Coppenrath & Wiese

"The constant growth of documentation and knowledge entries in various systems made a quick search for problem solutions significantly more difficult ..." Robert Stoll -Teamleiter IT-Support

 

Food manufacturer optimizes support processes

With EcholoN, Coppenrath & Wiese sets the recipe for success for effective IT Service Management

The Osnabrück-based specialist for frozen bakery products Coppenrath & Wiese and its approximately 2,200 employees, the continuous readiness for operation of IT and a reliable IT service for the smooth operation of business is of particular importance. A constantly growing knowledge database for the fast and efficient processing of IT disruptions and process standards according to ITIL should ensure an effective process organization in the IT service in the future as well. At Coppenrath & Wiese, the central element for supporting and automating the service processes is the Service Management Suite EcholoN from Hamburg-based mIT solutions GmbH, which the company introduced in 2013 for reliable IT support.

The Conditorei Coppenrath & Wiese GmbH & Co. KG, with its headquarters in Osnabrück and the production site in Mettingen, is today one of the leading manufacturers of frozen bakery products in Europe. The assortment includes besides a variety of pies and cakes, a.o. cream desserts, strudel, bread rolls, baguette and lye bakery products .

Coppenrath & Wiese administration building

Head office in Osnabrück

Growing requirements made reorganization in the service necessary

To ensure that the complex IT infrastructure at Coppenrath & Wiese is always ready for operation, a team of 18 specialists of the company's IT department is responsible for the maintenance, servicing, care and development of the systems as well as for the support and training of the users. However, the Lotus Notes-based service database has limited support for IT support staff so far and, moreover, offers few opportunities to organize ticket processing as needed.

 

Robert Stoll

"Although our previous system also offered a ticket capture screen with integrated workflow engine and knowledge base, with our increasing demands there was a lack of functionality, e.g. in the reporting, the necessary scalability of the system and ultimately the holistic approach.

 

Incoming inquiries were usually processed directly by the contacted employee.

"In many cases, the employees were interrupted in the processing of other inquiries.Thus the system was not automatically possible to assign them to specialized employees so that goal-oriented and efficient use of resources could hardly be guaranteed, which has often driven the effort for the processing of tickets unnecessarily in the air", says Robert Stoll, Team Leader IT Support and Helpdesk, summarizing the situation. "On top of that, we were struggling with ever poorer performance in capturing our operations. The constant growth of documentation and knowledge entries in various systems made it difficult to efficiently and quickly search for solutions to problems. In the end, a lot of time was spent on unnecessary search processes instead of the actual problem solving and its sustainable documentation. "

Central knowledge database should support the support effectively

Against this background, Coppenrath & Wiese finally decided in 2012 to replace the previous ticket system with a holistic and professional service management solution for IT support. The stated goal of this step was, in addition to the reorganization and overarching optimization of the service processes, to enable a faster capture in the first customer contact in the future and to increase the initial solution rate sustainably. For example, The knowledge of what is generated every day when solving Incidents should be effectively preserved and documented or made available for future disruptions. By entering individual keywords, the linked knowledge databases should be displayed immediately so that the customer can be provided with professional instructions for solving problems during initial contact for many topics. A new solution should allow IT staff members to build a steadily growing and systematically structured pool of knowledge to provide quick assistance and relieve support of recurring issues.

Price-performance and holistic service concept were decisive

A self-search initially provided a first rough orientation on service management solutions available on the market. This was followed by the conceptual reorganization of the service processes, on the basis of which a detailed catalog of requirements for the new service application was finally created. As part of trade fair visits, live demonstrations and subsequent reference visits to user companies, the selection was then limited to three providers. A final decision finally enabled the project tendering and bidding phase, which ultimately failed in favor of the Hamburg mIT solutions GmbH with its Service Management Suite EcholoN with regard to the best price / performance ratio.

EcholoN News

Coppenrath & Wiese has been selling frozen bread rolls in Germany in addition to over 80 different cakes and tarts since 1997, under the name „Unsere Goldstücke".

Ultimately, EcholoN's holistic approach was convincing. the possibility that one already gets possible solution approaches directly in the system during the process recording, was an important decision criterion. "If a customer calls the help desk, thanks to the CTI connection, the employees automatically receive the history and an overview of which processes are currently still open for the respective customer, who processes them and what the current processing status is. By linking a specific service with corresponding documentation simply by mouse click, possible solution scenarios and best practices are already displayed during the process recording in the EcholoN system.

 

Required third-party applications, such as remote administration tools or web interfaces to the device, can be initialized directly from within the system to simplify operation, "explains Robert Stoll. If, for example, a specific problem often crops up in the subsequent reporting at the customer, then a targeted solution to a permanent elimination of the problem can be worked out and documented accordingly for other customers. Also, the possibility that service-specific questionnaires can be deposited in order to include all relevant information for solving the problem without having to re-establish contact makes the subsequent processing significantly easier.

Central system for questionnaires and documentation

With the integration of the service catalog into the EcholoN system, all IT employees now have access to a central medium for processing inquiries and organizing documentation. This not only deals with all essential questions in the service process, such as "Who is responsible?", "Who can I contact in case of problems?" Or "Which service providers can I include?", But also allows effective document search and indexing capabilities. Thanks to defined search and storage routines, file attachments and screenshots can also be easily integrated into the services, which can also be explained using Richtext fields. EcholoN serves the company today as a central system for all documentation filing and archiving.

Process reorganization and ITIL implementation

The reason for introducing a new service-oriented software at Coppenrath & Wiese was a necessary restructuring of existing processes. In a project Kickoff in March 2013, the requirements of the process organization according to ITIL standards were first discussed with the EcholoN specialists. The next step was the creation of a detailed service catalog by Coppenrath & Wiese. In internal training, the IT staff were then given the basic principles of service-oriented orientation. Following on from this, the mIT specialists in a user training course prepared all employees for working with EcholoN.

Based on the ITIL idea, the new system will in future record, categorize and track every single disruption to future problems.

"EcholoN ensures reliable e-mail notification of status transitions, which is a high priority for processes to run smoothly. At the same time, the duration of ticket processing is an important indicator of the quality of our documentation and in which areas there may still be a need for optimization. By gaining transparency about the ongoing processes and optimizations based on our EcholoN reporting, we can ultimately ensure better service quality and reduce processing time for incidents and problems", said Robert Stoll.