01. Resource Management in a Clinical Centre
Costumer – Clinical Centre in Hessen
Line of Business – Health care
Department – IT
Project Scope – Human Resource Management
Subject – Implementation AQRO™
Project duration – 12 Person days
The Customer:
The clinical center is a Hospital with maximum treatment. The clinical center has about 800 beds and about 1.800 employees. Annually more than 30.000 stationary and almost 60.000 ambulatory patients are treated. 19 clinics and institutions belong to the clinical center. It is under the ownership of local authorities. At the moment the IT department consists of close to 20 employees. The IT department maintains 250 servers (virtual) in 2 computer centers, and the 850 client computers (workstations and thin clients) of the clinical center, as well as various medical applications.
The Situation:
- Employees feel stressed by turmoil and disturbances in the open-space office, but also because of numerous requirements and work packages, which had to be done simultaneously within various projects.
- Telephone support was not performed consequently (who was up to it, did support and was disturbed, and the others felt also disturbed, even though they did not answer the telephone)
- Unclear responsibilities
- No transparency, who does what and when
- Project plans have not been complied with (whether on time nor within the budget)
- Inadequate work quality and high error load of the IT products and services
- Frequent duplication of work by employees, who work on work packages of the same projects without knowing about one another
The Service of Acuroc Solutions:
- Perform an as-is analysis and a weak point analysis
- Conduct AQRO™ seminars
- Pragmatic support during the implementation of the method AQRO™
- Support during the creation of role descriptions, documentation, guidelines, and the required, pragmatic agreements.
- Coaching of the employees during the first 3 weeks after launch
The result:
- Transparency during the planning and management of the operative work, objective prioritization
- Transparency regarding the usability of resources in organization and in projects
- Less stress, significantly higher motivated and satisfied employees
- More work quality due to increased concentration because of significantly reduced number of unplanned disturbances
- Clear competences and responsibilities
- Other departments are interested in AQRO™
- Significant increase of efficiency (more than two hours a day per employee) due to the undisturbed focus on the actual work packages and roles
Why with Acuroc Solutions:
- Professionals regarding Human Resource Management on one hand and IT organization and processes on the other hand
- High competence regarding the successful implementation of the Human Resource Management method AQRO™
- High technical competence along with social competence and sure instinct, so that changes in procedures and organization are introduced successfully
- Pragmatic and customer-oriented approach
- Efficient and results-oriented procedure
- The benefit of all measures of the project is always visible
- Focus is on sustainable success, not only on a final project result
Customer Assessment:
After several unsuccessful attempts to organize the work of the employees, so that is was less stressful, and to minimize the effects of the open-space office and the noise level thereof, I thought the concept of the method AQRO™ was magical. I did not reckon, that the method could be implemented that fast and sustainable, and that also all benefits and successes that Acuroc Solutions guaranteed could be reached. I am enthusiastic about the increase in efficiency and the employee satisfaction and therefore can only recommend this. Within the IT we will not work anymore without AQRO™.
H. G., IT-Manager Clinical Center
02. Resource Management for global virtual Teams
Costumer – Leading Global Company
Line of Business – Pharmaceutical Industry/Medical Engineering
Department – Service Desk EMEA
Project Scope – Human Resource Management, IT-Service Management
Subject – Implementation AQRO™
Project duration – 36 Person days
The Customer:
The company has 80.000 employees world-wide, thereof about 3.000 employees in Germany and provides people with a broad portfolio of diagnostics, medical engineering, medical nourishment, and established branded medicaments. The company today has a turnover of about 22 billion US-Doller and has sites in 150 countries. AQRO™ was implemented in the support department of EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa, Russia, etc.) in 36 countries in 21 languages.
The Situation:
- Diversity of the different sites from production, distribution, across to marketing
- Variety of applications and processes in the countries which had to be supported
- The constantly changing environment due to acquisitions resp. sell-offs of business branches leads to permanent new challenges for the employees in IT support
- Cultural and linguistic barriers lead to misunderstandings
- Because of the virtual organization it is not clear, who is working on which projects and with which intensity
- The efforts for communication and reconciliation are extremely high, however they have only moderate success, but necessitate an enormous high amount of e-mails
- The employees feel overwhelmed and stressed.
The Service of Acuroc Solutions:
- Within a few days, due to the implementation of AQRO™, roles with distinct responsibilities and activities were defined,
- Clear communication rules agreed upon, which now enable a structured and target-oriented communication.
