DATAGROUP

The IT service provider DATAGROUP Köln GmbH has been part of DATAGROUP AG since 2009, operates its own branches in Essen, Munich and Mainz and employs around 300 people. "We offer complete shared services," explains Petra Janssen, Head of IT Operations & Service Desk. "That means we act as a service desk at first and second level, but also take over network services, server support and project services for our customers." The service desk, with its well-trained IT specialists, is there for customers around the clock, seven days a week. And it is needed: Every month, about 4,000 calls reach the staff, in addition to 1,500 outbound calls through callbacks to customers who have previously contacted DATAGROUP Cologne by phone or email. To enable more flexibility, the service provider had been looking for a new, modern ACD solution since spring 2012. It was clear from the beginning that, unlike before, a virtual ACD should be used: "We attach great importance to a flexible and scalable solution so that we can react immediately to changing call volumes," explains Christopher Dreschmann, Team Coordinator Service Desk at DATAGROUP Cologne. Since September 2012, the solutions from VIER have been in use - after a four-month implementation phase including a six-week test phase. "The seamless transition was particularly important to us, because our customers rightly expect continuity and reliability from us," affirms Petra Janssen. Around 20 service desk employees in first and second level support have been working with VIER's Multichannel ACD since then - but a special focus is on VIER's reporting solutions, which were introduced at DATAGROUP Cologne at the same time as the Multichannel ACD.

"For us, it was and is absolutely essential to provide our customers with professional reporting as usual," Petra Janssen knows. "This includes a management view with meaningful information and the ability to easily display important details." The data is not only urgently needed for accounting, but also helps to avoid ambiguities or problems from the outset. As interactive statistics and analysis tools, VIER's reporting solutions enable the consolidation, presentation and evaluation of selected data from the VIER modules and external data sources. The areas of application range from the free design of professional statistics and diagrams with analysis function, the presentation of current monitoring and wallboard data to intraday control.

Several times a week at DATAGROUP Cologne, in addition to the hourly online monitoring of the call volume, the accessibility of the service desk via the service numbers is now checked with the help of the reporting solutions from VIER - for example through clear pie charts: "Compliance with the service level agreements is of crucial importance to us, so we need to be able to determine at a glance at any time whether we are in the so-called 'green zone' - the extensive and at the same time simple display options of VIER's reporting solutions are very helpful here," explains Christopher Dreschmann, who is also responsible for monitoring as well as monthly reporting. "To fulfil our performance promise in a controllable way is simply a prerequisite for the successful relationship with our clients," affirms Petra Janssen. However, the head of the service desk and team coordination is also dependent on valid data in real time when it comes to questions of deployment planning: "Like all service managers, we have to keep the balance between our resources and the best service quality," says Petra Janssen. Christopher Dreschmann confirms that the solutions from VIER help with this: "As we had hoped, we are now much more flexible than before. And the failure safety has also increased!" Flexible expansion.

For the future, on the one hand, the mobile use of the information of the reporting solutions of VIER via smartphones could now become an issue. On the other hand, the expansion of the use through the possible cooperation with other units of DATAGROUP AG comes into focus: "The subsidiaries of DATAGROUP AG act independently and have their own special fields. Supporting the cooperation of different specialists with the help of a joint ACD could therefore become very exciting in the future," Petra Janssen is pleased. And what do the customers of DATAGROUP Cologne say about the change to the multichannel ACD and the reporting solutions of VIER? "The nicest feedback from the customers is actually that there is no feedback at all on this," says Petra Janssen. "Since the switch to VIER went smoothly, nothing has changed at all for the customers. Everything is running as usual for them - and that's what we're most happy about!"

As an IT service provider, DATAGROUP Cologne (formerly arxes) has been active in the field of service management, project and data centre management for other companies since 1986. The more than 25 renowned customers who use the IT support come from all industries. Among them are medium-sized companies as well as large corporations. In order to ensure constant availability and high service quality, DATAGROUP Cologne has been using the virtual multichannel ACD and the reporting solutions by VIER as interactive statistics and analysis tools since late summer 2012.

Learn more: datagroup.de