Grindrod upgrades to HEAT 8 for enhanced efficiencies

Ranked sixth in the 2004 Financial Mail Top 20 South African Companies survey, shipping and freight management company, Grindrod Limited, has upgraded to version 8 of FrontRange`s service management solution, HEAT - to take advantage of enhanced functionality.

JSE Securities Exchange-listed Grindrod has a strong operating presence at each of SA`s major ports as well as in Johannesburg, Mocambique, Angola and Namibia. It also has offices in London and the Isle of Man.

In its own right, it employs more than 800 people and controls assets in excess of R2 billion, generating annual revenue of over R2 billion. It employs a further 2 181 people in companies in which the group has an interest.

For Grindrod to consistently achieve maximum efficiency and world-class standards across such a varied corporate profile, such a large staff complement and such an extensive partner, supplier and customer network, its ICT infrastructure has to be kept at optimum availability and functionality. ICT users are not only based in Grindrod`s 24 offices in Africa and England, but also on the company`s ships whose computer equipment can be serviced only during the short period when the ships are in port.

There is therefore considerable pressure on Grindrod`s ICT help-desk to accurately prioritise and track calls as well as allocate support operatives timeously and appropriately.

An initially outsourced help-desk was brought in-house two years ago to eliminate the intermediate step between Grindrod and its users that was reducing efficiencies and manageability. The move also improved Grindrod`s ability to manage support calls to third-party vendors.

Having worked closely with their outsourcer for the previous two years, Grindrod`s internal IT staff were familiar with HEAT and able to take it over smoothly enough to bring about cost savings of about R31.50 per call. Users, frustrated by the perceived gap between themselves and the outsourcer, had been making calls direct to internal support staff without logging them with the help-desk. This made tracking calls with any degree of accuracy impossible. Once the help-desk was taken in-house, user confidence in logging calls grew and within two months the number of calls logged increased by 28%.

"Suddenly we had a precise handle on the status of incidents within the system and we could take appropriate preventative as well as remedial action," says Grindrod IT manager, Cliff McCormick.

Says FrontRange Solutions Africa managing director, Tracey Newman: "The enormous advantage of a system like HEAT is that it puts you in a pre-emptive rather than a reactive position. For one thing, the system is so highly automated that management and support staff have time to step back and get a big picture view of service levels and quality. For another, HEAT is IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) verified in the areas of incident, problem, service level and change management. So, as help-desk management, you know that the system is best-practice-based. Which means you`re always superbly positioned to keep your customers happy by keeping your delivery promises to them."

McCormick says: "We`re very satisfied with HEAT. It has never occurred to us to consider a competitor product."

So, Grindrod is not expecting HEAT 8 to deliver a quantum leap in the way of additional cost savings and efficiencies. "We`re just wanting a continual, steady improvement in the way we currently do things. Really, it`s a matter of staying up to date on service capability."

Specifically, the company is expecting an improvement in the way it allocates and manages support staff, greater flexibility in its escalation process and a chance to integrate some of its change control processes into the product.

With the removal of primary key designations from call type fields, HEAT 8 is much easier to customise and edit. Its new service level agreement features are also more flexible, making it possible to stop the automated escalation facility in order to take into account situations - like a delay in delivery of parts by a third-party supplier - that are outside the control of the user company.

HEAT`s autotasking facility has also been enhanced, enabling Grindrod to increase the number of common tasks - such as password resets and correction of lost accounts - that it gives to the system to handle, thereby freeing up support staff time for more demanding tasks.

The solution`s enhanced change management facility will allow Grindrod to make live changes to its hardware, software and network, without disrupting users. And, HEAT`s LDAP link into Active Directory will make it easier for Grindrod to add users to its system.

The company will continue to use HEAT to give its users remote access to HEAT facilities. Support staff have 95% of the functionality of HEAT using this method and can access HEAT from any machine with a Web browser and network connectivity.

McCormick believes that increasing familiarity with HEAT will enable his staff to extract progressively greater functionality and value from it - possibly far in excess of Grindrod`s current expectations of the solution. "You can use a product better as you get to know more about it."

Newman agrees that users grow into the advanced benefits of HEAT over time. "Initially, they focus on using the system to solve their immediate problems. Once that pain is removed, they have time to explore its very rich functionality."