Mondi partners with Numara Software to ensure SLA commitments

Numara Software, Inc., a leader in service desk management solutions, announced today that Mondi – a leading international paper and packaging group - has taken the decision to deploy Numara FootPrints 8. The contract was secured in late December 2007, and the software will be rolled out across the UK Corrugated Division of Mondi during January.

The software will support approximately 450 PC users and, once successfully up and running, the next phase will involve Mondi evaluating FootPrints for additional territories such as Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Poland and Turkey.

Prior to deploying Numara FootPrints 8, Mondi had taken the business decision to develop an internal support system. In an interesting twist, the bespoke system had actually been introduced to replace an existing, older, version of Numara FootPrints which the company had previously been managing the support infrastructure on. However, over time, the new system became difficult to scale, was time consuming to manage and, as the reporting functionality wasn’t as detailed as it needed to be, performance against service levels became difficult to measure. When management of the in-house system became too resource intensive, FootPrints was the obvious solution to revert back to.

Chris Watson, UK IT Manager at Mondi explained: “As early adopters of FootPrints, Mondi originally licensed the software for our UK operation back in 2000. The solution met our requirements well but as our business evolved the decision was taken to design a bespoke ‘in-house’ solution - working to the same basic principles as those offered by FootPrints. Again, the business demands switched, and visibility became critical.

FootPrints 8 is an entirely web based solution that delivers a distributed or virtual support desk offering, providing the team with the required visibility so we can see how the business is being serviced overall and then manage or escalate enquiries quickly. With a virtual IT team in place, working across many sites, finding this element in the software was critical to the procurement process.”

So, with an increasing number of sites requiring support, and no dedicated full time person, Mondi ultimately needed a central repository to manage and prioritise workload, which Numara FootPrints offered at the highest level. This was also further enhanced as the features of the software perfectly complemented the existing internal IT structure at Mondi. And with all future system maintenance being managed by Numara, the internal IT team were now free to focus solely on supporting the business processes and meeting agreed service levels.

Going forward, every single IT request will come through the helpdesk function, removing ad-hoc support calls and corridor conversations that are impossible to track and report against.

“From printer changes to re-setting passwords, IT requests for new users to bugs in software and change requests to current systems, everything the IT team does is now captured, benchmarked and reported against,” Watson continued. “In support visibility is key, so being able to provide detailed reports on request to show how SLA’s are being met and demonstrate how problems and incidents are being resolved, is invaluable.”

Given the user friendly interface of the system, and as a result of his previous experience with the software, Numara FootPrints 8 has been installed personally by Watson. Set up to run in the exact environment needed, it has already been configured for go-live with minimal assistance from Numara’s professional services team.

“Delivering consistently high levels of customer satisfaction is critical for any business looking to increase its competitive edge. So ensuring the correct service level agreements are in place is of vital importance,” said Andy White, Head of EMEA and APAC at Numara Software. “Developed in line with ITIL, FootPrints 8 offers a range of best practice features that allows our customers to increase operational efficiencies and then monitor feedback closely, giving them an overall improved level of control across the business. Industry feedback on the current version has been very positive and, since the launch, we’ve seen some very strong traction in the market.”