Customer Success Story

Supporting Offshore IT Service Management Success

When employees of outsourcing and technology company Xansa have an IT problem, help is immediately at hand
– often from more than 4,000 miles away.
The organisation’s Customer Service Desk is in Noida, 12 miles from Delhi in India, and part of an offshore
capability, which Xansa believes sets it apart from competitors.
Using Axios Systems’ award-winning IT Service Management (ITSM) solution, assyst, the Service Desk handles all
IT-related calls from the company’s offices, employees working on client sites, and clients using Xansa equipment.

Background
www.xansa.com
Xansa is a UK-based outsourcing and technology company that specialises in
Industry Sector: IT
delivering business services. With a 45-year history of sustaining long-term
relationships and pioneering better ways of working, Xansa drives real and long-
Benefits
term cost reductions and improved business performance. Committed to delivering
Best Practice IT Service guaranteed business outcomes through a combination of technology and process
Management expertise, Xansa gives clients across the private and public sectors the freedom to do
more.
Exceeding customer
expectations with Service With over 8,600 people in the UK and India, Xansa achieved revenues in 2007 of
Level Management £380 million.

Improved Problem and Operating on a 24x7 basis, the Xansa Customer Service Desk is the crucial first point
Change Management of contact for call logging and incident resolution, using assyst from Axios Systems
to handle thousands of incident-raising calls each month. assyst is the world’s most
Excellent staff morale
advanced Best Practice-based IT Service Management software solution.

Improved Management
Speed of response and problem resolution are vital since Xansa works with some of
Information
the world’s best-known brands including Barclaycard, BT, Royal Mail and O2.
Improved quality,
flexibility and cost- Far and away the best solution
efficiency. At Xansa, assyst was chosen to replace Quetzal as a Help Desk and ITSM solution
since it could be rapidly implemented ‘out-of-the-box’ and was developed from
inception around IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Best Practice.
In addition, it offers a unique lifecycle approach to IT Service
Management through the integration of Help Desk and
Incident Management, Problem Management,
Change Management, Asset and Configuration
Management and Service Level
Management processes in a single
solution.

2 8 css Xansa EN v1.0

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 Customer Success Story
“The Health Check
was very worthwhile
This consolidation is a key strength of assyst, as it guides the user intuitively
and interesting.
through the processes in turn, ensuring a Best Practice implementation every time.
It tackled lots of
aspects and opened In addition to the Xansa Customer Service Desk, application support teams,
our eyes a bit including those dealing with some non-IT items like the central telephone
more. It was helpful switchboard, have access to assyst which is also used for Problem Management
to have someone and raising Requests for Changes.
knowledgeable
about assyst on All assets are captured in assyst which interfaces with the company’s personnel
the spot to answer database so equipment can be linked to the relevant employees and their physical
queries.” locations. The assets register covers 15,000 items – everything from individual
equipment to servers, link structure items and software.
Suzanne Slatter
All employees with access to Xansa’s intranet can log their own calls and
Service Manager
interrogate the knowledge database using assyst’s web-based self-service
companion product, assystNET. They receive an incident number and can log
progress against it, giving them closer personal involvement in problem resolution
and reducing the Desk’s workload.

assyst – smoothing the passage to India

Using assyst, Xansa in India already provided some first line support before the
function moved from England. Today, in addition to the Service Desk, a number of
second and third line support specialists are based in the offshore delivery centres,
complementing the skills of those located in the UK.

According to Ann Smith, former Business Systems Service Manager, problems

connected with running a call centre from India have been no greater than setting
up a function in another part of the UK.

“Moving anything offshore can give teething troubles,” she said at Xansa’s offices
in Birmingham. “First, you have to get the scope right. Everyone has to understand
who is doing what.”

“There have been varying expectations of the level of knowledge which people
have, how much they can handle themselves and how much they need to pass on
to others,” she went on. “Other than that, the problems, such as interfaces between
first and second line support, have been no different from those associated with
setting up a call centre anywhere. The fact that it is in India has not made any
difference.”

Speaking the common language of quality

“Obviously there are variations in language but within the UK there are a number
of local dialects; operating from India just introduces another accent,” said Suzanne
Slatter, Service Manager. The move was achieved in stages, with a gradual build-
up of resources in Noida easing the transition.

Giving the view from India, former Customer Service Desk Manager, Vikas
Dureja added: “Technically there are no real challenges since we are connected
to a terminal server. I don’t think it makes much difference working from here or
anywhere else.”

