4me serves up enterprise service management for SSP Group. SSP Group’s service management solution did not provide supplier support, so it chose 4me to radically improve collaboration.
About SSP Group
SSP Group is a leading operator of food and beverage concessions in travel locations, operating restaurants, bars, cafés, food courts, lounges and convenience stores in airports, train stations, motorway service stations and other leisure locations. With over 50 years of experience, today SSP Group has more than 39 000 employees, serving approximately 1.5 million customers every day. SSP Group has business at approximately 180 airports and 300 rail stations and operate more than 2 800 units in 35 countries around the world.
SSP Group operates an extensive portfolio of more than 550 international, national and local brands. Among these are local heroes such as Brioche Doree in Paris, LEON in London, and Hung’s Delicacies in Hong Kong. The range also includes proprietary brands created for the travel sector, including Upper Crust, Cabin Bar and Ritazza, as well as international names such as M&S, Burger King, Starbucks, Jamie’s Deli and YO! Sushi. SSP Group also create stunning bespoke concepts such as Five Borough Food Hall in JFK, New York and Norgesglasset Bar in Oslo Airport.
Industry
- Catering and retail
Location
- UK HQ, global operations
Challenges
- To standardise on a global service management platform.
- To collaborate and manage multiple internal and external suppliers without losing sight of SLAs.
- To use knowledge to speed self-service adoption and reduce first-line support burden and e-mail volumes.
- To track and openly report on service success and operational satisfaction to service owners and business stakeholders.
Multi-workspace to multi-tenanted service management
SSP Group was using a traditional solution for some of its service management needs, predominantly in support of UK Operations. The organisation originally implemented a system because it could create a dedicated workspace for specific support groups that could improve service management at a functional level, such as SSP Group authorisations. However, it did not provide a universal and connected structure to support collaboration and supplier management across regions, all third-party providers and business service areas. SSP Group needed a multi-tenanted solution with service integration and management (SIAM) as standard.
Before selecting 4me, SSP Group considered upgrading but performance from an on-premises solution could never match a SaaS service. SSP Group also thought about including leading vendors, such as ServiceNow, in a tender process but none could fully satisfy the three tenets required. These were:
- Collaboration – to seamlessly work with, and manage, multiple internal and external suppliers without losing sight of SLAs.
- Knowledge – to continuously compile, author and present knowledge in a service management solution, to speed self-service adoption and reduce first-line support burden and e-mail volumes.
- Transparency – to track and openly report on service success and operational satisfaction and provide meaningful management information to service owners and business stakeholders.
4me partner, Revo 4me Services, implemented 4me for the SSP Group UK operations desk in 2016 at London Euston, which demonstrated that the solution had the capability to manage a service supply.
Implementation
As 4me is a cloud-based service that is optimised for IT service management out of the box, SSP Group did not have to go through a long period of onsite consulting services to achieve the first implementation. SSP Group started by implementing a pilot 4me project with TFS, SSP Group’s partner in India that operates nearly 200 food and beverage outlets in major travel hubs. The pilot demonstrated how well the production and QA instances interoperated, moving customisations and adapted workflows into the live system. The group also witnessed the ease with which upgrades were applied to their instance without any additional consulting or time-consuming system administration. This first tranche, involving 50 users, took just 20 days to implement and go live quickly demonstrated the usability of the system. Nick Earp, SSP Group Head of Global IT Operations, says: “I believe 4me is a solution that is quick to deploy, but to have Revo implementing meant that nothing got lost in translation and no project timelines became extended to our surprise or cost!”
Integrate to collaborate
SSP Group uses specialist managed service providers (MSPs) in business-critical areas, such as database support, networking, SAP and in-unit maintenance. Multiple integration services were deployed to fully automate integrations with SSP Group suppliers and ensure that third-party service provider adoption was rapid and seamless. This allows 4me to connect the Trust Accounts, so request data and processes can be containerised and tickets can flow between providers so they can collaborate without compromising the SLA with the business or employee, even if another service management solution is used by a provider.
Knowledge to serve
4me’s partner Revo ran workshops with SSP Group to establish the service catalogue and, by integrating 4me with OneLogIn, it was able to match and assign Active Directory users to its services. This enabled the creation of the services structure against which knowledge could be attributed and this became a significant factor in successful end-user adoption. When SSP Group went live, self-service adoption was at 40% in the UK, and has been maintained at this level; across the Nordic and Spanish regions, the self-service adoption is now even higher. This compares with current industry estimates of 21%. 4me is a knowledge-centred solution and uses machine learning to continuously refine the presentation of articles based on service entitlement. It now delivers a highly personalised service to SSP Group employees. SSP Group staff can rate the usefulness of every knowledge article to improve its relevance within a service, and to help drive self-resolution.
Solution
4me integrates SSP Group suppliers to ensure third-party service provider adoption is rapid and seamless. 4me connects the Trust Accounts, so request data and processes and tickets flow between providers. SSP Group and its suppliers collaborate without compromising the SLA with the business or employee
4me uses machine learning to continuously refine the presentation of knowledge articles based on service entitlement. It now delivers a highly personalised service to SSP Group employees.
4me reports ensure SSP Group can see the real-time status, from measuring supplier performance through to request trends and emerging issues and, above all, employee and customer satisfaction.
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