Support teams live in a state of permanent emergency, equipment keeps failing, and similar incidents come back again and again. For large retail this is no small matter: the time it takes to resolve a problem stops matching what the business needs. We studied the requests of many clients and built a ready-made Service Desk aimed specifically at the tasks of retail chains — on top of the corporate portal that most companies already have installed and configured.
Does this situation sound familiar?
Before we talk about tools, it is worth answering a few honest questions about how support is organised in your company right now.
- The support team does little to prevent incidents and is in a state of permanent emergency.
- The company has a great deal of equipment and IT infrastructure that regularly fails or needs scheduled maintenance.
- Similar incidents keep appearing and have to be resolved over and over before the root cause can be identified.
- The time to resolve a problem does not match the requirements of the business.
The market offers a fairly large number of ITSM systems — just take a look at the Gartner rankings. However, simply picking the highest-rated solution and rolling it out at home will not work. Here is why.
What ITSM tools are
In other words, this is not "one more program for the IT crowd" but a tool the whole company turns to when it needs to. That is exactly why a mistake in choosing it is expensive — and exactly why the choice is rarely simple.
Four reasons why "take the best in the ranking" will not work
The problem of choice
The main difficulty is the lack of qualified expertise for choosing the best solution. You rarely find an IT engineer inside a service department who has worked with at least a dozen Service Desks and knows the strengths and weaknesses of each one.
Universality is the enemy of speed
The systems the market offers are often conceptually universal. As a result, they are complex to set up initially and demand a high barrier to entry. You will need help from external consultants, the rollout will drag on and go over budget.
Conditions of use
A huge fleet of varied equipment, geographically distant sites, omnichannel work with customers and broad logistics coverage all create serious difficulties when you try to adapt the chosen system to the current conditions of the business.
Hard to embed
There are no specialists who could quickly and effectively embed the solution into the corporate infrastructure and train the staff.
A ready-made ITSM solution for large retail
We studied requests from many clients and developed a ready-made Service Desk aimed at solving retail problems.
Modern retail uses a large number of specialised information systems — from infrastructure ones (Active Directory) up to the ERP level. Our solution integrates with such systems and embeds itself into a company's infrastructure, which is made up of many components. In particular, we can integrate with:
- the enterprise's accounting systems;
- SAP;
- the company's mail system;
- LDAP access and policy directories;
- Active Directory.
What this gives you in practice
- Rollout without consultants. The system runs on the corporate portal platform that everyone already knows well, and integration is fairly simple and easy to manage. Our Service Desk can be deployed and put to use by the company's own technical support or IT staff.
- Use of the data you have already accumulated. We can take the equipment lists, product catalogues, reference books, libraries and user accounts that already exist in the system. This lets you start work immediately and significantly shortens the transition from the old system to ours.
- Ready-made retail business processes. Our Service Desk already has the business processes typical of the retail business built in. Templated, well-known and tested solutions can simply be picked from a list and put straight to work — they are already configured and ready to use.
- Flexibility that was not sacrificed. The system allows customisation: you can model and automate new processes in the enterprise, and configure or extend the templated solutions on offer.
How our CRM solution differs from the alternatives
Commercial universal ITSM-class systems contain a great deal of superfluous functionality that any enterprise might hypothetically need — that is the price of universality. What we offer is functionality optimised for the needs of retailers' IT support. This simplifies integration with the other information systems in a typical retail infrastructure.
| Criterion | A universal ITSM system from the market | Our solution for retail |
|---|---|---|
| Scope of functionality | Plenty of extras that any enterprise might hypothetically need | Optimised for the needs of retailers' IT support |
| Initial setup | Complex, high barrier to entry | Templated processes picked from a list and already ready to use |
| Who implements it | Help from external consultants is required | The company's own technical support or IT staff |
| Timelines and budget | The rollout drags on and goes over budget | Deployment on a platform that is already installed and configured |
| Interface | New to the staff | Already familiar to the rest of the company's staff |
| Training | A separate cost item | Costs the company considerably less |
The functionality is built on a fairly widespread corporate portal platform. The platform and our development naturally complement each other. This increases transparency: the service's events and news can be published promptly to the company-wide feed, and the user interface is already familiar to the rest of the staff.
One more important advantage is worth noting. Deploying our Service Desk uses the corporate portal that is already installed and configured. That means training staff costs the company considerably less, which plays no small part in the cost of the project.
Facts about the results of implementation
Companies already using our Service Desk note how effective it is. Here is what works in the system every day:
- Incident registration and tracking functions.
- Keeping clients informed about the status and progress of their request.
- Automatic initial assessment of a request: an attempt to resolve it or to determine who is able to do so.
- Incident lifecycle management.
- Identification of problems that occur frequently.
- Closing incidents and notifying the client.
What changes in the company
- The technical support service's processes are put in order.
- Equipment downtime is reduced.
- Control, statistics, analytics and forecasting systems are up and running.
- A transparent system for tracking working time and performance has made it possible to reduce the risk of conflict situations.
- A workload redistribution system is in place.
- The payroll budget is allocated rationally.
Who already uses the Service Desk
NOVUS
The NOVUS chain stands for European standards of customer service and business conduct, a high level of service and comfort; the company is always open to cooperation with partners and suppliers.
A convenient interface, well-designed request handling processes, event notifications, a mobile client, and a fast, always friendly response from technical support to every enquiry, including prompt adjustments of the system to specific requirements. A stable and reliable system that can nevertheless be configured to the customer's needs, either in-house or with the developers' help.Fedir Horokhov, Deputy Director of the IT Department, NOVUS
AGROMAT
AGROMAT means more than 1000 brands of tiles and bathroom fittings for the whole home, a large number of stores and showrooms with ready-made solutions, personal service, and its own academy of designers for fast, convenient and high-quality answers to renovation questions.
If you are ready to raise the effectiveness of your service management
Book a presentation of our Service Desk. You will be able to start using solutions proven by experience in modern retail quickly and on your own. And if the need arises, our specialists will help you adapt anything in your setup that is not typical.
