Millions in Forecast Savings and a Whole New Way to Delight Customers at This Tech Giant: ITSM Using Jira Service Management

 

The Client

Over the course of four decades, this tech pioneer has grown steadily into one of the best-known providers of personal computers, peripherals, and infrastructure hardware, as well as a diversified range of related products and services. They now sit on the Fortune 50, bring in over $100 billion in annual revenues, and own a solid reputation in a highly competitive industry.

The Challenge: Data was there, but it was difficult to leverage

With the tremendous volume of hardware and software products the company produces, sells, and distributes worldwide, their services division naturally sees a high volume of issues coming in daily. From manufacturing defects to user error, these issues are inevitable. But, ensuring they are repaired, replaced, or otherwise rectified in a fast, convenient manner, is a top priority for the company.

A vast amount of data, but limited usability

Over time, the company had collected hundreds of thousands of data points around these issues, with a goal of identifying trends and better mitigating recurring problems. But, the bulk of that information was stored as freeform text within each Jira issue ticket the service department created.

As a result, identifying trends and drilling down to root causes was a highly manual process—both time consuming and labor intensive.

“The data was there, but it was hard to get at, and hard to make sense of,” says Morgan Luu, Solutions Architect with Cprime. “That was impeding the team’s ability to fully realize their committment.”

Committed to customer delight AND cost control

Recognizing the challenges the service department was facing, a new initiative was launched focused on establishing a tool-based way to efficiently leverage this vast bank of data to support root cause analysis. This, in turn, would support faster, more cost-effective resolution of customer issues, and a reduction in repeated problems. 

The timeline was tight, but that’s because the potential return on investment—both financially and in terms of customer satisfaction—was huge.

“Our organization spends millions of dollars monthly on technical support and service issues,” says the Technical Program Manager in charge of the initiative. “So, obviously there’s a cost issue. But, more importantly, every defect equates to a dissatisfied customer, vendor, retailer, or distributor. That’s why improving this program is such a high priority.”

“We had to develop and implement a solution in record time,” he continues. “Morgan and the Cprime team rose to the challenge and immediately started attacking the strategy and execution.”

The Solution: Customized implementation–ITSM using Jira Service Management–to make all that data instantly actionable

In discussions with other leaders within the organization, the Technical Program Manager was recommended to contact Atlassian—the maker of Jira Software—to see what they could suggest for adapting their existing Jira solution to accommodate this new initiative.

Atlassian, in turn, recommended Cprime—a long time Platinum Solutions Partner with over a decade of experience leading Atlassian implementation and optimization engagements. 

The first point of contact was Scott Steinmetz, a Cprime Account Executive. Scott, in turn, brought in Solutions Architect, Morgan Luu. 

Settling on Jira Service Management as the solution

Over parts of four months, the Technical Program Manager collaborated closely with Morgan and Scott to dive deep into the current state of the data, business processes, and goals of the executive initiative he was leading. In the end, he decided that Jira was not the optimal solution, but that Jira Service Management (JSM) fit the bill.

“With Morgan and Scott’s help, I could confidently choose JSM as the right solution for us,” he says, and adds, “I needed to be sure the tool was going to help us accomplish everything we needed, because it was going to be a large investment in time, effort, and money. But, even though it took time, I never felt pressured to move ahead with questions still outstanding, or to settle for second best.”

Establishing the optimal JSM setup

Over the next three months, the Cprime team performed a number of in-depth evaluations, a thorough gap analysis, and mapped out all the custom data fields that would be necessary to turn the wealth of information the client had collected into highly actionable data.

“One of the keys to success,” says Morgan, “was taking the business processes they already followed and helping translate them into workflows, notifications, and automation rules across the system, for a seamless boost in speed and efficiency.”

Launching the new system

From that point, four weeks of development and implementation work resulted in the final solution, which launched just eight months after the initiative began. This included:

• Standing up and launching a new instance of JSM Data Center, including creation and configuration of custom data fields and a corresponding database to support data analysis and reporting
• Installing and configuring Atlassian Assets—a native integration for asset management—that was used creatively to power some of the queueing and automation needs the solution required
• Development of custom integrations with other tools to support data gathering, reporting, and workflow automation
• Creation of a method for collaborating with vendors and other partners directly through the JSM portal so issues can be viewed and edited by the most appropriate contributor

The Technical Program Manager sums up what was accomplished: “This is an example of producing a highly valuable solution in minimal time with no detrimental impacts—it’s been stable since day one—and with minimal resources required from the IT team. And, importantly, it’s proven highly scalable: we’ve done 26 releases improving the product in the first month alone.”

The Results: Actionable data to support successful root cause analysis, reduced issue handle time, and huge savings

The customer service teams have already seen tremendous benefits with the new customized JSM solution, integrations, and templates.

• Faster resolution – Average handling time for each issue has been reduced by 15 minutes, allowing for greater productivity and boosting customer delight
• Greater data leverage – Every new issue adds to the growing database within ten defect types, all of which can be sliced and diced across dozens of custom fields to identify trends and root causes 
• Excellent scalability – The service teams are fully empowered to continue scaling the solution with new defect types and templates as needed
• Tremendous cost savings – These improvements combine to produce a forecast savings of millions of dollars annually

Based on a strong collaborative relationship

While the technical work and expert advice were invaluable, the Technical Program Manager feels the relationship Cprime established is the real key to the success of this engagement.

“It really all comes back to the relationship: working with Scott and Morgan has been incredible; without that relationship, this engagement would not have been such a resounding success,” he says. 

He sees Cprime’s way of working as a refreshing change from experiences he’s had in the past.

“I’ve worked with vendors in the past who want to be the keyholders to the knowledge and skills we need. Cprime has done the opposite: they’ve given us everything we need to continue scaling and improving this new solution.” 

And, although this engagement is finished, the relationship continues.

“Now that the engagement has ended, I can still rely on Morgan for further help because they have empowered us to continue building out the capabilities; if we need technical support and advice, we still get it.”

He concludes, “I can’t say enough about the value Cprime brought to the table here. I’m recommending them to everyone who needs help they can provide.”

Could your company benefit from results like these?

Cprime offers a host of services around business technology implementation, strategic consulting, and training to help businesses improve ways of working, just like we have for this client. 

If your organization could benefit from an upgrade in your customer service workflow, explore our flexible ITSM service offerings. 

Or, contact a Cprime expert today to discuss your unique needs. We have the people, partners, and expertise to both point you in the right direction and get you where you want to go—and beyond!

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