20

TrendsClient in

focus

Close to the motorway stands an

office building with company Minis

lined up in front of it. The illuminated

lobby presents a welcoming feel

and an austere design. The Ordina

office breathes IT. Various types

of workspaces offer flexibility and

room for every occasion. There are

hotspot desks for a short stay at the

office, or to quickly check your emails,

lounge areas for informal meetings or

brainstorming sessions, focus booths

for tasks that demand concentration

and privacy, and meeting rooms of all

shapes and sizes for teamwork. No

one has a set workspace. This setup

illustrates perfectly what is meant by

“Ordina gives you room”: room for

ideas, creativity and solutions.

TEXT: NIENKE DEUSS

At the service desk of Ordina Belgium

Ordina is one of the larger IT players in Belgium and is a subsidiary of a Dutch company. As an integrator, Ordina offers a diverse range of services, from ERP implementation to solutions for delivery chains, enterprise content management, business intelligence, applications and infrastructure management. It’s this diversity that makes Ordina’s service desk the flagship of the handling and allocation of customer queries – for both external customers and its own employees.

Solutions for time-consuming operating proceduresOrdina has grown extensively during the past few years. The outsourcing of help desk and application management is gaining ground and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are becoming ever more important in IT. That has consequences for the following up of customer queries and problems, which must run smoothly and remain traceable. The acquisition of a comparable tool for service management was thus not an option, but rather a necessity.

“Previously, our customers and employees could register their incidents by mail, telephone or in person at the service desk,” explains Yves Thomas, internal IT manager at Ordina. “Two employees registered all the calls and the action undertaken in a separate application. They sent individual emails to the operators, and they entered the feeback from the operators in the system. Operators and customers had no access to the system. You can imagine the consequences: the never-ending copy-pasting of emails to the application and vice versa. Above all, at the end of the month it cost the service manager days of work

to put the SLA reports together for customers, and to organize the billing service. The methodology was incredibly time-consuming and unmanageable due to the rising numer of callers.

Ordina made the decision to develop a tool using its own software experts, as Yves explains. “It’s not that simple. Even when the product is finished, you still have to continue developing and maintaining it, which is very time-consuming and costly. One of the reasons to choose this particular tool, was that TOPdesk further develops and supports the tool. Additionally, because Ordina has a competence centre based on IT

ORGANIZATION: Ordina Belgium NV

WORKS WITH: TOPdesk Enterprise 4.2

FOR: Internal IT help desk and clients

CALLERS: 2100

CLIENT IN FOCUS 21

22 CLIENT IN FOCUS

Service Management and ITIL, choosing TOPdesk was logical. TOPdesk supports the best practices of ITIL, and because of this, we can set up our service management processes according to the recommendations of ITIL”

Streamlined ImplementationIn June 2007, TOPdesk was launched at Ordina. “Together with a TOPdesk consultant, we assessed whether our processes are in keeping ¬with the software, and vice versa. We set up our processes all over again, and at the same time configured the application together with TOPdesk. Between the sessions with the consultant, we did our ‘homework’ and prepared for the next one. In this way we gained in-depth knowledge of the tool and we are now able to carry out the managment and configuration ourselves.”

When TOPdesk went live, the service desk and the operators certainly had to get used to it, but the advantages of using TOPdesk soon came to light, Yves explains. “Copy-pasting is now a thing of the past thanks to the automatic mail import. Calls are now read out automatically through email and set up as incidents in the service desk queue. Operators follow a very straightforward process, and log the action taken. Subsequently, callers are kept informed via automatic emails and, most importantly, they can follow the calls themselves in the Self Service Desk.”

For every call, the operater can log how much time he or she has spent on it. “This is automatically transferred through to our time registration system,” explains Yves. “The monthly SLA reports still require a quick check, while key performance indicators help the coordinators with the monitoring and follow up of the queues by their team members”

Far fewer calls about the status of incidentsYves talks eagerly about the use of the Self Service Desk, thanks to the strong email culture in the company. “We refer to the Self Service Desk in all of our communication. Fifty-three percent of the calls are still registered by email, but now an additional 22 percent also come through the Self Service Desk. Customers register incidents themselves, and can keep track of the progress. As a result, the number of calls about the status of incidents has declined dramatically.”

Ordina’s clients receive a report periodically, detailing the support services which have been undertaken, as Yves explains. “In the past, an employee dedicated literally days each month to the reports for customers. With nearly 1000 calls per month, it’s convenient that SLAs and the current state of affairs are virtually generated automatically and sent to the customer in TOPdesk.”

22 PERCENT OF ALL CALLS ARE REGISTERED THROUGH THE SELF SERVICE DESK. THE NUMBER OF PHONE CALLS HAS DECLINED DRAMATICALLY

WITH NEARLY 1000 CALLS PER MONTH, IT’S CONVENIENT THAT SLAS ARE VIRTUALLY GENERATED AUTOMATICALLY FROM TOPDESK

CLIENT IN FOCUS 23

Ordina set up a connection between the reports in TOPdesk and the time registration system themselves. “The operator logs the time he or she has spent on a call in TOPdesk, which is then passed through a background connection to the time registration system, and subsequently to the billing department,” he explains.

Also for Facilitites Management and HROrdina’s customers and employees use TOPdesk, among other things, to register incidents concerning their applications. All malfunctions and faults come to the attention of the service desk. The IT department is, however, not the only department that works with TOPdesk. “Initially, TOPdesk was only used for calls concerning the applications and IT infrastructure,” as Yves explains. “Now, even a leaking tap or defective

coffee machine is reported to the facilities managment in TOPdesk. Our HR department also receives calls about staff details which need to be updated.”

Along with new versionsYves is already looking forward to the release of TOPdesk 4.3. “Ordina always goes along with the newest releases and service packs. It’s reassuring that the software is developed, without you having had to look into it. The web community for TOPdesk users is also useful because you can discuss the possibilities of the package, and hear from other users how they have set up the application. In this way you discover new ways to use it, which can be helpful in your own operating environment.”

How do I link calls to one another

The question mark icon, featured on every process

page in TOPdesk 4.3, gives you access to the new Help

& Support website. Here you can fi nd the answer to all

of your questions, in the form of FAQs, manuals, Tips &

Tricks and ‘Getting started’ instructions.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T