TÉmoignages Clients

Tait Radio Communications

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VMware Service Manager software has enabled Tait Communications, a major international supplier of mobile radio equipment, to deploy a global customer support system from a single server and database in its New Zealand headquarters.

Business benefits to Tait Communications resulting from the implementation include:

• Global knowledge sharing across a single, partitioned database
• International subsidiaries are able to operate as a coordinated team, while still maintaining independent local views of support data
• Full enterprise level service management functionality deployed entirely across the web
• Global visibility of all support calls in progress for Tait's corporate support team in New Zealand.

Corporate Background

Tait Communications, founded in 1968, is a major international supplier of mobile radio and base station equipment to government and private enterprise in over 100 countries.

Tait products are used across a range of industries including airports, railways, taxi networks, police forces and emergency services.

From its headquarters in Christchurch, New Zealand, Tait supports 900 staff worldwide and has offices in 10 international locations, plus a network of eight worldwide subsidiaries. From across the globe, 80 international support engineers provide product support to Tait customers.

Customer calls are logged and managed by the subsidiaries and, if further action is required, escalated to the corporate support team in Christchurch.

Business Scenario

Tait Communications wanted to increase productivity and improve the customer service provided by its support engineers by creating a "virtual team environment" across the company's international subsidiaries, says Prue Chapman, Technical Support Manager.

Each subsidiary, and the corporate support team in Christchurch had been using different systems for logging customer support calls, or no system at all. This meant, says Chapman that "we had no way of tracking customer issues across the entire support chain."

Tait wanted to move from this fragmented support model to one that supported knowledge sharing across a single database, while still retaining independent views of local customer data. "Our central objective was to get our support engineers working closer together to provide better service to our customers."

Business Solution

In its search to find the technology that could support its virtual team, Tait Communications evaluated 21 different service management products, short-listed five, and ultimately selected VMware Service Manager , developed by VMware Service Manager and distributed in New Zealand by Delta Software.

"We wanted a centralized database that all our support engineers around the world could access 24x7, without sacrificing functionality," says Wayne Payton, Technical Support Administrator. "VMware Service Manager was the only product we looked at that could do that."

Central implementation, global deployment

VMware Service Manager 's 100% web technology enabled Tait to install the application on a single server in Christchurch, and deploy full support functionality globally across the Internet.

Support engineers access the application from a web browser; no other configuration on PCs is required, meaning that Tait has been able to run the system on its existing VMware Service Manager structure.

Partitioning and Time zone support

Customer information in VMware Service Manager is partitioned, making common data universally available, while data specific to a support team is accessible only by that team. This allows Tait engineers to respond to their own environment, but have access to a global knowledge base when required - effectively creating eight support environments in one.

Now, says Payton, "If somebody in a different part of the world has a stronger skill set in a certain area, we can permanently record that knowledge and make it available to everyone."

Time zoning support within the system means that regardless of where a call is initially logged, any engineer who subsequently picks it up will see dates and times in their own local time, with service level information taking account of local working hours and public holidays.

High level visibility

For Prue Chapman, as Technical Support Manager, the implementation has provided a level of visibility and accountability across Tait's dispersed support teams that was previously unavailable.

"We will be able to demonstrate through reporting that we are meeting, or exceeding, our service level agreements, whereas before it was mostly perception based."

Because each of the subsidiaries is using a single system, Tait has additionally been able to standardize its processes globally to ensure consistent support for customers across the business, and a seamless transfer of calls between subsidiaries and the corporate support team.

Smooth implementation

The implementation of VMware Service Manager ," says Wayne Payton, "went very well. In my experience of implementations of different products, VMware Service Manager was smooth in comparison. The consultant from Delta Software had a good knowledge of the system and of what we wanted to achieve with it."

Future applications

Tait's future plans include extending VMware Service Manager to its customer base via a Customer Portal web page. Customers will be able to log calls, at any time, directly into the database, where they will be picked up and actioned by a support engineer.

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