industry sector

MEDIA
Service Management boosts IT Service
performance at publishing group Weltbild

case study:
Verlagsgruppe Weltbild

Clear management
reports are just one Electronic mail-order business via the internet is gaining more and more in importance. Through the
of the many benefits
development of shop systems Weltbild has been successful in this market sector from the outset. The
of Axios Systems’
assyst Help Desk products specifically designed for the internet of course require to be maintained and developed further.
and IT Service
Management The main reason for starting the search for an IT Service Management system was the drive to improve
software, according customer service.
to Markus
Wachinger, The Company
who works for
Germany’s largest Based in the Bavarian town of Augsburg, Verlagsgruppe Weltbild is an internationally successful publishing
publishing and and mail order company with around 3,000 employees in Germany and abroad, which in 2004 generated
book mail order a turnover of €1bn (£0.67bn). Weltbild sells media products and publishes books and magazines. The
company. publishing group’s 17 million customers value its brand, the multi-channel sales strategy and the carefully
chosen products along with their attractive prices. The results of a recent survey show that 7 out of 10
people in Germany know the “Weltbild” brand. It is synonymous with quality and credibility in the media
sector.

The Service Desk in Augsburg currently provides user support at the Verlagsgruppe Weltbild, which, among
others, comprises of 250 book shops as well as offices in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

It supports a vast range of products (140 PC software products alone) and different systems platforms. “We
would like to reduce this but at the end of the day we are the service provider and have to respond to our
customers’ wishes and requirements”, Markus Wachinger explained.

The Selection

“It was important for us to install a comprehensive product which included all modules
such as Incident Management, Change Management, Configuration
Management etc., which can be activated by a click of
the mouse. It made no sense to add a piecemeal of
modules, one after the other.”

“Products that required development work

were ruled out at a very early stage, because
it would have taken too long to adapt these
to our requirements. We wanted an ‘out of
the box’ product that we could get up and
running immediately.”

“When we were at the decision-making stage

we visited an existing Axios customer to gain
an idea of the live operation of the software.
We also used a point system that allowed us
to evaluate the different products against a
list of criteria. One of these criteria was the
utilisation of a knowledge base.”

over
the solution was assyst >
case study : “ assyst “
tells us how well our IT processes are functioning and enables us to
meet our customers’ expectations.
Verlagsgruppe Weltbild

“assyst was simply ideal in

terms of value for money. It
was the best product on the
market and is closely aligned
to the ITIL guidelines.”
Markus Wachinger,
Head of User Services
“assyst emerged as the clear winner both in terms of cost and performance.” The Future Benefits
“Another reason for choosing assyst was the fact that Axios has specialised in Resetting of passwords is one of the main reasons why the percentage of calls that need to be Application of ITIL Best
referred to second level support is higher than desired. For organisational reasons the Service
just one core product line which it develops for the long term. Customers have the Practice
security of knowing that the product will remain on the market in future.” Desk mostly cannot re-set passwords. “About 10% of all reported incidents are password-
related”, Markus Wachinger said. “We could notably increase our first-fix rate if the Service Desk • Extended availability of
The Solution was given the necessary privileges.” the Service Desk
To start off with Weltbild introduced Incident Management, closely followed by “We want to keep developing with assyst and implement additional modules such as Financial • Improved management of
Problem Management. Wachinger thought that he would not implement Change Management and build up a knowledge base in order to benefit even more from the solution.” the IT infrastructure
Management for the first couple of years, however, it was in fact up and running
only 3 months down the line. Asset data must be kept up-to-date to ensure the • Reduced IT operational
Customers
work that has been done collating them in the first place is not wasted. Any change costs
Logistics Centre
in the hardware and software is now controlled via Change Management.
• Improved IT user
“Time to implement was relatively short. It was important to us that the software satisfaction
solution had integrated all ITIL modules, which was not the case with many Call Centre
applications.” Incident • Better cost efficiency due
to internal charging
The great bulk of Weltbild Verlag’s business runs through its Augsburg call centre
staffed by 300 operators and the nearby warehouse which ships customer orders. Asset & • Improved IT security
Config Problem
At peak times, such as Christmas, tens of thousands of items are being processed
simultaneously each day. The IT system which supports such an operation has to SLA
function flawlessly all the time.

The Service Desk answers hundreds of calls a week, resolving just under two thirds
of them at first level. At the same time a growing number of external suppliers have
to be included in the Incident Management process. This can easily be documented
and even automated to some extent with the assyst functionality.
Just by glancing at a report generated from assyst, IT Service staff at Weltbild
can tell where the critical points are - for instance how many call-backs a service
department has received from customers after problems have been reported in a
specific problem category.
The IT department at Verlagsgruppe Weltbild has basic Service Level Agreements
(SLAs) with the distribution centre which stipulate requirements for system
availability, reaction and problem resolution time.
“SLA Management is very important for us. Although we do not have any formal
SLAs with the end users at the moment, it provides us with the evidence that tells
us whether we are meeting our targets”, Wachinger went on. “This information
indicates how good our support really is.”
This information is helpful when it comes to concluding external SLAs because it is
used to determine service costs.
Change Known
Error
ITIL processes in assyst underline the quality of
support at Verlagsgruppe Weltbild
Benefits and Future
“One of the greatest benefits of assyst is that it provides us with data which helps us evaluate
how well our IT processes are working. This enables us to meet the expectations of our end
users”, commented Markus Wachinger, Head of User Services at Verlagsgruppe Weltbild.
“My experience is that it’s easy to sit around a table and declare that you want to improve and
speed up support processes. Everyone nods their head and says ‘Sure, let’s do it!’ But nothing
happens because nobody knows where to start.”
“Now we can put something on the table in black and white, showing how we performed last
month or compared to last year. We have a basis from which we can plan and control. We
can now talk about specific ways in which we can re-organise our activities and improve our
performance.”

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 case study:
The Credentials Verlagsgruppe
Weltbild
“It also allows objective reporting. Facts are clearly set out in reports that help us
understand and optimise our processes. In order to achieve efficient Service Management
it is particularly important for us to measure our reaction and resolution times and the
time we spend on support activities.”

“Because assyst is based on ITIL, all the required functionality is already included in the
product. This is a great advantage.”

"We were impressed by the understanding of our business needs

demonstrated by Axios and found that assyst is the ideal tool to
meet our requirements."

"assyst offered all the functional and technical features we were

looking for in our outsourcing platform. Our biggest clients are
moving towards ITIL so assyst was the logical choice."

"We chose assyst based on our long term objectives, which were
to implement ITIL and a solution that would support this."

"The key in selecting Axios was their in-depth knowledge of ITIL."

assyst@ax i o s s y s t e m s .c o m
w w w . a xiossystems.com