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Cireson Streams Increase Productivity in the Cloud for EACS
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Remote Asset Management
- Remote Control
- Service Parts Management
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
- Training
The Challenge
At the heart of the support services EACS offers to its clients is their Service Desk, which serves companies throughout the UK. The Service Desk is manned by a team of qualified engineers who act as a single point of contact for customers providing both first line support (to end users) and second and third line support (to IT staff in other organizations). All calls into the team are tracked with formalised call logging, management and an escalation process if required. Regular reports also need to be generated to highlight key business intelligence and call trends. EACS’ original Service Desk solution was a previous version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. However, it had shortcomings that prevented EACS from increasing efficiency and improving the overall end to end customer experience. The IT team wanted to replace it with a flexible and easily customizable hosted solution that could grow with the company and provide a better experience for their clients.
About The Customer
Founded in 1994, EACS provides IT solutions and managed services to a wide range of organizations in the UK. The solutions offered include end user computing, infrastructure, cloud computing and systems management. The services range from ad-hoc consultancy, support and training to fully managed or hosted IT systems. EACS is known for its comprehensive IT support services, which include a Service Desk manned by a team of qualified engineers who act as a single point of contact for customers. They provide both first line support to end users and second and third line support to IT staff in other organizations. EACS is committed to delivering high-quality IT solutions that enhance productivity and efficiency for their clients.
The Solution
Instead of just upgrading to the next version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, EACS evaluated a number of different solutions on the market before selecting System Center Service Manager as a replacement. Service Manager had the greatest potential to fulfill all of their requirements; however, as IT consultants who worked with the solution in the past, they were aware it had some weaknesses. With the help of Cireson and their internal teams, EACS could start to use and further develop Service Manager’s capabilities with great results. The increased performance of the system was one of the first benefits they noticed once the apps were up and running. Another important benefit was the ease of customization of various features. The automation capabilities of the apps were instrumental in helping EACS’ team speed up the incident resolution process. They also decreased human errors by eliminating many manual steps the analysts have to go through while resolving user requests in Service Manager. The biggest challenge for EACS was to deploy Service Manager and Cireson in the cloud. The IT team supports not only internal users, but also over 150 customers, which results in unique multi-tenancy issues, requiring the team to implement extra security measures ensuring data confidentiality. The investment required to deploy the infrastructure to Azure was reasonably competitive when compared to the alternative of purchasing new hardware and running it in their own datacentre. However, it was the flexibility that won the decision in the end.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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