Penny Market is a subsidiary of the international trading chain REWE Group, one of the world’s largest trading companies. Penny Market is present in many other European countries.
Penny’s IT infrastructure is extensive. It covers 345 stores, 800 end stations and 1500 users who generate plenty of service and support requests. Hitherto, picking up such requests was done by emails and over the phone, and there was no record keeping. Without a functioning set of records it was hard to comply with defined SLAs and, at times, some requests did not get addressed, which led to delays and unnecessary problems. The IT department went looking for some way to secure the resolution of all requests, while complying with SLA. After careful selection, the company finally opted for the ALVAO Service Desk system, as best suited to their needs. After testing, configuring and training all users, the system went live in October of the same year.
During the deployment of ALVAO products a whole range of ITIL training courses and workshops was undertaken, attended by key IT department staff. Stemming from these meetings, process documentation was put together, reflecting the specific environment and needs of the customer. The agreed service catalogue, service levels and processes were subsequently put into practice using ALVAO. Tomáš Kříž, head of the IT Service Desk explains: “For me, the main benefit of deploying the system was how undemanding it was on our internal human resources. Our whole implementation was done by ALVAO consultants, who not only set up the system, but also gave us clear guidance on how to use it in the future. They helped us set up the individual services, SLA and other particulars, tailored to our operations. To round it off, they thoroughly trained not only our technicians, but the end users, too, which we consider the most important step in the whole implementation. These days, the consultants come by to see us for check-up workshops, and help us when deploying new features and expanding the system to other departments.”,
Tomáš Kříž, head of the IT Service Desk characterizes his ALVAO-facilitated operations as follows: “The ALVAO Service Desk and Asset Management helps us organize the work of the IT department and to avoid problems. Thanks to the fact that we know which user or outlet generates the most support requests, we can respond with training up the users at this outlet, thereby saving our resources later. We also use the knowledge base which helps us solve problems faster. Every request is logged, has a clear deadline to resolution and has a responsible support technician assigned. We keep a history of all the steps taken, and all communications concerning each request. Thanks to this, every technician knows what he’s doing and is better able to organize their work. At the top level we deal directly with the Company Director, who gets to see the management reports, and works with us to propose possible solutions. We monitor and evaluate the performance and quality of each and every service from the business standpoint. This is how we manage to maintain the existing services at a high level without the need to bolster our IT staff with new hires.”
Bringing in the system has enabled the company and its staff to speed up problem resolution. Thanks to the history of the journalling of each task, supervision of request resolution has much improved. For each task, there is a known responsible person and a task resolution deadline, which helps avoid delays and the chance that the task might get forgotten. This is how Tomáš Kříž sums up his experiences with ALVAO: “The system has brought us a much simplified workflow. We succeed in working smarter and faster. The primary objective was to establish a single point-of-call for logging IT requests and securing their resolution. ALVAO has generously met and exceeded this goal. The functions we have available in ALVAO for managing the IT department are well designed, ready to go, and really helpful to our daily routine.”