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World's Largest Beverage & Brewing Company Migrates to Atlassian

December 30, 2017
Praecipio

Overview

Submitting, tracking and responding to incidents, service and change requests is a core capability required of every modern IT organization. Not only must they track and resolve issues from their users, but IT teams are also responsible for the oversight and support of technology assets themselves (i.e. laptops, servers, peripherals, etc.). Within the Information Technology Infrastructure Framework (ITIL), IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Asset Management (ITAM) solutions have become critical components of day-to-day IT operations management at companies of all sizes and industries. But as software solutions like these have improved and business conditions have changed over time, legacy technologies have fallen behind modern capabilities and become blockers to organizational advancement. Migrating to newer, ITIL-based, extensible technology is the obvious solution in these increasingly common scenarios, but migrations require significant planning, communication, and collaboration.

Our client, a multinational beverage and brewing company and the world’s largest beer producer, needed to replace its legacy service desk with a modern solution to facilitate scalable customer self-service customizations and accommodate increasing ticket volume and a large user base. The client’s requirements for a replacement service desk also included self-service options and adherence to ITIL-based ITSM best practices for both its customer-facing operations, including retail and distribution vendors, and its internal support desk. Working with Praecipio and leveraging our partnership with Atlassian and Riada, the client achieved its goals of increasing customer service levels, achieving enhanced scalability and reducing technology costs without an interruption in service.

The Challenge

The client’s legacy solution did not provide the base-level capabilities needed to identify types of tickets, manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs), or to determine teamwork assignments. Without these core functions, searching issues and accurately reporting on work performance and progress was very difficult. With more than 20,000 users and up to 4,000 ticket submissions per day, the sheer volume and complexity of incoming work made it necessary to implement custom issue types and customizable workflows to intelligently identify and then route issues to the right personnel.

As a company that employs over 30,000 people and supports multiple breweries and entertainment complexes throughout the United States, our client possesses more than one million assets that require governance. Beyond the challenge of managing the volume of equipment was the fact that these assets were stored and managed through more than 10 different databases and spreadsheets. During the Discovery phase, it was quickly determined that building a configuration management database (CMDB) to provide a repository for these assets was a critical step. A massive undertaking, Praecipio and its technology partners had the experience required to complete the implementation.

The Solution

For the service desk component, Praecipio implemented the Data Center deployment of Atlassian’s Jira Service Management and Confluence. This powerful combination of ITSM tools would provide the customer self-service portal and knowledge base capabilities the client’s IT operations team would need to automate and improve service levels. Then, working closely with the client, and injecting some aspects of the former service desk into the new solution, Praecipio created the custom workflows and hierarchies to enable the service-specific SLAs. Praecipio also integrated it’s own Jira app, Turbo Kit for Jira, to augment workflows and functions beyond Jira’s native capabilities. Praecipio's ITIL-certified consultants helped the client implement an ITIL-based service desk that worked more effectively, enabling the business to run more efficiently and reliably. In order to meet the requirements to facilitate effective management of their assets, Praecipio implemented the Jira Service Management-compatible Insight by Riada, to provide the CMDB that would make it easier for our client’s agents to maintain and update the data. By implementing this solution directly in the service desk interface, our client’s IT team is able to respond faster and make better decisions regarding the control of assets like servers, computers, phones, accessories, etc. Similarly, their business teams can use the asset management capabilities to manage employee on-boarding, marketing and legal assets, and more. With the desired solution in place, and as an authorized training provider for both technology partner’s solutions, Praecipio also provided the client with extensive training for Jira Service Management, Confluence, and Riada’s Insight.

The Results

The client is now successfully supporting 750 agents and 20,000 users with the Jira Service Management portal. The new solution enables them to handle more than 4,000 daily service requests and using customized dashboards the client can effectively report on 20,000 open tickets.

With a modern solution in place, integrated with an asset management database, internal support is easier to deliver and track. Therefore, when a support request is raised, all relevant information about the asset is available to the agent.

Now that the newly implemented system is in production, the client expects to see improvements in critical service metrics including improved customer satisfaction and reduced mean-time-to-resolution. Because the client is solving core business issues by using best-in-class tools and processes, they are better positioned to utilize resources more efficiently, have improved visibility into asset allocation and usage, and support ongoing business changes.

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