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The Province of East Flanders is a regional authority and governmental organization. East Flanders is a Flemish province and one of the ten Belgian provinces. Its customers are citizens, organizations, and stakeholders in East Flanders, including around 20 educational institutions.
The Province’s IT department supports internal customers in the broadest sense of the word. Schools and other policy services are also customers, but citizens aren’t. They have around 1,700 users spread over 45 locations in East Flanders. This means IT faces complex challenges and very diverse processes.
Since 2006, the IT department had been using a rudimentary ITIL solution whereby everything was considered an incident. As this solution didn’t provide enough opportunity to expand services, they were looking for a new one; a single, well-developed, and future-proof enterprise service management (ESM) platform.
The team wanted to go further than just defining the ITIL processes and focus more on the service management part. They were looking to improve their services and increase efficiency by empowering the users with an accessible and easy-to-use self-service portal with a solid knowledge base; a well-structured customer and service-centric solution with clear workflows, tasks, and responsibilities.
The team looked at 4me, Ivanti, and TOPdesk. After careful consideration, they chose 4me because of the agility of the system, the user-friendly Self Service portal and excellent knowledge management, and the possibility to set up different service domains with seamless collaboration and exchange of information and knowledge within a limited and defined group where necessary.
Paul Fostier, IT Director at Province of East Flanders, says:
Daphne Werrebrouck, ITSM Project Manager at Province
of East Flanders, adds: “We also like the free weekly enhancements and upgrades. And the possibility to propose enhancements ourselves via the partner. It is great to see that some of our suggested improvements have actually been implemented.”
The combination of the 4me tool with local support by 2Grips works well. The tool delivers everything we need from an enterprise service management tool and 2Grips is familiar with the Belgian market and understands us very well. As a result, we receive excellent honest advice and get challenged where necessary.
Industry
- Government
Location
- East Flanders, Belgium
Challenges
- The Province of East Flanders required a new future-proof ESM solution to help them move from incident management to true enterprise service management on one single platform.
Solution
- ITSM/ESM
“We are impressed by the scalability of 4me; we are using the platform more and more throughout the organization resulting in true enterprise service management instead of just IT. Everyone is amazed at how easy it is to join and use and the efficiency it brings.”
Daphne Werrebrouck
ITSM Project Manager
The initial implementation, including the initial design and defining the services, took approximately three months.
As it was an entirely new way of working, the team agreed on a phased roll-out. The first phase included CMBD, Request Management and the 4me Self Service portal, followed by the other processes and workflows, CSI (continual service improvement), knowledge management, change management, and currently also demand management.
Paul: “As we progress, we continually learn and adjust. Experience adjustments sometimes take time; these are things we hadn’t anticipated beforehand. But the tool is never an issue; the tool can deliver anything we want.”
Daphne adds, “2grips played an important role in helping us to manage the change. Showing us where the gaps are and what we can improve. It was a good collaboration whereby we both felt comfortable challenging each other when necessary.”
Together with 2Grips, the team explained to the specialists why it had been decided to change and how it worked. New colleagues in the IT department all receive online, face-to-face technical training.
A simple explanation of how the Self Service portal works for the end user can be found on the intranet. In addition, the team communicated the reasons for wanting to adopt this new way of working and that it improves their service delivery.
- Request Fulfilment
- Incident Management
- Configuration and Asset Management
- Service Level Management
- Change Management
- Release Management
- Project Management
- Problem Management
- Supplier Management
Release management and project management are not used much yet, but there are plans to do so in the future.
- SSCM
- Active Directory
- SSO
- Snow (for software discovery)
- Planon (for locations)
The province started using 4me in May 2019. The new way of working was accepted relatively quickly. The users appreciate the fact that they can now do much more themselves. Right from the start, the end user could no longer send requests per email and only phone when something blocked them from doing their work.
The project was called ‘Its.4me’. That is how end users and other service providers look at it; what can it do 4me? Users use the ‘It’s me’ button to gain entry to the system.
Daphne: “The whole project is considered a success because of its rapid implementation and great adoption; any initial resistance faded quickly once people started using 4me.
The Province of East Flanders now handles 12,000 tickets a year. IT, HR, Facility Services, General Support Service, the Patrimony department, Recreation Services (for inventory management), and Educational Institutions are all in 4me. In addition, schools also use the Province’s IT services. It is quite a complex setup, but it works really well, including the interaction between the different domains.
Daphne: “4me is very approachable. The Customer Advisory Board (CAB) meetings are great, for example. We like to participate in those. They are all about co-creation between customers and the makers of the tool, which is unique. 4me listens to customers and their needs, and we are informed about upcoming changes.”
“And then there’s the yearly Connect event where we get additional training and the chance to do some networking.”
Every three months, the province has a meeting with 2grips about the product and the state of affairs. They will discuss matters for improvement, what needs to be done and what has been forwarded to 4me. Any new suggestions discussed in that meeting will also be forwarded to 4me.
Paul: “Everything hangs together now, there are no silos, it all comes together in 4me, one transparent ecosystem, reducing service complexity and improving user experience.”
“With 4me, we have the processes under control, can handle more work within the same time frame, and have much better insight into what we are doing; we are working more effectively.”
Daphne adds: “End user satisfaction with 99% positive reviews is incredibly high. If there is a negative review, the end user is called and asked why. Eventually, we see that most of the negative thumbs end in a positive thumb.”
Paul: “In a relatively short time, we have taken the step from incident management to real service management, from ad hoc to structured service management; from firefighting to providing proactive service.”
“It is never finished, of course; IT is always on the move. We take our time and adjust based on experience and progressive insight; we do everything step by step (CSI).”
Daphne: “We are impressed by the scalability of 4me; we are using the platform more and more throughout the organization resulting in true enterprise service management instead of just IT. Everyone is amazed at how easy it is to join and use and the efficiency it brings.”
“Everything hangs together now, there are no silos, it all comes together in 4me, one transparent ecosystem, reducing service complexity and improving user experience.”
Paul Fostier
IT Director
Province of East Flanders
