ICT Elmo and AINS Group

Transparency and efficiency for a unique ICT alliance.

Two Finnish companies, ICT service provider ICT Elmo and design and engineering consulting company AINS Group formed a unique alliance in 2020. As alliance partners, they both have full access and transparency to the alliance’s operations and budget. Decisions are made together, to share both the risk and the profit - and to best benefit the customer. Using Efecte as a shared IT service management system (ITSM) gives everybody working in the alliance efficient access to technical support and IT Asset Management.

elmo_ains

The company: ICT Elmo and AINS Group

Alliances are most commonly used as a collaboration model in construction projects. Unlike in a traditional purchaser-provider model, alliance partners share the budget and make decisions together as equals, and both the profits and deficits are shared. Alliance collaboration makes it easier to keep in schedule and within the given budget, when there is no additional “you” and “us” in the decision-making process. Alliance partners are equally “we”, delivering high-quality results to the end customers.

AINS personnel  600
Anselmo personnel 19
Issues and service requests 1200 pcs/month
Issue resolution time 11.75 h, 0.5 h for critical issues
Employee work satisfaction 8.81 (0-10)

The Situation

In ICT, the alliance model is not that common. Having experienced the benefits of it in engineering projects, AINS Group decided to scale the model to ICT services, too. Collaborative mindset and customer orientation were given emphasis in the tendering process for an alliance partner. In the demo workshops, it was quickly apparent that there was the right chemistry between Elmo and AINS Group. “Both companies are very customer oriented. We are people working together to help other people get their job done as well as possible”, notes Ville Lammi, customer experience architect of Elmo. “Alliance partnership requires transparency and trust. As we already have those built into the way our individual organizations work, finding a shared vision for the alliance was easy.”

Ville Lammi Elmo

Ville Lammi, Customer Experience Architect, ICT Elmo

“We have been pleased with the added value the Efecte system has brought to Elmo and wanted the alliance also to benefit from it.”

VILLE LAMMI, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE ARCHITECT

ICT Elmo Oy

The Challenge

Finding ways to ensure transparency

To collaborate as equal alliance partners requires a paradigm shift from the traditional purchaser-provider model. Instead of optimizing their own processes, the alliance model requires a uniform, optimal process for both parties. In order to achieve this, either alliance partner might need to adapt to a new way of working or to take up using new tools or solutions.

In an ICT alliance, streamlining the ITSM system is essential. Elmo had already been using Efecte as a service management solution and proposed it to the alliance. 

“In our experience, it was an easy choice to recommend Efecte”, says Lammi. “We have been pleased with the added value the system has brought to Elmo, and wanted the alliance also to benefit from it.”

With the alliance having full visibility to the ITSM, following up the processes is simple. No bottlenecks build up, as would be likely if there were separate systems for each alliance partner.

The Solution

The alliance set up a dedicated IT service team to handle ICT service requests and asset management, using Efecte as the service platform. The alliance support team found the structure of the end-to-end system clear and user-friendly for both ends of the workflow, and the onboarding process was fast.

The alliance has been pleased with the possibility to customize Efecte according to the reality of the processes. Adding troubleshooting guidelines for users has allowed the users to try out possible solutions for their problems before submitting a service request. The number of direct contacts to ICT support via phone or email has also continued to drop. “For users, it is also more pleasant to deal with the problem when it is a good moment for them. Waiting for someone to pick up a call or sending several emails to-and-from on the same topic is really frustrating. With Efecte, we don’t have this problem”, Saara Happo, Efecte consultant at Elmo points out.

Saara Happo Elmo

Saara Happo, Efecte Consultant, ICT Elmo

Efecte allows for all the data that is relevant to the problem solving to be stored in one place, accessible to anybody handling the ticket. Users don’t need to repeat the same information already put in the system. Turnaround times for tickets can be set, meaning that no ticket is left pending for too long as tickets get automatically prioritized in the workflow to meet the SLA.

Efecte reporting tools give the alliance real-time visibility to how the ICT services are performing. Anomalies can be reacted to quickly. The alliance takes into account that aside from being service request makers and support providers, Efecte users are also human. In case something unusual happens and tickets are not handled as quickly, as usual, Efecte users get the information on the delay through the self-service portal and can prioritize their other work in a realistic way. “We are people working with people. The alliance is based on trust and transparency, and we stick to those values in everything we do” reminds Lammi. “People understand if there is for example a delay in delivery if they are told about it in advance.”

Aside from ITSM, Efecte is used for HR services and can be scaled up to a full ESM, including asset and project management and financial services. Pooling up best practices and solutions, and bringing them together is the key to effectiveness, in an alliance and in service solutions.

The Benefit

  • Transparent and agile solution for collaboration
  • Easy onboarding and the possibility to customize
  • Efficient workflows and prioritizing
  • Unified reporting and data for decision making

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