Insights Paper Engineering Services Break-Fix is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It. How a new delivery model for engineering services can reduce IT costs and improve business performance. Traditional break-fix engineering services can often increase costs, stifle innovation and impede productivity. This paper looks at an alternative engineering services delivery model that focuses on reducing costs, enabling continuous improvement, and driving superior business outcomes. Is break-fix broken? Let’s face it; IT has an image problem. In general, end-users only really notice IT systems when they don’t work, which means IT is often seen as a cost centre associated with failure and expense. This is compounded by engineering services contracts that are based on inflexible service level agreements (SLAs) and a traditional break-fix model where a fault is logged, an engineer fixes it and then it’s business as usual until the fault occurs again. Rigid SLAs mean rigid service, with no allowance for peaks and troughs in demand. Organisations don’t operate in static markets, they operate in constantly changing environments, and they need dynamic, flexible and agile engineering services contracts that reflect the reality on the ground. The standard break-fix approach also has no interest in stopping the cycle – preventing the ‘break’ so that the ‘fix’ becomes unnecessary. If you’re paid by the call, why would you bother trying to stop faults occurring? If you take a traditional approach to IT engineering services, you’ll get the traditional results – inflexible response times, unnecessary costs and recurring issues. Surely there’s a better way? A new model for engineering services At Fujitsu, we believe engineering services should add value, not costs – enabling end-users to offer the highest levels of service to their customers, and keep pace with technological changes cost-effectively. But that requires an entirely new delivery model. One that uses a lean approach to service, responding quickly to changing circumstances. One that aims to make improvements rather than just provide a fix. And one that uses flexible contracts to keep costs down and provide the agility to meet peaks in demand. Flexible delivery Very few organisations need the same level of availability for every application, service and device every day of the year. So why pay for it? By combining pay-as-you-go pricing with SLAs that monitor and track footfall or workloads, service levels will correspond to usage patterns and the operational significance of individual products – so you’ll only pay for the service you actually need. So, for example, a retailer could specify very different availability for a back-office printer on a Tuesday in February than for a till on the last Saturday before Christmas. And a local government agency might require higher availability for month-end financial processes than for day-to-day administration. Business outcome SLAs Traditional break-fix models have always been reactive and unresponsive, but a new approach is emerging that is built around business needs, encouraging proactive interventions to prevent failures rather than just fixing them. With SLAs based on business outcomes, engineering services become focused on improving productivity, driving revenue and increasing customer satisfaction – things that can make a huge difference to business performance. Rather than focusing on cost-per-call, engineering services should be adding value. For example, a traditional break-fix model would look at, say, the number of tills out of service across a retailer’s estate and focus on the time it takes to fix them. But the new delivery model focuses on the amount of extra revenue the retailer could achieve if those tills weren’t out of service in the first place. Insights Paper Engineering Services Moving away from cost-per-call When contracts are built around inflexible service levels and cost-per-call pricing, service providers have little incentive to reduce call volumes. But when SLAs are based on tangible business outcomes, there is a shift in perception, not just towards reducing costly engineer visits, but to reducing the number of service calls. Let’s say a call takes up an average of half an hour of an employee’s time, from logging the fault, making the initial call, booking in the engineer and monitoring and signing off the work. If you can eliminate 2,000 calls a year – whether through better self-fix scripts, increased preventative maintenance, or improvements to existing technology – you’ve gained an extra 1,000 hours of productive time. Saving time and money At Fujitsu we find innovative ways to transform the old break-fix relationship and help our customers reduce the time and cost of service calls. For example, we’re equipping customers with tablets featuring apps that talk end-users through the diagnostic and fix processes the same way a service desk agent would over the phone. If a self-fix isn’t possible the app will bypass the service desk to log an engineer call and send the correct part. This technology also allows customers to send pictures or set up a live video link with the diagnostics team to get an answer faster. »Fujitsu is a key element in the service we provide to our retail stores, who are extremely reliant on the tills and devices that it provides and supports. Fujitsu not only meets our requirements, but goes beyond the call of duty to provide us with the best possible service.