Efecte Solution for City of Vantaa

The City of Vantaa’s culture and education department manages the IT services and e-procurement of Vantaa’s schools, libraries and daycare centers. Its end customers consist of 30,000 pupils, 2,500 teachers and the children’s parents.

All services are produced without outside help by a team of 14. These include telecommunications, hardware, firewalls, e-mail, active directories and antivirus protection.

Easy and Carefree Use the Goal

The organization’s goal was to provide IT services so effectively that schools and other end customers did not need to worry about them. This was to be based on central control of the IT operations environment and its support services and receiving the data needed for this in real time. In this way, the end customers would have the possibility to concentrate on their own core operations. In order for the plan to work, processes needed to be examined.

The selection of the right ERP for IT solution was easy, according to IT manager Antti Ylä-Jarkko. Of the options studied, only Efecte offered the possibility to control the entire IT operations environment, from IT assets to support services. Before Efecte was implemented, the organization used a few, unintegrated software solutions.

An Efecte solution was already used in Vantaa’s IT management, where its versatility had proved impressive. Now, both organizations use the same system, easing many processes such as data transfer, which is now easy and cost effective. With the culture and education department undergoing organizational and licensing changes concurrently with the procurement project, the procurement was also aimed at finding an interoperable and simplified way of running operations. Efecte was built into an ERP for IT -solution for the entire IT organization.

Prior to implementing Efecte, the department’s PCSAs drove around Vantaa repairing and servicing workstations. Each PCSA had its own district according to its location. The most significant change to the old system was the centralized management of support services and the possibility to check the status of hardware remotely.

Rapid Implementation, Rapid Results

Efecte’s municipal consultants carried out the implementation rapidly, Efecte’s implementation taking only two calendar months in total. Rapid implementation was also supported by the fact that the culture and education department was responsible for all of its IT operations with nothing outsourced. According to Antti Ylä-Jarkko, the most challenging aspect was changing processes and staff working methods. “No matter how elaborate a system you acquire, processes must work and working methods change in order for the new system to be in full use”, states Ylä-Jarkko.

Ylä-Jarkko says that work planning in particular has become easier. Reports quickly display the main problems a PCSA is called upon to solve. With the help of Efecte, IT personnel can concentrate on the essential tasks and get all the information they need centrally from one place.

Training new IT staff has also become easier, since the necessary data and documentation can be found in Efecte. New staff are ready after brief Efecte user training, without the need for several months of orientation.

“With the help of Efecte, our processes have become clearer, and Efecte has become the organization’s ERP system, displaying what happens and when in real time. The work of the IT staff has become easier and clearer and management receives more data, which makes decision making easier, based on the facts. There is much more data available than previously,” reports Antti Ylä-Jarkko.

With the help of a joint, anonymous help desk, end customers receive consistent services rapidly and without waiting. End users have been very satisfied with these clear, well-organized operations, in which nearly all problems can be solved remotely.

“Efecte Saves Taxpayers’ Money”

According to Ylä-Jarkko, municipalities’ partners and suppliers use Efecte widely as well, making data transmission economical and simple. “Using Efecte hones municipalities’ IT operations to make them ready for outsourcing", continues Ylä-Jarkko. “Municipalities must describe and improve their operations so that they can reach a situation in which some parts can be easily and economically outsourced. In practice, all organizations using Efecte save taxpayers’ money”, claims Ylä-Jarkko.