Customer Story: AstraZeneca

Best-of-Breed Outsourcing: Service Desk and Field Services

Background:

AstraZeneca is one of Australia’s largest private sector investors in medical research and development (R&D) and has invested more than $250  million in Australia in the last decade. Employing more than 900  people in Australia, it is the largest national manufacturer of pharmaceuticals, providing $1.2 billion of medicines to the local market and $200 million in exports.

It is currently involved in more than 50 clinical trials at over 200 sites across Australia, investigating potential new treatments in the areas of oncology, cardiovascular, diabetes, infection, gastrointestinal, neuroscience, respiratory and inflammation.

“Data^#3 staffs our service desk 24/7. While we don’t have a huge out of hours demand, we do appreciate the responsiveness and flexibility for those users who do call on the service outside core hours.”

Anthony Tuting, Service and Supplier Manager, AstraZeneca

The Challenge:

AstraZeneca’s internal IT department was providing frontline helpdesk services to its Australia and New Zealand staff locally, having previously disengaged from a global services agreement that did not satisfy users. With the pace of technology change and heavy end user support demand, the local IT team was stretched to both support users and undertake more strategic business initiatives.

An additional issue was the fact that, with second and third line support outsourced, there were few career opportunities for the frontline helpdesk staff to move into more complex or technically demanding roles.

A review of the current arrangement demonstrated the need for the IT team to concentrate more on strategic business initiatives and executing projects to support the business. It also highlighted the potential benefits of outsourcing the helpdesk and end user support to leverage best practices such as ITIL to provide rigour around service desk and onsite support operations.

The Solution:

AstraZeneca went to market with a clear mandate to source a service provider that:

• Is local and proactive, with a clear focus on outcomes and customer satisfaction
• Has the skills, expertise and flexibility to support AstraZeneca beyond the terms of the services agreement when required
• Can integrate with and seamlessly manage existing global service providers providing second and third line, or specialist application or technology, support services
• Demonstrates a commitment to continuous service improvement throughout the life of the agreement.

Data^#3 fulfilled all these requirements and more, including offering to take on AstraZeneca’s existing staff to provide them with opportunities for skills development while maintaining continuity of personnel and organisational knowledge.

“We are seeing high KPI performance against all call statistics including average time to answer, call abandonment rates and quality of logging.”

Anthony Tuting, Service and Supplier Manager, AstraZeneca

The Outcome:

After a six week transition period, Data^#3 took over the service desk operation and onsite field services, providing first line for support for end users across the organisation including head office, New Zealand, sales and the manufacturing plant which operates 24/7.

Monthly key performance indicator (KPI) tracking provides clear visibility over service levels and user satisfaction, and provides the basis for continuous improvement  initiatives. Call volumes average 1,100  per month across the user base. A weekly team meeting also helps to keep a focus on performance.

“Working with Data^#3 has been extremely good from the perspective of tackling business improvements,” says Anthony Tuting, Service and Supplier Manager at AstraZeneca. “There is strong cultural alignment between our organisations, and we view the relationship as a partnership.”

“Data^#3’s maturity of systems and processes underpins successful service delivery, and this has driven performance improvement also through other service providers with which Data^#3 interacts. There are a number of global service providers supporting our Australian user base, and Data^#3 works with them to ensure that user needs are addressed fully and in the timeframes required.”

The focus on continuous improvement has promoted a focus on documenting processes, creating knowledge base articles to share knowledge within the services team and across the user base, as well as a commitment to month-on-month improvement on key KPIs including call escalations.

The efficiencies gained through continuous improvement mean that Data^#3 is able to support new initiatives within AstraZeneca’s business, including an aggressive change program being driven globally.

Download the Case Study – AstraZeneca.

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