- Dedicated roles and service plans, as well as resilient back-up plans are in place.
The result:
- Transparency for the management.
- The definite communication provides understanding, saves time and increases efficiency.
- The flood of e-mails was reduced enormously, and thereby the quality of information was extremely increased.
- Today every employee receives the necessary information at the right time.
- The employees are highly motivated, because due to the concentration on their roles and the opportunity to work without unplanned disturbances they can focus on their activities and finish them on time.
- Every employee has so much increase in efficiency, that he has one day per week in which he is not active in his defined and required role. Thus there is room on one hand for things which always should have been done like reporting, documentation, self-improvement, etc. on the other hand for innovations.
- Increased quality, freedom for new ideas and therefore a noticeable increased motivation among the employees.
- Substantially higher solution rate especially in first level support compared to the American parent company (within 4 weeks from 63% first solution rate to 82% first solution rate)
- At the moment it is considered to implement AQRO™ also in the USA
Why with Acuroc Solutions:
“I was skeptical, if we could solve our problems with AQRO™. As we have worked together with Acuroc upon different projects for several years, I have come to know Acuroc to be an extremely reliable and competent partner, who finished all projects very successfully. This is why it was clear that Acuroc was our desired partner for the project AQRO™. The success proves us right!”
G.L. Regional Manager EMEA Service
03. Increase of Production for Regional Utilities Company
Costumer – IT Service Provider for a regional utilities company for electricity, gas, and water
Line of Business – Provider
Department – IT Affiliate
Project Scope – Human Resource Management
Subject – ITIL, Prince2, IT-Strategy, IT Governance, ITIL Certification
The Customer:
IT service provider for all entities of a regional utilities company for electricity, gas and water.
The Situation:
- The various changes pertaining to utilities companies, especially regulating measures of the Federal Network Agency, pose major challenges for IT service providers. Exemplary for the substantial regulatory changes in the industry, is the separation of grid operator and electricity distributor.
- This lead to mandatory changes in IT regarding processes and tools, especially those in ERP systems, entailing investments well beyond six digit sums.
- To make better financial sense of these investments, the company wanted to offer ERP-services and other IT-services for other middle-sized utility companies on the market. For this purpose, it was necessary to create transparent processes to offer services with high quality and transparency to the customers at a moderate fee. This included at the one hand the efficient deployment of staff, at the other hand a certification of the processes according to ISO 27001.
- “historically developed IT”, which was founded as an independent company only recently; the network within the company was hugh accordingly and the service concept was not incisive.
- Processes were defined, but not known to all and not lived. Every worker could be responsible for everything, even though in some areas, e.g. Change Management, division of work existed.
- An old Ticket tool was used, which could not be customized with the existing internal know how.
The Service of Acuroc Solutions:
- Definition of IT Services and target groups
- Development of a medium and long-term IT strategy
- Definition of an implementation roadmap
- Analysis of the IT architecture and definition of a target IT architecture
- Definition of a supplier strategy including sourcing, outsourcing, and out tasking
- Definition of processes, roles, and responsibilities
- Support during the selection of an ITSM-Tool
- Implementation of typical service operation processes, requirements and project management, sales, proposal system, invoicing
- Support during the implementation of IT Governance and IT Compliance
- Implementation of a quality assurance process and of a meaningful reporting
- Improvement and standardisation of the estimation procedures for project orders
The result:
- After 11 months, successful certification of the implemented processes through TUEV Sued
- Statements on the realistic costs for the performance of IT-Services are now possible.
- Today the customers see the company as professional supplier and as partner of business, who is the first contact for IT support and IT consultancy.
- During the last years, joint business solutions were developed, which were caused by the changes on the market. Here the law for renewable energies (EEG) with the support for solar and wind power has to be mentioned, which is responsible for the increase in the number of partners and suppliers from several dozen to a few thousand.
- Because of the good coordination of IT with the business and the optimal use of resources the tasks could be handled.
Why with Acuroc Solutions:
- For more than 20 years, we support IT organizations very successfully with the reorganization and realignment of their IT department. These organizations are amongst others “preserving” business lines (energy suppliers, government departments, authorities, etc.)
- We very successfully include change management into our projects.
