With growing client needs and expectations, the company has been making every effort to meet their clients’ more complex requirements. It had to adapt its internal incident resolution processes to this effect and confirm due qualification with ISO 27 001 certification. This standard demonstrates the security of data and information protection.
ALVAO Service Desk helped the company to achieve both. Employees quickly embraced the software. Engineers applied ALVAO broadly, wherever it made work easier, and even in areas beyond the company’s initially envisaged scope. Get inspired by the successful implementation at PPA CONTROLL.
The company has been operating on the Slovak market in the areas of energy, industry and transport infrastructure since 1991, but its history goes back 70 years. It employs 800 staff and is structured as a parent company with several subsidiaries.
The company specializes in electrical systems without voltage limitation, instrumentation and control technology, control and safety systems, fire protection, cabling and computer networks and the production of its own power distribution units.
In all these areas the company provides analyses, studies, project documentation, engineering and consulting activities, supplies of instruments and equipment, installation up to commissioning of equipment, including repairs and maintenance.
The parent company’s IT team comprises 10 staff, while the subsidiaries have IT staffing at single administrator levels. Despite this, there was no functioning central request management prior to the deployment of ALVAO Service Desk. Requests raised against the IT department often went by the wayside. Users were chasing on the phone, writing emails, and accosting technicians in the hallway. In the absence of one single point of contact, no one knew where to report requests, and the IT department could not organize their work effectively.
The company sought a modern, user-friendly solution that would make request handling easier and work not only in the parent company but also across its subsidiaries.
“I did my own research, tried several services, and approached a lot of suppliers. But ALVAO suited me the most. The previous software I worked with, in my previous position, would not suit our needs in PPA CONTROLL as well as ALVAO can,” recalls Juraj Oslanec, Head of the IT Department for the entire holding.
It took employees a while to get used to using Service Desk. The IT department motivated the use of ALVAO with a clearly defined policy. Requests made other than through the Service Desk portal had lower priority. Thanks to these measures and the straightforward design of the Service Desk, which users greatly appreciate, they now report any problem or request to IT solely through ALVAO.
The users themselves have found that requests that used to take weeks can be resolved within hours if they enter them correctly – via ALVAO. Each trouble ticket reaches the correct solver immediately after it is raised.
To make use even easier for more senior staff, IT has made some simplifications to raising requests. The desktop on every older employee’s company computer bears a visible icon referring to ALVAO Service Desk. In addition, the engineers have added a single button within the portal that immediately directs the user to creating a request.
The company uses Service Desk as a ticketing tool for applications to the IT department. Users can raise not only IT requests, but also requests related to asset management, equipment, office supplies, and more.
The organization began to use ALVAO also for knowledge base and internal change management issues. Technicians raise requests against themselves and effectively manage the changes they make.
Service Desk use has gone beyond the parent company to all its subsidiaries. Technicians from the parent company take care of the overall IT, the company’s infrastructure, and can allocate requests among solvers and branch offices.
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Previously, the company did not have processes in place for reporting security incidents, which is essential for obtaining ISO 27 001 certification.
With the implementation of Service Desk came centralized management of security incidents and a clear process for how incidents are handled. Users report issues in the single point of contact, and solvers have an internally set SLA by which they must resolve the issue reported.
PPA CONTROLL started using ALVAO to process audit findings – both internal and external professional. Service Desk is an ideal space for setting up a process, its solution and division of responsibilities. A ticket is raised for each audit point. In ALVAO, it is then easy to set the deadlines for solutions, reviews and the target status. We had never considered such utilization ourselves, but are always pleased to see a client finding another innovative use for our products.
Juraj Oslanec, Head of IT Department for the entire company, evaluates the outcome of the ALVAO Service Desk deployment project as follows:
“Since we’ve never used a similar tool before, we have no metric by which to compare the effectiveness of ALVAO. Nevertheless, I can say that in 2022 we recorded over 1800 requests from 600 employees who use the Service Desk.ALVAO established itself in our organization very quickly. The users find it very useful to have a clear picture when they contacted whom, when someone first got back to them, when the solution came. They have an overview and can prompt that they are waiting for a solution.
When reporting to the Board of Directors, I can easily show how much work the people in my team have on, and how the IT department deals with each year. Service Desk gives me the basis for team expansion or process automation.
What’s more, I can monitor how my staff perform. I can clearly see who is working on what task. I can easily transfer requests between technicians and am better able to manage the team’s capacity."
Has the PPA CONTROLL case study inspired you to make similar changes to strengthen your department and company? Contact our consultants to arrange a complimentary meeting or ask for more details about our products – Service Desk & Asset Management.