NIENSCHANZ

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

Reducing the running costs of the business by 50%

NIENSCHANZ
www.itsm-nnz.ru
Country Russia
Sector IT (MSP)
Key Statistics
ƒƒOne of the largest IT companies in
Russia [1]
ƒƒTotal turnover of the NIENSCHANZ
CJSC in 2009 was 8.2 billion RUR
(USD 0.27 billion) [2]
ƒƒ30,000 configuration items
ƒƒ22,000 calls closed in 2009 with
assyst
1 according to CNews ratings
2 exchange rate 1 USD = 30 RUR
Key Challenge
ƒƒFind the right ITSM platform to
support the MSP business in line with
its strategy
ƒƒReduce costs and increased
operational efficiency
ƒƒRegain control of their customers
complex IT infrastructures
Key Strategy
ƒƒDefine and re-engineer existing
business and IT processes
ƒƒEstablish a Service Desk
ƒƒImplement a federated CMDB and
ITSM platform
Key Benefits/Results
ƒƒImproved customer service with
Service Desk operating 24/7
ƒƒReduced incident resolution time by
38%
ƒƒProductivity ratio increased by 34%
per engineer
ƒƒAverage customer satisfaction level
increased to 9.8/10
ƒƒTime and cost savings to support IT
infrastructure
increases profitability of leading MSP
NIENSCHANZ finds the ideal ITSM platform, assyst, to enable
them to develop and implement their strategy effectively
NIENSCHANZ is a multi-brand group of companies,
one of the largest IT holdings in Russia and a trusted
solution provider with over 18 years of experience
delivering a portfolio of IT services and solutions to the
largest organizations and government bodies.
NIENSCHANZ customers are large, federal government
bodies and local government offices, including the
Committee of St. Petersburg Local Authorities, the
Federal Tax Service and Immigration Authorities.
Since 2002, NIENSCHANZ has been ISO 9001:2000
certified, the international standard for quality
management.
NIENSCHANZ is segregated into divisions – financially
independent business units which carry full responsibility
for developing and selling their products. The Division
of Computing Systems (DCS) is one of the oldest
business units. Formed in 1990, its main business was
initially the production and distribution of computing
equipment. In 2005, due to a significant decrease in
the demand for computing equipment, it was decided
to focus efforts on a new offering – providing IT services
to external companies. Since 2006, DCS has been an
outsourcer, supporting the IT infrastructure of external
customers: mostly governmental organizations such as
the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation, the
Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation
and multiple municipal organizations in St. Petersburg.
Challenge - improve efficiency and
management of IT services
In 2007, the growth of business prompted the
requirement of a conceptually new approach to
manage IT services. By this time, the outsourcer
already supported 20 large customers (over 10,000
configuration items) which were spread over multiple
locations in St. Petersburg and the surrounding region.
DCS faced the following issues:
ƒƒLack of a federated source of information in the
Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and
information about the assets from different customers
was stored in multiple Excel tables, which made
ƒƒThere were no clear responsibilities defined
within DCS, especially in regard to customer
communication.
ƒƒManagement had no view of staff workload or
how much time they spent on certain customers.
The above led to reduced customer satisfaction
levels and overworked personnel, since they were
“fire-fighting” the majority of the time. Also, due to
a lack of reporting, it was difficult to communicate
what costs were associated with ongoing contracts,
which led to a strained relationship with senior
management.
Strategy – increase service delivery
and customer satisfaction by
automating processes in accordance
with ITIL recommendations
DCS devised a five year strategy for which it was
crucial to re-define the business processes, change
the company structure accordingly and gain an
adequate grasp of the complex IT infrastructure they
were supporting.
All of this required a platform to automate IT Service
Management (ITSM), with the main goal to improve
service delivery and customer satisfaction by increasing
the operational effectiveness of the IT services. The
required platform was to enable automation of all ITIL
processes and create cost savings.
Following a comprehensive selection process, the
assyst solution from Axios Systems, the world’s
leading ITSM provider, was chosen, most notably
because it allowed the organization to automate all
ITIL processes within one single implementation and
offered the shortest deployment time.
es & Solu
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IT Se

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ƒƒCost transparency for customers and reporting virtually impossible.

