More than conventional business intelligence for Deutsche Telekom

Service Level Management – More than just „colorful pictures“

For this reason, it has been one of the central tasks of Dr. Seyl and his team to provide all customers with regular, meaning quarterly, informative reports on the quality and Service Level Management – More than just „colorful pictures“ availability of the services provided and the achievement of agreed KPIs. In day-to-day practice, this has meant gathering a wealth of data and numbers from a variety of unrelated monitoring and reporting tools, which were then consolidated into a centralized Excel spreadsheet and transformed into a report. The company‘s international focus and cooperation with different providers in different countries, which in turn use different reporting techniques, made consolidation even more difficult. ”The work was more reminiscent of a Sisyphean task than of SLA management,“ Dr. Seyl describes the previous approach.

With the aim of making this important task more efficient and being able to provide customers with the results online via a web front-end, TC International looked for a suitable solution and decided at the beginning of 2013 for the launch of the Apptio Digital Fuel IT Business Management Suite (ITBM).

The SLA and Service Relationship Management solution enables both internal and external service providers to efficiently manage their business and contract obligations. It thus provides the necessary transparency to ensure the success of service relationships with customers as well as with suppliers. With the graphic development environment, it is possible to create so-called Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and individual reports quickly and intuitively. In addition, the specification of data sources and their mapping can be easily realized on the relevant contract information.

ITBM reporting takes place in different ways, based on user roles and permissions. Through various drill-down functions, more detailed information can then be retrieved. Aside from purely technical information on SLA compliance, the reports also provide information on the bonus/ malus system. Trend analyzes are also possible.

The results of the service fulfillment can be presented, customer oriented, in monthly verifications of the service levels, to enable a goal-oriented discussion with the customer based on cause and effect with the goal of a common service optimization.

Dr. Seyl explains the decision for ITBM: ”We looked intently at a variety of solutions but found that Apptio Digital Fuel‘s solution had a unique selling proposition compared to conventional business intelligence and data mining tools, as it currently is the only solution on the market which covers the complete process of SLA management. The respective contract situation with the customer is also taken into account.“ Another decisive criterion for the choice of ITBM  was supplier management. “Due to our extensive partner network, we face the challenge that we obtain certain services from one or more partners with an appropriate SLA, which we then pass on to our customers while also concluding an SLA. However, the agreements in the two SLAs must be reconciled in such a way that there is no „breach“ in the contractual relationship of supplier – T-Systems TC International – customer,“ says Dr. Seyl.

Already at the beginning of the project it became evident how important it was to get amasol as a design and implementation partner. ”Anyone who thinks they receive a ‚finished‘ software similar to an office solution with Apptio Digital Fuel ITBM is wrong. The solution merely provides a kind of framework that has to be parametrized and tailored to the specific company and customer requirements,“ explains Dr. Seyl.

”Shortly after the project started, we realized that we had found the right partner with amasol. When working with the solution a lot of the logic and concepts of the solution became clear over time. The amasol  team actively supported us with their expertise and practical experience, which included not only the implementation of the solution, but also the development and implementation of Business Service Management projects. All employees impressed with their high level of customer orientation and expertise, which meant that we were able to take the system into operative business as early as mid-September. The operational handover itself was also perfectly prepared and carried out by amasol.“ It then did not matter that the transfer took place on a Friday the 13th.

By now, the Apptio Digital Fuel ITBM Suite has proven itself in practical use. Dr. Frank Seyl draws a positive conclusion: ”We were able to fully achieve our goals of increasing efficiency and providing a web-based reporting portal for our customers with Apptio Digital Fuel ITBM. Not least, this is the merit of amasol as a competent and solution-oriented project partner. Thanks to amasol, we can now even offer our customers and employees the opportunity to access the reporting tool via mobile devices such as an iPad. We are happy to have a partner such as amasol that we can rely on for future adaptations to the solution.“