ATS Customer Satisfaction Soars with Request Process Automation

Results

• Reduced the time required to submit requests by 80 percent.
• Eliminated 95 percent of manual IT effort through process automation.
• Virtually eliminated misrouted tickets, resulting in 98.9 percent accuracy for new requests and incident reports.
• Improved customer satisfaction from 60 percent to 93 percent (and still rising).

Background

Making Global Manufacturers More Competitive

Advanced Technology Services (ATS) helps the world’s most sophisticated manufacturing companies improve productivity and profitability through its three service divisions: Factory Maintenance Service, Industrial Parts Services & Calibration, and Information Technology Services. Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Peoria, Ill., ATS employs approximately 3,000 people across the U.S., Mexico, and the United Kingdom.

ATS strives to deliver customized services that provide measurable results for customers. The company tracks metrics and performs analysis to continuously improve the value of its services. Through outcomes such as improved machine availability, reduced inventory or accelerated IT service delivery, ATS makes its manufacturing customers more competitive in global markets.

Listening to Customers

“After one of our customers experienced failure with their initial attempt at outsourcing their IT service desk to another vendor, they approached ATS with an opportunity to deploy service desk and request management as a service for their enterprise,” says Christopher (CJ) Voss, manager of IT application development at ATS.

Initial discussions and review of existing customer satisfaction scores revealed problems related to request management. Requests that should take a matter of minutes were actually taking days, and, worse yet, some were improperly routed or went unnoticed altogether.

Cluttered and confusing SharePoint forms limited user adoption and resulted in confusion for the service desk fulfilling the request and the need for reworking forms. In addition, some of the information that was being requested should have already been provided by IT, which only created further barriers to adoption. Furthermore, the manual request process resulted in critical approvals being bypassed or forgotten. Finally, average customer satisfaction surveys scored in a dismal 60th percentile for timeliness of services delivered.

Building a Better User Experience

ATS sought to resolve these issues through an interactive enterprise request management (ERM) system that could be used inside the company as well as deployed for customers. “As a service provider, we look for products that meet the needs of external clients but that we can also use internally,” Voss notes. “We were looking for help in addressing our customers’ request management issues, standardizing processes, and providing an audit trail to track all those requests for approvals and compliance purposes.”

Following an evaluation process, ATS chose Kinetic Data ERM software—Kinetic Request portal and Kinetic Task workflow automation engine—for its new service request front end.

“We leveraged Kinetic Request and Kinetic Task to architect a workflow with the necessary approvals and tasks,” says Voss. Implementation of these technologies within the ATS myEnterprise portal and framework allowed the company to successfully deploy a system for the customer prior to launching its own new service desk.

The request portal now automatically grabs required user information based on the login, eliminating the need for employees to manually enter these details. All requests are submitted through simplified request forms, which also provide a reliable and auditable history of approvals and access provisioning. Approvals for the groups involved in the process are automated and require no interaction from the ATS service desk for fulfillment.

Producing Real Results

Since implementing the ERM portal using Kinetic Data software, ATS has achieved several measurable (and noteworthy) results, among them:

• Reduced request submission time more than 80 percent due to simplified online forms that make it easier for users to request services.
• Eliminated 95 percent of the manual effort formerly required by IT for approval processes and request routing.
• Because 98.9 percent of request submissions and incident reports now immediately reach the right service group, misrouted tickets are largely a thing of the past.
• Customer satisfaction now scores impressively in the 93rd percentile—and is still rising.
• What’s more, the system automatically tracks service time and results, so ATS can continue to refine and improve its service delivery processes.

“Our experience of working with Kinetic Data has been very positive,” says Voss. “We’ve increased customer satisfaction, reduced rework from the service desk trying to hunt down approvals and optimized processes that were previously ignored. This request management system provides a great balance between meeting end-user simplicity and the compliance needs of the business.”