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MH Teplárenský holding (MHTH) is a Slovak energy holding consisting of six power plants for heating and heat distribution. The different plants operate cogeneration units in six district cities in Slovakia. State-owned MH Management is the only shareholder of all six plants and has decided to consolidate and transform the six companies into one to improve overall efficiency.
During the first phase of the transformation, they will develop and implement shared services across the plants. All six accounting systems, for example, will be consolidated into one information system. The same goes for the HR and payroll systems, with all six and their different vendors consolidated into one information system. Other systems, such as billing and CRM, will also be consolidated. MHTH will provide these services to each of the six plants from one location. Everything in the organization will be centralized except for production.
MHTH hired a new and experienced IT team with a commercial background to transform their service management. They were involved from the beginning, assessed everything, and defined their strategy.
From an IT perspective, the goal was to build one common data network, consolidate core and non-core information systems, and set up IT processes to be able to support all the business requirements. MHTH wanted to start with an ITSM tool to help them manage the processes.
The existing situation was insufficient from an ITIL process support point of view. Only two out of six plants were running ticketing systems, one of them open source, and these systems did not support the requirements at all. IT service maturity level of all plants was poor and in desperate need of improvement. If staff needed something, they would just write an email or call.
As there was no common data network and all plants had internet connections, MHTH was looking for an appropriate cloud (SaaS) solution that supported local language, ITIL best practices, and an intuitive interface (strong UX). In the cloud, everyone can connect to the ITSM solution, the users as well as the IT teams of all six plants.
Aside from 4me, ServiceNow, Jira, and BMC were invited to participate in the RFP. There was a list of requirements, the critical ones being: SaaS, localization with local language support, ITIL compliance, a strong reporting engine, integration into AAD, SSO supported, CMDB functionality, and local support by the provider.
Norbert Skakala, CIO at MHTH, had an excellent experience working with 4me partner OMNICOM, who introduced MHTH to 4me. Norbert says: “4me met all the technical requirements, and at an attractive price. We saw the short demo, tested the solution and decided to go for 4me. I can say that so far, we are very happy with our choice.”
The fact that MHTH gets local support from a trusted partner such as OMNICOM was another big plus.
Industry
- Energy & Utilities
Location
- Slovakia
Challenges
- MHTH was consolidating six power plants across the country and was looking for a future-proof IT service management solution to centralize all IT services.
Solution
- ITSM
“4me is by far the best service management tool I have ever used. It has a very strong user interface, excellent reporting functionality, and is quick to deploy. And, as it is a cloud service, I do not need special resources. We are able to do many things ourselves.”
Norbert Skakala
CIO at MHTH
The base implementation was rapid and agile. The collaboration with OMNICOM and 4me worked well. The initial base was implemented in a time frame of 40 working days, all according to plan.
Karina Rybarova, Head of IT Governance & IT Process Manager at MHTH, explains: “The product is not fully implemented yet because, in our case, deployment is not only a technical matter but mostly about a change of culture and the adoption process. Most of the IT teams and users at the different plants were not used to using ticketing systems. It’s about a change of mindset. That’s the most difficult thing to tackle. Once they start using 4me, there is no problem. The user interface is intuitive, and the reporting is fantastic.”
The team decided to do the implementation step by step, starting with request and incident management, followed by program and change management. They will implement more functionalities soon. One of the most challenging parts was creating the service catalog and getting information from all the plants. Karina explains:
During the implementation, the MHTH team had weekly calls with OMNICOM. Karina: “They were always very accessible and helpful.”
Online training for the IT staff as well as users (through a webinar that was joined by many users from all six plants) was provided by the local 4me partner OMNICOM. And the IT Governance team prepared educational videos in collaboration with OMNICOM. It was very helpful for staff to see how they should handle a ticket in 4me and for the users to see what they could do if they needed some help from IT and how to raise a ticket.
The training made things very clear, and now the team needs to spend more time educating people to use 4me and not fall back into their old habits. It is not just about how to use 4me – 4me is user-friendly and easy to use – but also about training them to use a tool.
- Request Fulfillment
- Incident Management
- Configuration and Asset Management
- Service Level Management
- Change Management
- Release Management (planned)
SSO, Active Directory, SCCM (planned)
The launch went really well. The main challenge was the change of culture; for people, IT staff as well as business users, to accept the change and adopt the new system. Karina says:
All IT staff and 750 of the 950 employees (not all users have computers) are now using 4me. Although MHTH has one IT service catalog for all six plants, users will see only the relevant services when they go to the Self Service portal. It is tailored to each individual user.
Karina says: “The workflows in 4me are fantastic and easy to create ourselves.”
The on and offboarding process from the IT workplace was the first workflow they set up. They set up a special dynamic form that the HR colleagues can fill in. Automation rules were also set up; these rules are launched before the workflow starts.
Karina says: “There are many benefits to having these workflows automated. First, IT doesn’t forget to deliver something; all the necessary tasks are included in the workflow for each onboarding process. Second, you don’t need to spend time on administrative tasks; nobody needs to decide to assign tasks. Third, they only get assigned the relevant tasks for the location of the new employee. It is a pretty advanced workflow with all the automation rules.”
It is not easy to compare data to how it was before, especially with the overall consolidation of the six plants going on, Karina explains. The project is only a small part of the company’s total transformation project, which aims for a new organizational structure, information services consolidation, business process changes, and a company culture change.
Karina says: “We have achieved all the targets we set out to achieve. We now offer shared IT services based on the skills of IT teams across the country; we’ve seen a quick deployment of 4me; good adoption of all the basic operation processes in 4me – incident management, request fulfillment, problem management and change management; and we now have great visibility and reporting.”
Norbert says: “For me, the reporting functionality is fantastic. Finally, we are not blind anymore. It is very easy to extract information from the system. 4me provides me with real-time data and all the reporting I need.”
“For IT services, we now have one central service catalog for all six plants. We are planning to set up a cost model for each service. Each plant has its own P&L, so they will be allocated the cost for what they use. The visibility and reporting in 4me, with its strong focus on service cost and quality, will certainly help us achieve this.”
He explains that the information will be used to improve the service delivery and user experience, and the fact that everything is transparent also means that IT can show trustworthy numbers to management. This will make it easier to obtain more IT investment.
The IT department receives about 1,000 requests per month. It is in the process of adding more knowledge articles so that more issues can be solved in the Self Service portal. Applying this Shift-Left principle is easy to do in 4me and will save a lot of time.
The chatbot, for example, is now mostly used to set up a new ticket. As soon as there are more knowledge articles in the system, the chatbot will also be able to provide more advice. The chatbot can communicate in Slovak. The language features in 4me are very important to MHTH.
Norbert says: “4me is by far the best service management tool I have ever used. It has a very strong user interface, excellent reporting functionality, and is quick to deploy. And, as it is a cloud service, I do not need special resources. We are able to do many things ourselves.”
Karina adds: “The whole project was a success. The collaboration with 4me and local support via OMNICOM worked very well. The whole process was focused, quick, agile, and with total quality management. We are very pleased with the outcome.”
Other departments such as Facility Management, Procurement, and HR are already asking if they can join the 4me platform. Once the tool is established and in the DNA of the users, MHTH will see how it rolls it out to other functions and departments, moving to true Enterprise Service Management.
“It’s all about information; without data, you can only offer an opinion. Now we have excellent visibility of everything. I can see the service performance and make improvements based on the reporting. Based on the measurements, we can set up SLAs. We are measuring satisfaction, and that seems to be good. From now on, we can measure and evaluate and compare.”
Norbert Skakala
CIO at MHTH
