» Newell Rubbermaid
» Castle Computer Services
» Logic Systems Management
» Tube Lines
» Metronet
» British Gypsum
» Jarvis
» The Tussauds Group
Products:
» HEAT Self Service » iHeat » HEAT
Industry:
Consumer Goods
Organisation:
Newell Rubbermaid is a huge, $5.7 billion global business, and is the name behind dozens of famous brands such as PaperMate, Sharpie, Expo, Dymo, Waterman, Irwin, Lenox and Rubbermaid. The company has 30 sites in Europe alone, covering 18 countries and has 2,500 employees speaking a myriad of different languages – all of whom turn to a central Data Centre Service Desk run by Glen Foster and powered by HEAT and supported by CRMworks.
Solution:
One of the major challenges faced by Glen and his team is communication issues. With up to 260 queries coming in from across the continent every day, some smart thinking was required to ensure it could provide top quality support to all users. The solution was developed in house with CRMworks’ assistance; a webpage where users can insert their queries in their own natural language whilst background translation takes place to ensure that Service Desk operatives can log and allocate calls appropriately.
Glen Foster explains the process: “After a call is logged it may be dealt with by the central service team if it’s in English, otherwise it will be allocated direct to one of the 30 local support teams to be dealt with in the appropriate language. The rules database in HEAT then comes into its own as it ensures that incidents are routed appropriately and we can follow everything with an ITIL framework. Detailed reports are created through the combination of HEAT and Cognos software so we have full visibility of all issues and have the ability to track and audit all calls through to conclusion.”
Glen is confident and happy with the current solution; visibility and audit trail reporting was one of the key reasons the Service Desk decided to work with CRMworks to install HEAT. The Service Desk doesn’t work to SLAs but does employ user-allocated KPIs to set response and close times for all service desk tickets.
“Newell Rubbermaid is an extremely dynamic organisation which changes rapidly,” Glen explains. “We need to be able to report in detail about any breakdowns and problems and HEAT gives us the granularity in reporting to examine audit trails and continue to improve our service. Often, there are genuine issues to resolve and by using Heat we are able to spot issues early on so we can resolve them promptly before they affect multiple users. ”
Before deciding on HEAT, Newell Rubbermaid examined all the market’s offerings ending up with a shortlist headed by HEAT and CRMworks. Early evaluation results were positive and Newell Rubbermaid went live with HEAT on 14th February 2005.
Glen confirms: “HEAT offers the best balance of functionality and flexibility so the system can be customised to evolve with our requirements.”
However, it was the relationship with CRMworks that ensured the early and continuing success of the project. Glen adds, “We have found a really valuable team member in CRMworks, their expertise and real-life experience has been very helpful. Additionally, we’ve found them very collaborative and flexible in their approach and always at pains to understand our business requirements at a deep level. We trust them to advise and steer us in the right direction and many a time they’ve helped us to identify key opportunities as well as pitfalls.
“We feel we have a very valuable partnership with CRMworks; they offer experience that money just can’t buy, they never say ’no’ and we know we have the commitment of senior members of the company. ”
Products:
» HEAT » HEAT Self Service » Audit Wizard
Industry:
Computer Services and Software
Organisation:
Castle Computer Services provide accounting and payroll software applications and hardware/software support contracts to a growing number of organisations from their offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Solution:
As one of the UK’s most successful resellers of IT services, with around 600 clients and an established reputation for excellence, Castle Computer Services has a high quality ethos for delivery of IT to its customers. Offering a range of financial and accountancy software products and hardware as well as networking and virtualisation skills, the company is a Microsoft Gold Partner, a VMware Enterprise Partner, Channel Partner for Infor and a Platinum Partner for Exchequer. As part of Castle’s service offering to its customers is comprehensive support of business-critical systems, requiring exacting SLA conditions, its demands of supplier, CRMworks, have been equally stringent.
Castle’s headquarters outside Glasgow are home to a large Service Desk team which provides 1st and 2nd line support to customers from both sides of its business; Applications and Technical. The team of 17 deals with up to 1,300 calls every month with a wide variety of requirements, from simple PC performance queries, through support calls that have been escalated by a client’s IT department, to complex software queries from finance specialists.
Mark Smith, customer support manager at Castle, explains the structure: “We have created five distinct support teams to meet the requirements of such a wide portfolio of products. One of the key challenges for us is to ensure that calls are logged appropriately, allocated correctly, resolved efficiently and closed promptly.”
In 2004 the company recognised that it needed to replace its home-grown call-logging system with a more sophisticated approach and investigated the market’s offerings. Following extensive evaluation, Castle selected HEAT and CRMworks as its Help Desk Partner.
