Organizations constantly change: they add and drop product lines, acquire other companies, divest business units, and expand into new markets or countries.
The true measure of any enterprise technology is not whether it can merely adapt to such changes, but also enable continual improvement, both operationally and in employee experience.
When Schneider Electric launched an initiative to upgrade its employee services request portal, it put its request management software to the test. Here’s the company’s story.
Schneider Electric is a global organization with more than 170,000 employees in 134 countries, supplying a wide range of business and residential energy products and services.
As part of its ongoing commitment to provide employees with a positive work experience, in 2010, Schneider replaced its complex and costly legacy service request management system with enterprise request management (ERM) software from Kinetic Data.
Schneider chose Kinetic Request portal and Kinetic Task workflow software not only because they leveraged Schneider’s in-place IT service management system, but also based on the design flexibility and ease of use of the portal interface. Plus, they really liked the simpler, less-costly pricing model.
By 2013, Schneider’s business had evolved, restructured and outgrown the 2010 system. It needed to update its request portal to be even faster and simpler, as well as use a mobile-friendly responsive design so employees are enticed to use the Web instead of calling the service desk for requests and issues.
Among the host of employee experience improvements:
- Portal load time improved by 50 percent;
- The Google-like search and redesigned navigation let people find what they need with just one click instead of five or more, cutting request submission time by 80 percent; and
- The portal displays information and options specific to each employee’s department, role, and location automatically upon logging in—there’s no starting at square one to make a request.
In fact, the new version is so intuitive, it doesn’t require user training.
Needless to say, employees are thrilled. Cheers popped up on the internal chat system. Messages like “Magnificent design,” “Bravo,” and “This is excellent!” appeared from people from across the globe.
Not only is the employee experience a huge improvement, but also within six months, Schneider was well on the way to its goal of driving 38 percent more requests through its Web portal, enabling it to avoid $1.4 million in service management costs.
The new design has already reduced misrouted tickets to the ITSM system admin team by 54 percent, saving 260 labor hours per year.
ERM has been such an overwhelming success that plans are already in place to translate the site into French, German and Chinese. Schneider plans to leverage ERM technology to manage facilities, HR and copy center requests.
And it doesn’t stop there. The company is scanning the global landscape to identify other possibilities for improved employee experience, productivity gains and cost savings from their new ERM system.
And now, for the rest of the story…
- Read the full news release about how Schneider Electric redesigned its employee service request portal.
- Download the white paper Enterprise Request Management: An Overview.
- Contact us to discuss how we can help you automate and accelerate business processes.
Cassy Lueneburg