Zentis

Zentis is specialized in the processing and refining of fruit and other natural raw materials. Its fruit and vegetable experts are focused on transferring natural ingredients into fruit, warm flavor, cereal and vegetable preparations.

Zentis is a technology-driven, globally operating company. In close cooperation with its partners, Zentis is at the forefront of creating customized food solutions for start-ups, local customers and corporations worldwide. The company is headquartered in Aachen (Germany), active in over 50 countries, and has six production sites in Germany, Poland,

Hungary and the USA, with 2,000 employees driving customer growth

on various continents.

Zentis was looking for a reliable and future-proof service management solution. For the past ten years, they had been working with an on-premises ITSM tool that was mainly used for ticketing. There were problems with functionality and performance, and it was complicated to configure.

The team at Zentis was looking for a complete service management solution that would give them end-to-end visibility, provide better service support, and enable them to work closely together with external partners and providers as well. A cloud-based solution with more capabilities, functionalities, and much better performance.

Udo Hanke, Head of Architecture and Services at Zentis Group, explains: “We are a small IT department and wanted an easy-to-handle out-of-the-box solution that offers all the functionalities but cuts out the complexity of some of the other solutions. It also had to be an agile solution that enables us to quickly change our service offering when necessary.”

4me partner Stefanini demonstrated 4me to Zentis and they quickly saw the possibilities. Additionally, Stefanini provides the first-line support to Zentis, which is why 4me was a very interesting solution. Both Zentis and Stefanini have a 4me account, and through the trust relationship, Stefanini can easily provide services like resolving incidents, Zentis Knowledge Management, or executing parts of the change or workflow, while maintaining full security GDPR compliancy.

Industry

Food & Beverage

Location

Zentis is headquartered in Aachen (Germany), is active in over 50 countries, and has six production sites in Germany, Poland, Hungary and the USA.

Challenges

Zentis was looking for an easy-to-use and modern service management solution that would give them end-to-end visibility, provide better service support, and enable them to work with external partners and providers as well.

Solution

ITSM, ESM

“Everything is so easy to see in 4me; you don’t usually have this much transparency. I really like the real-time reporting and dashboards; the out-of-the-box reports are already so detailed that there’s no need to create new ones. They help me to stay in control of service quality and cost and see right away where services can be optimized.”

Roman Hautermans
Service Level Manager at Zentis Group

The implementation was done in collaboration with 4me partner Stefanini. 4me was implemented in December 2021, all according to plan. The actual implementation took 2 to 3 weeks, and the team spent approximately two months in advance of the implementation, preparing and discussing what should be in the service catalog.

It was decided to implement the basic services (around 60% of all services) first. The focus was on the support and getting Stefanini implemented. The team continues to add services and functionalities, which can be done very fast.

Udo: “Stefanini supported us very well; everything went very smoothly from beginning to the end. There were no hick-ups during the implementation of the systems.”

Maarten de Ridder – ITSM Architect and Practice Consulting Team Lead at Stefanini: “The collaboration with 4me is always great. We appreciate that if we would like to add something in 4me, we can always propose it, and 4me will consider it. In a couple of cases, the requested functionality was implemented in just a few weeks or the next release. Like mailing from outside a ticket, for example, or saving some personalized views as default. These are features that have been added after Zentis requested them. Not all tool vendors do that.”

Udo adds: “We need partners who have the know-how and who we can work together with as a real team. Partners like Stefanini and 4me, who understand our needs and act upon them.”

Stefanini and the team at Zentis did some training sessions for the specialists to get them going on the tool and organized 1–2-hour training sessions for the staff.

Request Fulfilment
Incident Management
Knowledge management
Config & Asset Management
Service Level Management
Workflow automation
Project management (USA)
Problem management (planned)

SSO, SCIM.

This was all very easy to implement. Stefanini had planned to help but found that the team at Zentis had already done it all themselves.

Adoption among the younger generation has been good. For the older generation, who had been working with the former system for 15 years, it took a while before they got used to it, but once they did, they clearly saw the benefits.

Udo explains: “I always say, just do it and learn. Now with 4me, we have a test system, so try it, use it, click on a button, and see what happens. Once they do, they see how easy and intuitive it is and all the benefits 4me offers. Streamlined workflows, all the different functionalities, out-of-the-box stock reports, and dashboards you can create yourself. These are possibilities we didn’t have before.”

Currently, all the different IT departments are in 4me and some of the other departments, like QA and HR, have already shown interest in 4me as well.

Everyone likes 4me’s service-centric approach. Now the user has a request or issue, and from there, it is decided in 4me which team should solve it. The user doesn’t necessarily need to know which team they need to solve their issue, as long as it is solved.

Udo says: “The tool delivers everything we need. We are very happy that Stefanini introduced us to 4me and helped us get the system up and running. And I like the collaboration with 4me, who are always there for you when you need them. We actually get together with the vendor, which isn’t the case with all vendors. With 4me, we always have easy access and quick answers.”

The feedback of Zentis users is very good so far. Overall, the feeling is that Zentis now has a higher level of service maturity, with seamless internal and external collaboration, resulting in improved customer satisfaction and increased productivity.

The service-centric approach enables Zentis to adapt quickly to its internal customers’ needs by leveraging the dynamic platform and service catalog.

Roman Hautermans, Service Level Manager at Zentis Group: “Everything is so easy to see in 4me; you don’t usually have this much transparency. I really like the real-time reporting and dashboards; the out-of-the-box reports are already so detailed that there’s no need to create new ones. I am now able to keep control of service cost and quality, and see if services can be optimized.”

“Coming from an on-premises system to a cloud system, I really appreciate the performance of the 4me platform. And the automation rules are also a very powerful feature, they are very easy to set up and manage.”

“The fast and easy integration of external vendors (like Stefanini) into the 4me system is also a great feature. Once account trusts are established, different organizations can securely work together in 4me. It is easy to monitor the SLAs for external vendors as well.”

4me can support complex chains of dynamic sourcing and the team can’t wait to see the long-term benefits of all the streamlined workflows. The 4me Self Service portal will certainly reduce the number of tickets in the future.

“All in all, the implementation was a success. I am glad we chose 4me over the other solutions we looked at. It is much less complex, faster and cheaper, with the same or even better functionalities, and allows us to add new services with agility.”

Roman Hautermans
Service Level Manager at Zentis Group