How SupplyOn AG optimizes support with Jira Service Management

The Challenge

SupplyOn is the supply chain collaboration platform for global companies. After seeing significant growth in both employee and customer numbers, SupplyOn AG decided to rethink their service desk solution to accomodate the growing number of tickets. From the discussions that followed initial workshops conducted by Scandio consultants, the need for customized workflows for a more efficient ticket processing emerged. In addition, the transparency of ticket processing and communication with the customers needed to be improved considrably. Furthermore, the creation of a reporting system for customers, partners and SupplyOn, which could generate reports automatically without any manual effort was also essential.

In the evaluation of help desk providers, SupplyOn ruled out numerous of other software vendors because they could not accomidate a satisfactory solution, especially taking into account the cost-benefit ratio. Nevertheless, Jira Service Management, which was already being used internally and was supported by SupplyOn IT, also convinced in further analysis. Consequently, the Internal IT of SupplyOn recommended Scandio as a strong and reliable partner for support regarding service management, processes and Atlassian.

The Solution

The complete requirements analysis was carried out in close cooperation with the customer by two senior IT consultants from Scandio. In the subsequent design of the overall system, all processes were initially discussed. Among other things, the interplay between 1st, 2nd and 3rd level support was redefined and fundamental topics such as escalations, time zones and calendars were included. It is also important to mention, that the conception of the entire processes was not completed in one step. The decision to use an iterative project approach, based on Kanban, intentionally left enough space for conceptual changes. Thereby, the first phase led to the final decision in favor of Jira Service Management, primarily due to its high degree of integration into the IT landscape at SupplyOn.

The new ticket system had to fulfill the following core requirements:

• Efficiency - faster and simpler processing of tickets
• Integration with existing software tools
• Specific and continuously adaptable workflow
• Transparency for customers, partners and SupplyOn
• Extensive automatic reporting options
• Fully integrated customer communication in seven different languages  
  

Jira Service Management at SupplyOn

The new service desk based on Jira Service Management was fully implemented by Scandio and was made available on a highly available as well as fail-safe data center instance. Due to SupplyOn's global business activities, 24/7 availability must be guaranteed. Since SupplyOn operates primarily in Asia and the European region, several service desk queues were created by region. In addition, support tickets are sorted by topic, with a distinction made between standard support, support during the registration process at SupplyOn, and finance support for invoices, contracts or cancellations. Moreover customers are able to create their tickets via e-mail, telephone or the integrated service desk portal. Furthermore, processing takes place in three (to four) support levels. On top of that the integration of external 1st-level support has been improved through the introduction of Jira Service Management.

The editing process was designed to provide a very high level of transparency and to enable extensive customer communication via the system. With the help of the "Email this Issue" extension, it is possible to completely convert the high number of emails into tickets. In addition, an automated reminder system was configured, so that after adressing the customer three times, the respective ticket is closed automatically. Thanks to the extensive design options in Jira Service Management, e-mail notifications adapted to SupplyOn's corporate design were also created, which provide customers with status updates on their current process at all times.

Ticket processing was facilitated by a simple and intuitive user interface. Collaboration between multiple agents on one ticket across multiple support levels is possible in a simple and quick way. Automations, including the "Scriptrunner" extension, provide additional support for agents to optimize the average processing time. In the course of this, a filing system for the tickets was also introduced, which returns them to processing after an "on hold till" date has passed.

Scandio's introduction of the "Insight" asset management system into Jira Service Management made it possible to link SupplyOn's customer master database directly to customer inquiries. This eliminates the need for duplicate maintenance of customer data. With this type of automation, SupplyOn was able to save valuable processing minutes on each ticket with the support of Scandio consultants within the service process. This time can be spent 100% on customer communication instead.

Status and Acceptance

The acceptance and understanding of the system by customers and users has been the main success factor of the implementation. SupplyOn has invested extensively in the preparation of the system implementation in order to positively influence these factors. Professional expectation management, extensive training of agents and global customers can be mentioned here as examples. Eventually, the expenditure and intensive preparation by SupplyOn paid off - after just three months, a significant increase in efficiency compared to the old system could be measured.

Jira Service Management is an excellent basis for large help desk and service desk systems, which is becoming even more important due to the large number of professional extensions from the Atlassian Marketplace. SupplyOn uses the following apps:  

• ScriptRunner for Jira Workflow and problem automation
• Automation for Jira Automation and extension for Jiraa
• Jira Misc Workflow Extensions (JMWE) Support for workflow creation
• Double Check Protection of internal and confidential data
• JWT (Jira Workflow Toolbox) Support for workflow customization
• Email this Issue Increase efficiency through direct transformation into a ticket
• Insight for Jira Asset management usage of address data in tickets
• eazyBI Usage for detailed reporting

The figures of the past months in regular operation speak for themselves and underline the importance of the project's success. With almost 10,000 transactions per month, the processing time of standard tickets was reduced by more than 60%. At the same time, the number of parallel e-mail communication was reduced to zero. At peak, up to 250 agents in four support levels work on processing service requests.

Optimal Productivity

The improvements brought about by the introduction of Jira Service Management for SupplyOn become particularly clear when considering the following:

• The number of agents has remained the same.
• The number of tickets has increased (massively).
• Efficiency has been significantly increased.
• Customer communication has been significantly improved.

Through the implementation of "eazyBI", integrated reporting is now possible and both internal and customer-specific key figures are easily at hand. Here, SupplyOn has both internal key figures and customer-specific key figures at its fingertips. These are available to customers, partners and SupplyOn at any time through individual dashboards.

Customer service key figures: The key figures are not only accessible, but will also be able to be exported by the customer in the future. The customer dashboards show comprehensive key figures such as the solution rate, a comparison of created vs. resolved tickets and time-dependent key figures. Henceforth, customers will be able to expand their selection using the reports defined in the service level agreement.  

SupplyOn's service metrics: In addition to the metrics available for reporting to customers, SupplyOn also uses overarching metrics to continuously improve its service. The recording of inventory times, processing times and reprocessing (reopen rate) of tickets (problem, incident or service request) are recorded. The distribution of tickets and a ticket spread (i.e. the division of large tickets) are also recorded. The rate and the history of the processed tickets (resolution rate/history) are sorted into categories and subcategories in order to be able to perform a detailed evaluation. Furthermore, the ratio of mechanically and manually processed tickets is recorded.

Further development and future

The Jira Service Management application can be continuously improved, so that further service improvements and increases in the efficiency of ticket processing will be made for SupplyOn in the future. For example, workflow and customer communication are to be further optimized through isolated adjustments. In addition, internal and external reporting is to be revised once again. A further step, which is intended to support customers in using the SupplyOn portal, is the connection via SSO and an interface so that ticket creation and the status of tickets can be accessed more easily.

About SupplyOn

SupplyOn is the supply chain collaboration platform for globally active companies and offers a broad solution portfolio for the specific process requirements of the automotive, aerospace, railway and manufacturing industries. It supports processes for supplier management, purchasing, procurement, logistics, transport, quality and risk management. With innovative solutions for visualization, analysis and artificial intelligence, the entire supply chain can be managed securely, efficiently and intelligently in a dynamic global environment. SupplyOn's supply chain business network connects around 100,000 industrial companies from 100 countries worldwide, including Airbus Group, BMW Group, Bombardier, BorgWarner, Bosch, Continental, Deutsche Bahn, DEUTZ, Kautex Textron, Liebherr, Oerlikon, Safran, Schaeffler, Schindler, Siemens, Thales and ZF.