customer tools. This solution had to be easy to set up, with as little implementation and maintenance effort as possible. It had to be capable of serving multiple customers in a fully multi-tenant structure, with a high level of security and data segregation. In order to offer the customers a true business-oriented service catalogue and a delightful user experience, the solution had to be completely service-oriented, with a configurable self-service portal and a strong focus on request fulfilment automation to speed up the fulfilment cycle and to increase the predictability for the customers. Moreover, the performance of the user interface had to be excellent to drive user delight and efficiency.
Industry
- MSP
Location
- Belgium
Challenges
- To standardize and simplify remote service management
- Must be easy to set up and maintain
- It should be capable of serving multiple customers in a fully multi-tenant structure, with a high level of security and data segregation
- It needs to include a configurable self-service portal
- It should speed up the fulfilment cycle and increase the predictability for the customers
- It must integrate fully with ESAS software Service Cruiser
Rapid onboarding via the cloud
ESAS also decided to go for a cloud-based solution, which had to be fully scalable and 100 per cent pay-per-use-based, to reduce the investment and to prepare for rapid onboarding of new contracts and customers. ESAS also emphasized best practice, out-of-the-box-integrated service support processes in their requirements, in order to fully benefit from the experience of other service organizations.
Finally, it was mandatory to be able to fully integrate the service management solution in the strategic tooling landscape of ESAS, including the ESAS field fully automated service operations cloudbased software Service Cruiser. Nonetheless, for non-volume contracts, the service management solution had to be capable of end-to-end coverage of the request lifecycle, including field services and logistics. After a thorough selection trajectory, including a proof of concept specifically for the field services and logistics requirements, 4me clearly fulfilled all requirements and stood out from the competition.
4me was selected as the primary Service Management solution with an end-to-end request processing capability. 4me partner InfraVision advised in the selection process, by assisting ESAS with the selection methodology, and by showing the true capabilities of 4me in comparison to the competitor tool landscape. Robert Decant, CEO, says: “At the tooling side, we have been convinced by the very complete functionality in 4me, the scalability, and the multi tenancy. And, importantly, the pricing of the complete solution was also very competitive and correct. We see the partnership between Infravision, 4me and ESAS Service Cruiser further evolving in the future!”
Implementation
Once ESAS had chosen 4me as the primary Service Management solution, the implementation scope and approach were commonly agreed.
An ambitious implementation plan was set up for one of ESAS’ more complex combined remote services and field services contracts, which would cover all requirements. A successful project would open the door towards the extension for all types of similar contracts.
The implementation took place over a three-month period. The smooth implementation proved that ESAS had made the right choice in 4me. Marc Pieters, Project Manager for ESAS, says: “ESAS expected the project within the specifications, budget and agreed timeline, as our customers expect from us. 4me made this happen.”
Shortly after, ESAS started the expansion of the use of 4me in other contracts. ESAS can do the majority of the configuration by themselves, and only relies on the support and advice of InfraVision for the more advanced functionalities of 4me. ESAS is self-sufficient for the majority of configuration activities of 4me. “Thanks to the implementation of 4me, we have significantly reduced our email and Excel usage. In addition to this, we have improved our reporting based on the 4me database. Our primary goal now is to onboard more customers in 4me”, says Tom Van der Aa, Remote Services and Internal IT Manager.
Solution
- 4me allows customers and engineers to access request and request status information in real time
- Management has real-time access to 4me dashboards and reports, allowing them to control the quality and efficiency of remote service delivery
- ESAS is able to configure much of 4me internally
- 4me is easy to use
Results
- ESAS can manage the continuous growth in the remote service desk area in internal and external requests with increasing quality and efficiency gains.
Boosting efficiency and service quality
ESAS and its customers clearly grasp the benefits of the new way of working in 4me: for the go-live scope, the initial customer request information gets automatically inserted into the 4me request via the 4m REST-APIs, which drastically boosts the efficiency of the ESAS service desk and dispatching centre, and ensures the quality of the information. When the requests are completed by the field organization, the customer gets an automatic full report of the result of the intervention, which is stored in his data warehouse.
Moreover, the field engineers can access, update and complete their requests in real time via their smartphone or PC, whichever they prefer. Consequently, the SLA information in the request is up to date, and the customers get to see undisputable timestamps for the resolution of their request.
The ESAS management has real-time access to 4me dashboards and to management reports. This enables them to proactively control the quality and efficiency of the remote service delivery. “We really see the benefits of using 4me, not in the least because of the standardization of workflows, for which we are self-sufficient after a limited training. 4me gives us effective operational and managerial insights”, says Robert Decant.
Going beyond IT
As ESAS is delighted with the capabilities of 4me, it has decided to further expand the use of 4me beyond its customer contracts. 4me has since been implemented for ESAS internal IT, for fleet and for HR request management.
Tom Van der Aa says: “It’s all about standardization and processes. As we grow continuously, ESAS also needs a structured way of working in ITSM tooling and this is offered by the implementation of 4me. On top of that, the tool also fully supports our mission for maximum customer experience with user friendly interfaces. We are really happy because 4me is easy to use for our technicians as well as for the back-office dispatching team, due to its simplicity. Also, customers can step in easily due to the ease of use of the customer portal. And we feel confident about the partnership with InfraVision, which is characterized by flexibility, commitment on delivery, and speed in resolving incidents. The cooperation is really excellent!”
Robert Decant says: “We also really look forward to expanding the interaction and interfacing between 4me and IoT monitoring devices and machine learning.
Final thoughts
Bavo De Cock, Chief Business Officer, says: “Thanks to 4me, ESAS succeeds in managing the continuous growth in the remote service desk area in internal and external requests with increasing quality and efficiency gains.”
“We have been convinced by the very complete functionality in 4me, the scalability, and the multi tenancy. And, importantly, the pricing of the complete solution was also very competitive and correct. We see the partnership between Infravision, 4me and ESAS Service Cruiser further evolving in the future!”
Robert Decant, CEO, ESAS