« Andy White, Service Manager, EE Not only that, we’re currently looking at ways to streamline the fix process even further – including using customers’ existing logistics infrastructure to deliver spares that can be easily fitted by end users; saving costs and reducing CO2 emissions. Increasing efficiency Another benefit of this new, proactive approach is that we continuously look for ways to improve existing technology and drive business efficiency. We constantly analyse technology performance and failure rates to identify trends for improvement and enable us to prevent faults before they occur. We conduct preventative maintenance and refurbish products rather than just repair them, helping increase their service life. We’re also developing ways to predict when a product will fail (for example, how many card swipes a payment device can have before it needs cleaning), so we can proactively replace or repair it before it impacts service – reducing costs and increasing availability. Insights Paper Engineering Services Real-world results. So how does this work in practice? Let’s take a look at a few of the organisations that are taking advantage of this new approach to engineering services, and examine some of the benefits they’re achieving. Mitchells and Butlers Mitchells and Butlers is the UK’s leading restaurant and pub operator, with a business spanning 1,600 sites, serving 130 million meals and 430 million drinks a year. To increase its IT agility and provide a more flexible cost base, the company asked Fujitsu to introduce a superfast broadband network and migrate old, inefficient applications to a new, virtualised data centre. Over a single weekend, our engineers migrated 40 business-critical applications and 44 terabytes of live data to a private cloud – with no disruption to guest services. As Martin Taylor, Director for Business Change and Technology at Mitchells and Butlers explains, “Every pub continued to trade, serve customers and process payments smoothly. This is the real measure of success of the project; the fact that nobody noticed such a major transition indicates just how well-designed and well-executed the whole project was.” Mitchells and Butlers virtualised applications now run at least 10% faster than their predecessors, while a pay-as-you-go billing model keeps overall IT costs down. Post Office With retail success measured in sales, retailers must process customer orders quickly. From online channels such as click and collect to waiting at the till in store, customers also expect a certain level of service speed and accuracy. In both cases, efficiency is essential. Matching these expectations in an increasing multi-channel or even omni-channel retail environment demands flexibility and consistency. Whether it is online ordering or queue management, physical store innovations require support from agile engineering services that improve efficiency and the throughput of customers. That is why the Post Office came to Fujitsu to support its 11,250 branches and 30,000 counters across the UK – including the remote islands off the coast of Scotland. Via an integrated engineering services contract, we support everything from the front office PoS devices to the back office systems, ensuring any faults are rectified as swiftly as possible to prevent loss of business. As well as undertaking the standard break-fix service, we conduct regular testing of equipment at every branch to service and maintain the existing hardware. Despite the fact that some of the technology is 15 years old, we have been able to improve Mean Time Between Failures to keep efficiency up and costs down across the Post Office business. Highland Council The Highland Council, a unitary local authority serving 232,000 citizens in the Scottish Highlands, asked Fujitsu Engineering Services to transform ICT across its curriculum services, used by more than 34,000 staff and pupils. The task was to modernise over 100 different desktop software and security configurations and to introduce new hardware – all without any disruption to services. In the first phase of the project, we issued new devices to replace all existing desktops, laptops and PDAs. After this initial capital outlay, the Council now benefits from our unique utility pricing model – paying only for availability support per device on a monthly basis. This means the Council can scale its requirements up or down at any time to save significant costs. In phase two, we replaced the Council’s expensive printer estate with a dedicated managed print service, so the Council now only pays per page for printing, with all capital, consumables and engineering factored into this price. Lower printing and support costs aren’t the only benefits though. The Council has also seen a 66% reduction in energy bills as well as lower engineering fees. And with fewer problems and a state-ofthe-art remote management, calls to the service centre and engineer call-outs have also been reduced. Insights Paper Engineering Services So how do we do it? Our new delivery model provides benefits in four distinct areas of engineering services: Break-fix, Desk-side, Premium engineering and Projects. Fujitsu Engineering Services Break-fix Desk-side Break-fix Our break-fix services provide hardware and software support across a diverse range of products, including PoS, digital media, self-service checkouts, ATMs, laptops, PCs, networks and servers. Unlike traditional cost models, we match our SLAs to footfall, so you only pay for the availability you really need, rather than paying a premium for high availability during periods of low demand. And with a 1,200 strong engineering team and carefully selected partners, we can flex up to meet peaks in availability demand. So for example, with one of the UK’s leading supermarkets our SLA for the Christmas peak period turned into a lane-count SLA, with a maximum of 25 tills out of 28,000 allowed to be out at any time. On December 22nd 2011, only five were out of service, providing a huge opportunity for the company to drive revenue and customer satisfaction. Being product-agnostic allows us to provide a truly end-to-end service that can’t be matched by smaller providers or equipment vendors. And because we’re also a telecommunications company, our engineers can work on all ICT infrastructure, helping eliminate the time and cost of managing multiple service providers. We also focus on a ‘shift left’ strategy, working with customers to reduce the number of engineer visits by removing wasted calls, developing