The new support at the INIT Group

Straightforward processes and powerful tools enable quick handling of your issues

INIT’s commitment to its customers doesn’t end once the new system has gone live: the INIT Group’s Support team is always on hand to assist with any questions or concerns. The Support team’s core task is resolving issues as fast as possible so customers can resume normal operations.

To achieve this, the Support team needs to quickly get to grips with the current situation – working in close collaboration with the customer to collate the required information and, based on extensive experience, to speedily identify the appropriate solution. This is exactly what INIT’s staff are trained to do well. 

Quick and effective solutions: the role you play

With all their training and expertise, our employees’ abilities to resolve your issue as fast as possible are particularly dependent on receiving accurate and complete information. For this reason, all our maintenance customers will soon receive a copy of the latest edition of our Support Manual – to ensure they will know exactly what information we need to set us on the right track. This document contains important guidance to help us work together as ef­fec­­­tively as possible, and contains helpful examples to further explain the processes.

This Support Manual is an important supplement to the maintenance contract, but of course does not supersede any provisions in individual contracts.

We always ask for a great deal of information when logging and classifying your issue. Should further details be required later during the resolution of your issue, we will ask for your active support again. The best way to achieve a quick solution is if active users get in contact with us directly to ensure the issue is resolved as quickly as possible. The more familiar they are with the system, the faster we can resolve emergency situations together. This is one of the reasons why it is important that your staff are appropriately trained – and we are happy to provide regular support with your ongoing training needs.

A methodical approach to resolving issues

Our service management tool (IT service management software, which includes work­­flow management in the form of tickets) offers a transparent overview of the current status of each ticket at any time, as our employees continually update the tickets to record current progress. An agree­ment on the type and class of inquiry is reached here early on, which is particularly important in time-critical situations. The type and class determine the contractually agreed time frame for resolution and how we must proceed. All issues are segmented into the four following types for processing, each of which outlines the subsequent workflow:

  • Incident: The task in this case is to resolve an unplanned interruption of a service or a reduction in the quality of a service. The process is completely focused on restoring full functionality of the system.
  • Root cause analysis: The task here is to identify the cause of one or more incidents. A lasting improvement to the quality of the system is ensured by investing significant resources.
  • Request: Information, system expansions, training, or other products or services are requested to enable the customer to get more out of the INIT system. In many cases, the response with details on how to proceed will be provided by the corresponding special department.
  • Open point: Open points are not part of the support agreement, but they are documented in the service management tool for better traceability. If parts of a project are still in progress or if discrepancies between the requested performance and the system are identified later, then these are open points. These are managed and dealt with as part of the project management process.

Our objective: resolve incidents as quickly and efficiently as possible

It is particularly important that incidents are processed as quickly as possible, in order that the full availability of the system is promptly restored. INIT prioritizes the processing of incidents for this reason.

As an international group that provides comprehensive system solutions, INIT has developed a six-step escalation process with different assigned roles that allows incidents to be resolved fast and efficiently. Different people can fill the required roles depending on the customer, communications channel, time and product. This means that more than 400 INIT employees are currently involved in the support process.

  • Receiver: Accepts the incident report.
  • Service Desk: Inspects the available information.
  • 1st-Level Support: Resolves known incidents.
  • 2nd-Level Support: In-depth analysis and troubleshooting.
  • 3rd-Level Support: System specialists from the relevant departments identify details right down to the source-code level and restore functionality.
  • Development: Planned programming work, if the incident could not be resolved fundamen­tally and instead requires more in-depth system adjustments. 

The incident will continue to be escalated until a solution is found. The potential source of the error is further narrowed with each escalation from one level to the next. The incident comes closer and closer to a resolution – not least because more specialized staff are brought on board at each level of escalation. At the same time, however, the time needed to process the incident increases with each escalation.

Our ambition: continuous improvement

We have thoroughly reviewed and subsequently restructured our support processes over the course of the past year. We have now adapted our processes and roles to match those outlined by the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the manufacturer-independent collection of best practices, and simultaneously established a support management system. This continuously monitors the current situation in the service management tool to ensure processing times are as short as possible and to guarantee that the optimal solution is identified for every customer request. In turn, the support generates valuable insights, which provide an important basis for the ongoing development of our systems and are fed back accor­dingly. On the statistical side, the service level management rounds everything off – continually comparing contractually agreed targets with the current performance from INIT Support, prompting adjustments where necessary.

Our service management tool was also updated as part of the ongoing improvements to our processess. Please contact us regarding a potential migration at any time on support_prefix@initse._suffixcom.

You will find additional contact details of the support team and information on our training offerings in the Support Manual and Training Catalog.

Contact

Dr. Michael Caspari

Head of Department Support & Operations

INIT GmbH

Germany

Get in touch

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This article was published in our customer magazine INITiative, issue 2/2019. If you want to receive the magazine regularly per e-mail, we kindly ask you to subscribe.

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