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 Customer Success Story

Back-up systems and use of two different

suppliers maximise quality and consistency of
the supporting telecommunications network
and minimise risks.

Xansa puts the accent firmly on quality,

flexibility and cost-efficiency. The formula
works: two-thirds of revenue comes from client
relationships lasting more than five years.

Moving employees to India has been cost-effective and is often requested by clients
on financial grounds. The majority of Xansa’s clients currently benefit from the
Indian capability.

“Our clients demand high quality from us because so many of their services are
critical,” said Smith, who has been with Xansa for 28 years and describes it as a
“great company with a fascinating variety of work.”

Ensuring a quality service

To ensure a consistent high quality service, the Customer Service Desk has Service
Level Agreements with internal clients who in turn have their own contracts with
end-customers. “They tell us the timescales they’re working to so we know what their
requirements are,” Smith explained.

In order to support this, assyst for Service Level Management offers an advanced
“The assyst solution has
solution to allow Xansa to set up commitments in the form of Service Level acted as the key enabler for
Agreements (SLAs). As a result, Xansa can ensure IT service delivery remains closely sustained annual six figure
aligned with their clients’ key business requirements. financial savings by the
ability to track assets, their
If an incident looks as though it might breach a SLA, an alert is triggered specification and suitability
for re-use.”
automatically. Priorities are pre-set on a scale of 1-7 with Priority 1 being a situation
affecting multiple users or infrastructure-related. A Priority 2 refers to a user being
totally unable to work e.g. a laptop not booting up. Escalation levels are set up in
assyst together with response and resolution times.
“What really clinched the
Taking the healthy option business for Axios was
Xansa has also taken advantage of another Axios service – its IT Service the professionalism of its
Management ‘Health Check’. This three-day consulting project examined consultants.”
Xansa’s processes and systems, compared them with IT Best Practice and made
recommendations for further improvements.

“The Health Check was very worthwhile and interesting,” summed up Slatter. “It
tackled lots of aspects and opened our eyes a bit more. It was helpful to have “The key in selecting
Axios was their in-depth
someone knowledgeable about assyst on the spot to answer queries.”
knowledge of ITIL in
conjunction with their
“Such independent analysis helps insiders see things more objectively because they award-winning toolset.”
tend to be too close to day-to-day details,” she added.

Benefits
So, what are Xansa managers’ overall opinions on assyst, the ITSM solution on
which their Customer Service Desk relies?

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 Customer Success Story

“The graphical interface is a strong point,” Slatter answered. “A lot of information

can be presented on a single screen and, certainly with the event monitors, you “There’s no way you
select what information is key to managing your operation. It’s user-friendly.” can cope without a
tool like assyst in this
Rohit Bhatnagar, Service Desk Manager, described assyst as “a product that has day and age, with
been developed around the principles of ITIL, one which offers flexibility to tailor the the volume of
setup to meet individual client requirements.” calls that we get.”

Getting the right information Ann Smith

Xansa makes use of assyst’s customer survey facility, which is managed by the Business Systems Science
team in India. Some 10% of calls are followed up with a questionnaire so users can Manager
grade the service received and customer satisfaction levels can be monitored.

Crystal Reports is used to generate management information “but we’re also

happy with the assyst event monitors, used for day-to-day monitoring of SLA
performance,” Slatter stated.

Managers find the most useful information includes reports on service level targets
broken down by priority levels and the number of calls fixed within stipulated
deadlines.

“We can look at the calls the Service Desk is getting, whether the number is
growing or shrinking. The reporting that comes out of assyst is of direct benefit for
me, my managers and my customers,” adds Bhatnagar.

The Desk also uses assyst to work out average call times and the associated costs.
Generally the Desk takes an average of five to ten minutes to resolve a call. It has a
target to fix 65% of all calls at first level.

“Without assyst we just wouldn’t cope”

From a management point of view, Smith said assyst “gives us control over all
the incidents or requests which are raised and the assets which we own. When
everything is lined up properly, at the press of a button you can find out things
that are going wrong and be alerted to incidents very quickly in order to put
preventative activity in place to deal with them. It just keeps track of everything.”

“Without it we just wouldn’t cope,” she said. “There’s no way you can cope
without a tool like this in this day and age, with the volume of calls that we get.”

Xansa’s own tools have changed too. Its use of the ‘NetMeeting’ facility, for
instance, allows Desk employees to take charge of another PC – and fix the
problem remotely.

“The world keeps getting smaller,” said Slatter. “We’re simply using the best tools
we can to get the job done in the most cost-effective way, regardless of location, for
the benefit of our customers.”

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