self-help scripts and conducting targeted preventative maintenance. And when an engineer is needed on site, we drive for a first-time fix and, even more importantly, a fix without spare – reducing service costs and environmental impact. This innovative approach to break-fix services also means we analyse performance to enable proactive intervention before failures can impact the business. In this way, IT becomes a key business enabler rather than a drain on resources. Desk-side We provide on-site and remote hardware and software support for everything from tablets and laptops to servers and wireless LANs, keeping end users productive and providing a vital first line of defence for business continuity. To ensure a comprehensive service, our Fujitsu-employed, fully accredited and security cleared engineers can also act as ‘smart hands’ for other departments and third-parties. We also offer VIP support services, including floor-walking, PC clinics and user training. Premium Engineering Projects As more organisations move to virtualised infrastructures, the need for dedicated on-site engineering resources is shrinking. Our flexible resource model means you can reduce fixed head count without putting availability at risk. Just like our break-fix services, the focus is on a shift-left strategy and on driving out demand – helping improve IT and operational efficiency and reducing service costs. Premium engineering Our Premium Engineering Services provide 24/7/365 on-the-ground support for mission-critical data centre systems, including High Performance Computing, servers, storage and network hardware. By implementing Fujitsu Tier III data centre standards in our customers’ data centres we can drive out demand and reduce administrative overhead. With resilience built into systems and services, instead of paying for more on-site engineers and expensive spares, you can maintain availability while moving the fix to the next day. As with the other areas of our engineering services, it’s also important that we’re OEM-agnostic. Our expert engineers can support technologies from a wide range of vendors, including Oracle, IBM Brocade, NetApp and many more. Projects Our new engineering services delivery model allows us to support projects of all sizes by providing fully trained, accredited and security cleared engineers at very competitive day rates – all employed by Fujitsu, so we know exactly who we’re sending to your site. In fact, we delivered 63,000 project man-days last year alone. From retail store equipment upgrades to complex infrastructure transitions like the Mitchells and Butlers data centre move we looked at earlier, we have the expertise and experience to offer a broad range of project-based engineering services. Insights Paper Engineering Services What makes us different? Engineering services might not be the most glamorous aspect of IT, but when it’s done right it can provide huge business benefits. Our utility-based pricing means you’re not paying for service you don’t need or use, reducing overall service costs and allowing you to refocus IT resources on strategic initiatives. By shifting from rigid SLAs to bespoke SLAs based on business outcomes, you gain the flexibility and scalability to meet changing business needs and we are rewarded for your success and our ability to help improve your business performance. That transmits to our engineers too. They’re assessed on the quality of their work, not the quantity. An expert engineering team It’s important to us that, unlike other service providers, all our engineers are employed by Fujitsu, so we know you’ve got exactly the right person for the job. When we do bring in third-parties, it’s because they can add value to a particular project. Our commitment to developing our own team of engineers means that last year Fujitsu Engineering Services employed 300 people at entry-level – creating the next generation of expert engineers. Our engineers are a big part of the new delivery model, but that’s not the whole story. We manage £35 million of stock in 19 locations and 1,500 intelligent lockers across the UK, so we know we can get the right part to the right place at the right time. And we think differently when it comes to repairs, not just going for the cheapest short-term fix, but fitting superior parts at our dedicated repair centre to drive out future demand. We don’t just repair products; in many cases we completely refurbish them. We make sure that after a fix we do everything we can to extend a product’s life. We make recommendations to customers about how to prevent faults and we constantly test new hardware to see how we can upgrade customer systems and avoid future availability issues. So we’re moving engineering services away from the old cost-per-call model to one that’s based on business outcomes. This new approach gets away from the traditional, reactive break-fix cycle to a proactive, preventative service that actively seeks ways to increase IT efficiency and availability – and boost business performance. »This is the real measure of success of the project; the fact that nobody noticed such a major transition indicates just how well-designed and well-executed the whole project was.« Martin Taylor, Director for Business Change and Technology, Mitchells and Butlers Find out more To learn more about Fujitsu Engineering Services and how our innovative approach could help you shape the future of your organisation: To find out more call 0870 242 7998 or email askfujitsu@uk. CONTACT FUJITSU Subject to contract. Tel: +44(0)870 242 7998 Email: [email protected] Accuracy: Fujitsu endeavours to ensure that the information contained in this document is correct but, whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of such information, it accepts no liability for any loss (however caused) sustained as a result of any error or omission in the same. ITGSD-xxxx © Fujitsu Services Limited 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of Fujitsu Services Ltd. uk.fujitsu.com