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Need for Efficiency
As a manufacturer of high-tech machines, Vandewiele attaches great importance to innovation. The entire company is highly automated, and almost all its employees depend on well-functioning IT. Vandewiele’s extensive IT team receives dozens of questions from colleagues every day: about PCs, software, printers, cyber security and so on. In order to answer these questions more efficiently and quickly, Vandewiele needed to streamline the process.
Laurent says: “We had an ITSM (IT Service Management) system for some time, but it was cumbersome and not really user-friendly. As a result, it was rarely used. Our end users preferred to call the IT service desk or send an email. They felt they could be helped more quickly if they contacted us directly than if they logged a ticket into our system. This resulted in lengthy email chains before a question reached the right person. That’s why we started looking for a more efficient alternative.”
Service Integration and Management
Vandewiele has been working closely with IT partner Savaco for many years, both in support of the IT service and in product development. “It is thanks to Savaco that we were able to track down 4me, and we decided to join forces with Savaco and 4me to optimize our IT services”, says Laurent.
4me is a SaaS solution for Enterprise Service Management, which streamlines internal services within companies and brings everything together in a single application. 4me works like an internal help button that allows users to ask questions to the IT department, as well as other centralized service domains such as HR, Facilities, and so on. In addition, 4me offers Service Integration and Management (SIAM). This makes it possible to optimize not only the internal service delivery, but also the collaboration with external partners.
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
Smooth Integration
Vandewiele called on Savaco to help integrate 4me within the company. A workshop determined how the structure of the system could best be set up, which services would be integrated in 4me and how the processes would run. “4me is a SaaS application that offers a lot of standard functionality, but you can also define how you build your system. We looked at the system from the end user’s point of view: What questions can a user have? How will they look for information? We wanted to focus on user-friendliness right from the start,” explains Laurent.
Savaco took care of the implementation. “The advantage of such a SaaS application is that you can implement it very quickly once you have determined how you will build the system. We spent about a week setting up the basis of our 4me tool,” Laurent adds.
Shift Left
In a short period of time, Vandewiele was able to really appreciate the benefits of 4me. “We can avoid sending emails back and forth between the user who has an issue and the IT support staff asking for more details. Moreover, with a number of frequently asked questions, users can solve the problem themselves based on the information we make available in 4me. In the service management methodology, this is called shift left: we encourage users to find the solution to simple problems independently by sharing our knowledge with them. This frees our team to tackle more complex questions,” Laurent explains.
Expansion to Foreign Branches and New Services
In a second step, 4me has been implemented in several foreign branches of Vandewiele. “Several sites have limited IT teams and some work independently to keep the IT environment at their site running, but of course they are also in contact with us at head office. Separate 4me environments have been set up for them. Users in these branches ask questions to their own IT department. If it concerns matters that are supported centrally, the question can always be escalated to the central IT organization in Marke. In turn, we can pass on questions to the service desk of our IT partner Savaco via 4me at the head office. This ability to optimize the cooperation with external partners is one of the major advantages of 4me,” Laurent says.
Now that 4me is in full use for IT, Vandewiele is also looking into whether additional services can be included in the system. Laurent explains: “We are now working hard to integrate Facilities into our 4me environment, so users can submit questions about the buildings at our head office to the right people via 4me. From problems with the lift, to a meeting room that needs to be cleaned, to questions about the parking spaces, all these will soon be reported via 4me.”
Users Satisfied
When asked whether he would recommend 4me to other companies, Laurent answers enthusiastically: “Definitely! For us, 4me offers a lot of advantages and I’m sure other companies can also make their IT support more efficient with 4me. The tool helps everyone in IT concentrate on their work.”
“Thanks to 4me, everyone knows what needs to be done first and which things can wait a little longer. This way, everyone in our team can easily save an extra hour every day.”
But even more important than the efficiency gains, according to Laurent, is the positive feedback from end users. “A good customer experience is crucial and our customers are our employees. We see that colleagues are logging more and more tickets via 4me, and we regularly receive compliments from users about how easily they have been helped. These things prove to us that 4me has been well received and that our users are satisfied with it.”
Vandewiele is also satisfied with the cooperation with Savaco and with 4me. “4me is very open to suggestions or comments from customers. For example, it has already made improvements to the system based on feedback. Also, the contact with Savaco has always gone smoothly,” Laurent explains.
Vandewiele continues to refine the setup of 4me within the company to further optimize its services. “In this way, we want to further define the various workflows within the system. We also want to share more knowledge in 4me for our users, in line with our shift-left strategy, and offer even more independence to solve problems.”
About Vandewiele
Vandewiele, headquartered in Kortrijk (Marke), is market leader in the design and manufacture of high-tech machines and solutions for the textile industry. The company produces machines for the entire production process: from making yarns to the final finishing of the textile products. Vandewiele employs 3,000 people worldwide, including some 700 at its headquarters.
“A lot can still be done, but in the meantime we are already reaping the benefits from more efficient IT services. I can therefore strongly recommend 4me to fellow IT managers, just do it!”
Laurent Evrard. Vandewiele
