Affinity Logic, a focused local IT solutions provider, working across the retail and consumer goods industries, has announced the successful launch of a customised service portal, aimed at providing a holistic overview at any time of the services and service levels, which Affinity Logic is providing to its customers.
Affinity Logic`s core focus is on IT service provision in the CPG/retail value chain, with an added focus on e-commerce enabling key participants in this value chain.
"Outsourcing service provision is a two-way street," says Affinity Logic`s operations director, Andrew Murray. "When retailers outsource IT services to a company such as Affinity Logic, service is everything.
"This is what drove us to develop and implement our service portal, which effectively provides a real-time, `one-stop` services and service level monitoring tool for use by our management and support staff," says Murray.
Global IT research and analysis organisation Meta Group recently indicated that many companies around the world are struggling to construct successful outsourcing arrangements.
According to Murray, Meta Group findings show that this is due to poor expectation management, unpredicted cost increases, and doubtful service quality improvement. In turn, Meta predicts that this will force companies to change vendors frequently, undermine outsourcing`s potential, and limit IT organisations` value-added capabilities.
Meta Group furthermore predicts that some 50% of outsourcing contracts not meeting benchmarking requirements will be renegotiated or terminated within the very near future. "The service portal is Affinity Logic`s proactive answer to ensure the company continues to deliver effective and efficient outsourced IT services," Murray explains.
At the moment Affinity`s directors, managers and IT support staff are using the service portal, so they can see all the systems that are live, and their status. Affinity Logic has monitors set up in strategic areas such as reception, so that this can easily be observed by those who need to see it.
This is also impacting Affinity Logic in the help desk area. The service portal has been displayed on a wall screen - so everyone can see it and can react and follow up and or escalate whatever actions need to be taken at a particular point in time, for a specific customer.
"In this way, it acts not only as a single point of reporting internally, but is also a great motivator," points out Viviana Fourie, Programme Manager at Affinity Logic, who was responsible for the project management aspects of the service portal.
"The portal displays four levels of severity status, from a mild to a severe alert, with attendant time scales and resolution times, in which the service issue or problem at the client must have been resolved," Fourie explains.
"Affinity Logic has different service level agreements [SLAs] for each of its customers. Resolution time is the time they have to solve the problem in order to keep the solution within the agreed SLA," she adds.
When a user logs into the system, they can only see the clients they are authorised to see. For example, when they log in the system goes to the call centre database (FrontRange`s HEAT) and gets all the calls active for his or her particular area of responsibility.
From an external security aspect, users will only be able to access the system if they are part of Affinity Logic`s RetailNet network, with access that has to be set up with specific security settings for each user.
"Once the system is rolled out to all clients, which is planned as the next phase of the service portal implementation, then naturally it will be set up with the strictest security in place, so that, for example, any one retailer can only get access to their systems," clarifies Fourie.
The system allows users to see the bulk overview of the service - as per the severity impacts or alerts as mentioned above - as well as allowing a view of the following: Documentation, project status, budget and report backs that have been uploaded.
"Besides allowing managers to monitor the company`s service levels, the service status overview is also a self-management tool for key support staff," Fourie remarks.
In addition to getting the overview, users can drill down into the systems.
"For example, you can look at local area network [LAN] maps - the status of your wide area network [WAN] throughout SA. You can see the WAN utilisation and the status of your network," she says.
Another example is that users can see the status of their servers.
"If SAP is slow it can be many things causing this. The system gives you a quick understanding of the issue. We have designed a tool which allows you see the service reports, status of servers, details on CPU, disk usage, applications, and it tells you what is happening machine by machine," she explains.
Client response to the service portal has been excellent.
"The portal helps our staff service delivery levels in two main areas: the access to data is beneficial, and the speed of which you can access this information is great," Fourie says.
"We no longer need to e-mail clients with updates, financials and so on. Once the client access phase of the service portal has been rolled out, the client can go in and view all the information in one place. The portal has also become the central repository for all the client information. Documentation and reports that can be viewed on the portal include: programme management, contract management, strategy docs, financial management/budgetary and customer satisfaction reports," she details.
Third-parties, such as those companies that Affinity Logic has alliances with that fulfil on some of its services, will also have access to the system, and be able to see the status of their calls as well.
The system was written by Affinity Logic in ASP.
"Because we needed something so specifically customised to our environment, we decided to write it in-house. We started in July 2001, and the first phase was implemented at the end of October. We are currently adding functionality and are going to roll this out to clients shortly," Fourie adds.
Affinity Logic has gone live with its helpdesk, network, and SAP services - and will roll out additional services over time.
"Meta Group predicts that, by 2005, 25% of companies will build trust with outsourcing vendors as a result of vendors leveraging technology to enable business strategies, establishing operations excellence best practices, and automating and integrating operational processes," points out Murray.
"The service portal is the first bold step that we at Affinity Logic have taken, in terms of successfully leveraging technology, to elevate the levels of service delivery and trust between outsourcing IT services providers such as ourselves, and our customer base," he concludes.
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