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Leading in Construction
Leyrer + Graf is one of Austria’s top 20 construction firms. Its core competence is structural and civil engineering. Through its subsidiaries, Leyrer + Graf is also active in the fields of timber construction and precast concrete. The company currently employs about 1,500 people and has 15 permanent facilities in Austria and the Czech Republic.
Virtual Collaboration
The IT staff of Leyrer + Graf is spread out over three locations: Gmünd, Horn, and Schwechat (near Vienna’s international airport). Because the support specialists do not see each other on a daily basis, it is important that they can work together effectively as a virtual team.
From the beginning it was clear that the IT service management solution would have to act as an enabler of remote collaboration. “We had already considered two other service management solutions when we discovered 4me” recalls Christoph Manhart, Team Lead for Support for Leyrer + Graf in Horn.
“The more we learned about 4me, the more we realized that its focus on providing a ready-to-use environment that requires minimal configuration and which is fast and easy to use, offered a perfect match with our key requirements.”
“We have a people-oriented corporate culture,” continues Christoph Manhart. “This is reflected in the tools we select for our people. These tools need to help them be successful in their jobs. When we saw how much attention the developers of 4me paid to the development of the user interface, we knew that we had found the tool we were looking for.”
Industry
- Construction
Location
- Austria
Challenges
- The IT department is made up of specialists that work at different locations
- A more service-oriented approach, as prescribed by the ITIL best practices, was desired
Cloud
“Like most Austrian companies, we were hesitant about a cloud solution,” says Christoph Manhart. “The advantages that 4me offers, however, caused us to reevaluate our views.”
Implementation
The initial scope of the implementation at Leyrer + Graf was limited to:
Service Portfolio
Incident Management
Change Management (limited standard changes)
The entire implementation took 8 consulting days to complete. These consulting days were spread out over a 1-month period. Lester Heath from techwork was the lead consultant for this project. “Implementing 4me is different from implementing a traditional ITSM toolbox application,” explains Lester Heath. “Rather than completing a nearly finished ITSM application, you can focus immediately on what is relevant for the customer, such as the definition of the services and their service level targets.”
Training
The lead consultant provided training to the IT specialists during a single 2-hour GoToMeeting session. More advanced training was provided to the 4me account administrator of Leyrer + Graf. The training sessions were completed as an integral part of the implementation project. “The training went smoothly,” says Lester Heath. “The specialists quickly grasped the fundamental concepts behind 4me and soon felt comfortable.”
Integrations
During the implementation project, the single sign-on (SSO) integration with Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) was activated. In addition, an interface was built to ensure that updates in Active Directory automatically update the people data in 4me.
Self Service and Email
End-users can already submit requests using the Self Service interface of 4me. “We only recently started to promote this new possibility,” admits Christoph Manhart. “Already about 10% of the requests are coming in from Self Service. Our users also like the ability to submit requests by sending an email to the service desk. These email messages are automatically converted into requests. About 25% of the requests come in via email. The remaining 65% are still submitted via telephone.”
Request Fulfilment and Change Management
“Over the next few months we shall start to roll out Request Fulfilment and Service Catalog Management,” says Christoph Manhart. “In addition, we are going to populate and maintain the CMDB and expand the use of Change Management to nonstandard changes.”
Solution
- 4me implemented to allow IT specialists to work together virtually in a responsive and user-friendly IT service management environment
- Prepared the Leyrer + Graf service catalog in 4me to facilitate the switch to a service-oriented approach
Results
- The IT specialist are able to collaborate more efficiently with end-users and with each other
- All support activities are tracked for each service, making it easier for management to assign resources to the areas where they will provide the greatest benefit to the organization
“Now organizations can get mature ITIL processes in less than 50% of the time this takes with toolbox applications. 4me is disrupting the ITSM industry in a very positive way.”
Lester Heath, techwork