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senior management
ƒƒSince there was no automation of registering requests
ƒƒDefined business processes made, a large proportion were lost or not responded
ƒƒImproved visibility and control on to on time.
assets with assyst CMDB
ƒƒThe calls were not distributed or assigned to personnel,
ƒƒReporting system now powerful tool which led to a non-effective use of resources – often
for decision-making
s

highly qualified engineers were occupied with

Fe

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de

ƒƒGained ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005 and

ffi

rudimentary tasks. lG
O
ra

ISO 27001 certification t

ƒƒLack of a federated platform led to calls being ov
ern men
rn
registered in multiple databases which meant that no m ent ove
analytical data was being collected. bo dies and local G
9 10 CCS Neanschantz US v1.0
www.axiossystems.com
 NIENSCHANZ
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

Benefits – improved customer service
and productivity while reducing costs
Significant savings were achieved
through:
Defined business processes and improved
quality of service provision
The DCS business unit was structurally re-organized
to fit the defined business processes and each staff
member received a formalized job description. The first
reorganization step was to implement a 24/7 Service
Desk in order to provide customers with a single point of
contact to address concerns and get feedback on open
calls. As a result, the call answer rate has improved
significantly and call abandonment has reduced to almost
zero, which was quickly acknowledged by the customers:
“During Q3 of 2008, the average performance rating
given by the customers to our IT team was 7.8/10. In
Q1 of 2009, it increased to 9.6/10, and to 9.8/10
in Q4 of 2009”, Yury Timofeev, CEO at DCS, proudly
reports.
Improved efficiency through effective planning
of transport and resources
assyst offers improved allocation of incidents, which are
now rated depending on personnel qualifications and
availability. More incidents are now resolved by 1st line
support, which has freed up the time of more qualified
personnel, thus reducing costs by structured workloads
and process automation. The federated CMDB and
Resource Manager tool within assyst shows the operator
planning on-site customer visits an electronic map where
the calls are located. This enables intelligent scheduling
of personnel, saving time and associated costs.
Incident resolution time has reduced by 38% (from 9.2
to 5.7 hours on average for an incident)
In spite of an overall increase in the number of registered
calls by 60% (due to the continuously increasing number
of customers), the productivity ratio per engineer
increased by 34% compared to the same period in
2008.
The single, federated CMDB gives control over assets
and their relationships, as well as instant access to
information on customer assets serviced, either in
total or per customer.
Transparent cost structure
“Implementing assyst has allowed us to analyze
the workload related to each of our customers”,
Timofeev explains. “This information made us re-
consider the contracts: we can now calculate exactly
whether the conditions we have with a particular
customer are profitable for our company. Through
the assyst reporting functionality, we were able to
clearly demonstrate that to senior management.”
By using assyst, DCS has gained control over its cost
structure, which has improved the relationship with
senior management, as well as established a more
transparent relationship with their customers.
“The most important achievement for us is that with
the assyst implementation we were able to cut the
costs to support our day-to-day business by 50%”
Yury Timofeev
CEO, DCS
NIENSCHANZ
Tailored reporting system to support
decision-making
According to specific business and customer needs
and requests, a comprehensive reporting system was
developed for each party, based on Crystal Reports
and BIRT products, by integrating them with the assyst
database. “Our customers receive the information
they need within timescales that suit them. As a
result, their business decisions are made based on
facts, not assumptions”, Timofeev explains.
“The facility to enable decision-making with
precise and up-to-date information
significantly decreased the negative
impact on the business, Timofeev
explains, “It is difficult to calculate
direct savings but, at a minimum,
I believe that implementing assyst
opened new avenues for our business
development and permitted us to
grow, i.e. sign new customers, without
the need to hire additional personnel
to run new contracts. It also gives us
the opportunity to gain additional
revenues as a reseller, since we, as an
authorized partner of Axios Systems,
include assyst as part of the ITSM
offering to our customers.”
Obtaining ISO/IEC 20000-
1:2005 for ITSM and ISO
27001:2005 for information
security compliance
Implementing assyst allowed the
company to gain ISO/IEC 20000-
1:2005 and ISO 27001 certification.
Not only was this an indication
of improved service delivery and
information security, but also showed
that the maturity of the organization had
grown significantly. NIENSCHANZ
has been one of the first companies
in the north-west region of Russia to
obtain these certificates, which has
significantly increased the kudos of
the company and demonstrates the
overall quality of their services to their
customers.

Improved teamwork and internal

communication
Cost Savings

The reporting within assyst enabled the development of

an efficient and comprehensive staff motivation scheme.
The performance of individuals and teams is rated
against specific KPIs. “Gaining control helped team
spirit within the DCS”, Timofeev believes, “There is now
a better distribution of workload and everybody knows IT Service Management Automation
exactly who is responsible for what. In addition, we
have developed a transparent motivation system through
assyst reporting, which is used to calculate the bonus Speed of deployment
payments at the end of the month.”

Improved control and management of IT Axios Systems in IT

infrastructure through a federated CMDB
The assyst CMDB currently holds over 30,000
configuration items distributed throughout multiple
locations in St. Petersburg and the surrounding region.
Axios has been providing ITSM solutions to the IT industry for more than 20 years. assyst,
is a fully integrated, out-of-the-box solution, available in on-premise and SaaS models,
which helps organizations optimize IT infrastructure efficiency, reduce overheads and
lower the total cost of IT ownership. Our main focus on helping companies deliver
top line value has been particularly well demonstrated in the IT sector with customers
including SCC, Northgate, LANIT, and Kaspersky Lab, among others.
www.axiossystems.com