Customers

XACCT Implements ServiceWise Web for Workflow Customization

XACCT Technologies is the market and technology leader in intelligent business infrastructure software for Internet carriers and network service providers. XACCT’s award-winning, carrier-class “Network-to- Business” (N2B™) platform speeds time to market and time to revenue for new Internet services while lowering service provider costs. XACCToffers the industry’s first and only platform that enables real- time data capture and enhancement; seamless integration with any upstream business or operations application; and instantaneous, flow-through service provisioning. With offices around the globe, XACCT has more than 60 customers, including Bell Canada, British Telecom’s Manx, Broadwing, Cable & Wireless, COLT, Global One, Genuity (formerly GTE), Interland, Mannesman Ipulsys, Siemens, TV Cabo, Verio, and WorldCom. XACCT currently has approximately 200 employees and a support organization of 40 people.

XACCT Chooses ServiceWise for its Customer Support Solution

Prior to selecting ServiceWise, XACCT was using a proprietary system, which lacked the ability to customize, had poor alerting and notification capability, and did not provide customers with Web access.

As XACCT experienced continued success and their need to support an increasing customer base grew, they needed a much more powerful support solution. They evaluated several leading products on the market and ultimately selected ServiceWise.

Yinon Eliaz, Manager of Customer Services Americas, said, “We chose ServiceWise because of the Web access and because modifying and designing the system was very flexible.” ServiceWise was the only product he evaluated that satisfied all of his requirements. It provided comprehensive customization, email notification, knowledge management, and was extremely easy to use.

Easy and Intuitive Customization

Yinon found the installation process to be very easy and within the first week ServiceWise was installed and working properly. “The most time-consuming thing is determining your company’s workflow process,” said Yinon. “Once you learn how to model your workflow using ServiceWise, you cannot work without it.” After the first week, Yinon’s group was using it and within six weeks, the entire support team was using ServiceWise.

“I would definitely recommend ServiceWise. The product is extremely flexible so you can design it in the way you want to provide you with the results you want.”

ServiceWise In Action

XACCT Technologies uses ServiceWise Web to support its customers. With all forty support organization members working either in the field or in various world wide offices, supporting customers via the Web is the best approach.

The company designed its workflow according to internal processes using approximately ten customized statuses. Using the workflow feature, ServiceWise guides an incident from the moment it is created until it is closed.

The email notification feature has been implemented to notify individuals about the status of their incidents. For example, a supervisor will receive email notification when a new incidents is submitted, a customer will receiver an email when an incident is updated, and the primary support engineer will receive an email with any changes related to his customer’s incidents.

Depending on the complexity of the issue and the need for escalation, several people may be involved with a single incident. An incident begins with the support engineer and can be escalated to his supervisor or the group supervisor when advanced support is required.

XACCT uses ServiceWise’s internal reports and also creates custom reports that track product components and sub-components. Using customized distribution reports helps management determine where the development team may need to devote additional resources.

A knowledge management system has been created that provides customers and tech support with access to all of the knowledge documents. XACCT has customized the system to control who can post knowledge to the system, helping to ensure that the knowledge management system is entirely accurate.

In building support teams, XACCT uses the ServiceWise feature that enables users to be defined by privileges and restrictions. These criteria help determine which actions each individual user is authorized to perform within the system. Users are defined by which customers they can support, who can close an incident, who can reopen an incident, and to whom and incident can be forwarded.

“ServiceWise is a very important tool for exposing your support organization to your customers via the Web,” said Yinon Eliaz. “Our customers really like it.”

Overall Experience

According to Yinon, “It’s a very flexible product that allows you to do whatever you want. If you want to design a workflow, you can do it. If you want to notify people in a particular way, you can do it. If you want to integrate a document or an attachment, you can do it. If you want to use specific reports, you can do it.”

“ServiceWise is extremely flexible, but it’s also very powerful,” continued Yinon. “Once you are familiar with the system, nearly everything you think of can be accomplished by it.”