Mark Smith remembers: “To be frank, the products all appeared to be very similar, but CRMworks stood out hugely. CRMworks has vast experience of successfully deploying service desk solutions and by working with them we brought huge expertise to the project. We were very impressed with the company’s approach; extremely detailed, dedicated and technically skilled. As part of the scoping project, the company spent one day gaining a detailed understanding our requirements, then built a prototype overnight and demonstrated it to us the very next day.”
CRMworks clearly demonstrated its desire to develop a long-term relationship with Castle and proved that it had superb understanding of the HEAT Product and what it was capable of. “Their consultants just know the product inside out and back to front and understand not only what it is capable of but what is relevant, workable and valuable in the real world. This, combined with the strength and flexibility of the HEAT product, made a winning combination,” Smith confirms.
Following some rigorous user acceptance testing, and training sessions for end users the installation progressed without a hitch and the new HEAT system was live and operational within a few weeks.
The user teams’ feedback was immediately very positive as they find the system easy to use and the benefits of the system are clear.
In the past two years, the initial impressions have been borne out and Smith declares that he is even happier with his decision than in the first days. “The partnership which we forged with CRMworks in the early days still endures and regularly brings us unexpected value and benefits. We’ve given them some really hard technical challenges,” says Smith. “And so far, we’ve failed to fox them, even if it means they stay up all night!”
Products:
» HEAT » HEAT Self Service » HEAT Plus Knowledge
Industry:
Financial Services
Organisation:
LSM Group brings together complementary core competencies in the design, management and fulfilment of business process automation and outsourcing, specifically within the Recruitment industry.
Solution:
LSM needed a support solution that was adaptable enough to replace a number of internal systems. Allowing customers to search a knowledge base and log their own calls were also key drivers.
Products:
» HEAT
Industry:
Transportation
Organisation:
Tube Lines works in partnership with London Underground to maintain and modernise the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines. Under the thirty-year public-private partnership (PPP), Tube Lines are responsible for the maintenance, renewals and upgrades of the infrastructure including track, trains, signals and stations.
Tube Lines has responsibility for:
Solution:
A HEAT solution was deployed to manage incident reported through Tube Lines’ fault reporting centre in London. Maintenance tasks are then distributed to external maintainers based on asset type, location, time of day and safety criticality. Dashboard and reporting requirements were set using Business Objects to allow complete visibility to any part of the business. Integration was developed with Tube Lines’ asset management system and London Underground’s CUPID application.
Learn more:
Read the Case StudyView the Press ReleaseRead the article from ComputingRead the Customer Testimonial
Products:
» IP Contact Center (IPCC)
Industry:
Transportation
Organisation:
Metronet works in partnership with London Underground to maintain and modernise the Circle, District, Piccadilly, Bakerloo, Waterloo and City, Victoria and Central lines. Under the thirty-year public-private partnership (PPP), Metronet are responsible for the maintenance, renewals and upgrades of the infrastructure including track, trains, signals and stations.
Solution:
Metronet needed a telephony solution to cope with the demands of a 24 hour fault reporting centre. The IPCC solution provided key functionality required under their contract with London Underground, such as call recording and statistical analysis. Additional requirements catered for include interactive voice response (IVR), skills-based routing and queue management. Despite very late engagement and incredibly aggressive timescales, this deployment went live on time and to budget.
Products:
» HEAT
Industry:
Manufacturing
Organisation:
British Gypsum is the UK's leading supplier and foremost authority on gypsum based plastering and dry lining systems and products, with more than 3500 individual products and systems in its portfolio. It is part of the BPB group, a world leader in the supply of plasterboard and gypsum plasters and a major supplier of insulation, ceiling tiles and related products for internal linings, serving growing markets for building systems in more than 50 countries.
Solution:
British Gypsum approached CRMworks when the contract for their existing product was up for renewal. Following a review, it became clear that the existing product could no longer meet their changing needs. HEAT was adopted to manage their complex internal IT requirements based from their service desk in East Leake, Leicestershire. Legacy data importation, SLA management and management reporting were key to the successful outcome of this project.
Learn more:
Products:
» HEAT
Industry:
Infrastructure Management
Organisation:
Jarvis delivers high quality infrastructure and support services to education, health, local government, on the roads and across the rail network. The Company provides a wide range of facilities management and infrastructure services, and is an acknowledged leader in innovative outsourcing solutions, mainly through public/private partnerships (PPPs).
Solution:
Jarvis needed a turnkey solution to manage staff access to dangerous rail sites. The flexibility of HEAT allowed a solution to be developed within very tight time constraints.
Products:
» GoldMine
Industry:
Leisure
Organisation:
The Tussauds Group comprises of 11 attractions in five countries across three continents from a UK base. Brands include international icons like Madame Tussauds and the British Airways London Eye, Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Heide Park, Chessington World of Adventures and Warwick Castle.
Solution:
The Tussauds Group adopted GoldMine to drive the sales and marketing activities for the group as a whole. Data integration has been developed with Tussauds accounting system using Inaplex Inaport.