- ITIL implementations always have high impact on the concerned employees, who we inform and support beforehand, so that we get them and the management on board
- Our intense focus on the support of the concerned manager and employees reduces the risks of a less successful project for you and increases the benefits of the implementation significantly
04. ITIL Implementation
Costumer – Public Utility Company
Line of Business – Energy Supply
Department – IT Affiliated Company
Project Scope – Organizational Optimization, ITIL, ITSM; Increase in Productivity, Portfolio and Project Management, Certification
Subject – ITIL, Certification
Project duration – 156 Person days
The Customer:
The company delivers IT package services to the corporate network of a public utility company. It was founded in 2003. At the moment 70 employees deliver IT package services focusing on waste disposal companies, utility companies, housing industry, and other private law and municipal companies.
The Situation:
- Heterogeneity caused by different lines of business, systems, company sizes and degree of maturity of the client companies
- An adverse relation of complexity to proportion, only small scaling effects on application level, particular interests, financial cost pressure, little employee turnover
- Process thought is not distinct, employees show little willingness for changes
- No IT Know-How in other affiliates, CIO is located in the holding
- Obligation to contract versus external business
- IT Governance is not sufficiently developed
- Previous projects concerning process optimization and efficiency enhancement were not successful enough
- Professionalization of the whole mode of operation is necessary, as well as increase in quality
- Because of the slim willingness for changes, a difficult initial situation for audit of the IT processes by the Technical Control Board exists
The Service of Acuroc Solutions:
Technical Support and supervision
- Especially during the development of the processes and roles according to ITIL
- Support during the selection of the ITSM tool, which was to be installed, and the adjustments of the tool
- Employee training
- Development of meaningful indicators, which show the actual and the target state and which show transparency
- Flexible and efficient support concerning the coaching of the employees, but also concerning the quality assurance after project closure
- Implementation of continual improvements, which is driven by the process owner and results from corresponding meetings
- Perform quality assurance regarding process and role conformity
- Creation of a service catalogue on the base of the ITIL implementation
- Implementation of the HRM method AQRO™ to enable the IT employees to work efficiently and stress-free
- Protection of structure and side rails
- Support of the organizational change management
- Driver and corrector (self-image / public image), idea provider and promoter
- Successful development of the whole IT to gain the certification of the processes according to ISO 21000 level 3 and 4 resp.
The result:
- Introduction of fundamental ITIL processes (Incident, Problem, Change, Release und Configuration Management)
- Successful implementation of the ITSM tool
- Implementation of indicators and continual improvements
- Auditing and early warning systems implemented successfully
- Certification of all processes on level 3 and 4 resp.by the Technical Control Board according to ISO 21000
Why with Acuroc Solutions:
- For more than 20 years, we support IT organizations very successfully with the reorganization and realignment of their IT department. These organizations are amongst others “preserving” business lines (energy suppliers, government departments, authorities, etc.)
- We very successfully include change management into our projects.
- ITIL implementations always have high impact on the concerned employees, who we inform and support beforehand, so that we get them and the management on board
- Our intense focus on the support of the concerned manager and employees reduces the risks of a less successful project for you and increases the benefits of the implementation significantly
05. Customer Satisfaction
Costumer – Medium-sized service company
Line of Business – Intercoiffure Group of Hairdressers
Department – Hairdressing Salon
Project Scope – Personnel Management
Subject – Implementation AQRO™
Project duration – 47 Person days
The Customer:
The customer runs over 128 hairdressing salons in Hessen with more than 75 hairdressers all of which passed the admittance into the 5-Star Elite of hairdresser and received the highly desired quality signet “Intercoiffure Mondial”. The customer was appointed Intercoiffure Regio Manager Rhein-Main in 2015.
The Situation:
- The company employs highly trained hairdressers, which delivery high quality services. Simultaneously they have to answer the phone, mix dye, wash, cut, blow dry, care for the customers (e.g. with magazines), cash in and sell product. The result of this is waiting time for the customers and constant interruptions for the hairdressers
- A solution is urgently required to optimize the service, to minimize the waiting time for the customers and the interruptions for the employees.
The Service of Acuroc Solutions:
- Conception and Implementation of AQRO™
- Support for the hairdressers, coaching and quality assurance during the implementation phase
The result:
- Waiting time for the customer has been significantly reduced, so that per day more customers can be attended to in a highly qualified manner.
- The interruptions for the hair dressers are minimized drastically and the motivation has therefore increased distinctly.
- Due to the established focus of the employees touching up (e.g. the shade of the color is too dark) is seldom needed.
Why with Acuroc Solutions:
- The concept of AQRO™ is comprehensible and conclusive. Acuroc Solutions has a very high competence level in conception, implementation as well as the coaching of employees.
