About the Organization
Sozialgruppe Kassel e.V. is a German nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting seniors and individuals with disabilities. Its mission is to provide care services and assistance, helping clients live independent and fulfilling lives. The organization also hosts community events to foster integration of its clients into the local community. Currently, it employs over 250 staff members.
Challenges Facing Sozialgruppe Kassel
The legacy ITSM system was a significant obstacle for employees and limited the overall day-to-day operations of the organization. The primary challenges included:
- Poor mobile accessibility: Field staff couldn’t handle requests via their phones, slowing down response times and increasing frustration.
- Inefficient request management: There was no unified overview of ticket statuses, leading to duplicate entries and unnecessary delays in resolving issues.
- Lack of customization: The system couldn’t be customized to meet the organization’s specific needs or unique scenarios, significantly limiting its usability.
- Inefficient asset management: Managing assets required printing handover protocols, which was time-consuming, labor-intensive, and wasteful of resources.
- Limited adoption across the organization: Clunky interfaces and limited features have prevented widespread use among employees.
Solution
Sozialgruppe Kassel sought a modern ITSM solution that was user-friendly, seamlessly integrated with the Microsoft ecosystem, and capable of efficient deployment across all departments. The organization's CIO, Christoph Becker, discovered ALVAO ITSM through Microsoft AppSource. During a 30-day trial, the team tested all critical features and scenarios, concluding that ALVAO was the perfect fit for their needs.
ALVAO features that have delivered the greatest value to the organization.
- Seamless Microsoft integration: Employees can now handle tickets directly from familiar tools like Outlook and Teams, simplifying their daily workflows. Integration with Microsoft Entra ID enables quick and automatic user account management, while single sign-on (SSO) logins enhance user convenience.
- Mobile access to tasks: With the mobile app, employees can manage tasks on the go, empowering them to work effectively while in the field. This has significantly improved response times and the overall quality of service provided.
- Digitized handover reports: Lengthy paperwork has been replaced with electronic records.
When hardware assets are issued or returned, the asset manager generates an electronic handover report that employees can sign directly through the web application, accessible from anywhere. In addition, employees have a one-stop overview of their assigned assets and signed handover protocols. This contributes to greater transparency and trust.
- Ease of use and customization: ALVAO's intuitive interface simplifies and speeds up the training of new employees so that they can start working with the system very quickly. Additionally, the platform's flexible process customization boosts efficiency not just in the IT department but across other teams as well.
- Cost-effective licensing: ALVAO’s per-user licensing model, rather than a per-agent approach, allows the organization to deploy the solution widely without incurring unnecessary costs, making it a budget-friendly option for large-scale implementation.
- Streamlined process creation and setup: ALVAO’s flexible workflows enable seamless collaboration across departments like Purchasing, HR, and Facilities Management. Teams can easily share information, improve communication, save time, and ultimately reduce operational costs.
"The smooth transition to the new system and the exceptional support from the ALVAO team during implementation were also key factors in our decision. ALVAO proved to be the ideal choice for optimizing IT service and asset management processes while meeting the diverse needs of our organization," Christoph Becker, CIO, Sozialgruppe Kassel.
Benefits
- Wide adoption across departments: ALVAO has evolved into a central platform used by multiple departments beyond IT. With its easy customization and simple administration, each team can tailor processes to their specific needs, streamlining daily tasks. This has led to improved efficiency, better communication, and enhanced transparency across the entire organization.
- Automation of central purchasing: One of the standout benefits has been the full automation of the central purchasing process. ALVAO covers everything from request creation to approval and ordering, saving significant time, minimizing errors, and providing greater visibility into procurement workflows.
- Affordable and scalable solution: As a SaaS platform, ALVAO offers high flexibility and effortless scalability to adapt to the organization’s needs. It eliminates the need for costly hardware investments and avoids the challenges of managing on-premises solutions. Organizations benefit from always having the latest version with new features and updates, with no hidden costs—making it a budget-friendly and future-proof choice.
- Increased efficiency and reduced manual work: Automation of routine tasks has reduced the burden of manual work. Employees can now focus on strategic, high-value activities, further increasing the organization’s overall productivity.
- Using data for continuous improvement: By integrating tools for analytics and reporting, Sozialgruppe Kassel gained valuable insights into the usage and efficiency of their new processes. These insights helped them identify the bottlenecks and focus on further improvements.
"With ALVAO, we not only resolved our existing issues but also introduced innovative ways of working that we could hardly have considered without this system." Christoph Becker, CIO, Sozialgruppe Kassel
ALVAO has already helped resolve more than 10,000 tickets, proving that the system has delivered real business value to the organisation.
Conclusion
Christoph Becker reflects positively on their experience with ALVAO, highlighting it as a flexible and powerful tool that not only optimized IT processes but also brought added value to other departments. The ability to customize workflows for specific teams, such as HR, Facilities Management, and Purchasing, has significantly improved efficiency and collaboration throughout the organization.
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