Fiskars

Fiskars Group Switched to Xurrent to Transform Its Service Management Processes

 

SUCCESS HIGHLIGHTS

ENTERPRISE-WIDE USER ADOPTION

INCREASED AGILITY

40% COST SAVINGS

“We went live on a Tuesday at 9 am UK time, and by the time I got in at 10 am UK time, there was no feedback. I was thinking, what is going on? By the end of the day, we had no complaints; it just ran, it was that good, so we’re really happy with it. Over 5,000 happy people all at the same time.”

Mike Rossi, Senior IT Manager Service Management at Fiskars Group

Improved processes and collaboration have increased user satisfaction and efficiency

Fiskars Group is the global home of design-driven brands for indoor and outdoor living. Since 1649, they have designed products of timeless, purposeful, and functional beauty while driving innovation and sustainable growth. Brands include

Fiskars, Gerber, Iittala, Royal Copenhagen, Moomin Arabia, Waterford, and Wedgwood. Fiskars Group’s brands are present in 100 countries across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. They have around 350 own stores and employ close to 7,000 people across 29 countries.

Looking for a more easy-to-use, flexible, and cost-effective solution

Part of Fiskars Group’s plans to reorganize IT and change the processes was to look at another ITSM tool. 

Fiskars Group’s previous service management platform was not right for its organization. And as it was not easy to use, not everyone was using it. Also, people in different countries who didn’t speak English wouldn’t use the tool because of language barriers. 

In addition, Fiskars Group had to pay for external consultancy to maintain the previous service management platform as the team didn’t have the in-house skills.  

They wanted to replace their first-generation cloud platform with a more flexible, easy-to-use, and cost-effective enterprise service management platform in the cloud, to be used across the whole group. 

While working with an external consultant on Fiskars Group’s digital transformation, the team reviewed several alternatives to the current ITSM tool, and Xurrent was one of them.   

Mike Rossi, Senior IT Manager Service Management at Fiskars Group: “We liked Xurrent the best; it was clearly the best fit for us. Xurrent has all the necessary functionalities, most of them out of the box and included in the license.” 

Instead of just IT service management capabilities, IT business management capabilities like Demand Management, Project & Portfolio Management, Time Registration, and Resource Management were all included in the license. This wasn’t the case with the other two tools Fiskars Group looked at. Demand Management, for example, was costly in the old platform (extra module), whereas, with Xurrent, it is included in the license.

Mike: “The Xurrent licensing is reasonable and very cost-effective and transparent; you know upfront what it will cost you.”

“Xurrent is easy to use. I’ve worked with many different tools over the past 23 years, and Xurrent is by far the easiest to use. The fact that users can work in their native language only adds to that. Also, it is very slick looking.”

The fact that the tool is based on the ITIL framework was also an advantage. Service desk partner HCLTech delivers ITIL-aligned services to Fiskars Group, and Xurrent helped Fiskars Group to follow the ITIL framework as the tool pushes an organization in that direction. 

When Fiskars Group looked at the partner who could help them with the Xurrent implementation and support, REVO Xurrent Services came out top. Mike: “We liked their support model the best, and they were actually listening to us and what we needed instead of telling us what they were going to give us.” 

“With our previous solution, we had to hire outside consultants to help us, whereas now I have a person on my team who has been trained by REVO and has taken on a lot of responsibility helping us design the templates and process flows. We involve REVO where we don’t have the expertise or the time.”

Mike Rossi

Senior IT Manager Service Management at Fiskars Group

“The launch of Xurrent was a huge success for Fiskars Group; it brought our service teams together, it made it easier for us all to work together and communicate, and it has improved our service management process, absolutely.”

Implementation

Fiskars Group was on a very tight timeframe to implement, and REVO assured them they could do it within the timeframe. 

The implementation took 16 weeks in total, all according to plan. During that time, Fiskars Group and REVO worked closely together to set everything up, design the service catalog, etc. The project started on July 1, and Xurrent went live on October 18, 2022.

Mike: “We worked as a true partnership, hand in hand with Xurrent partner REVO. Working very closely with them from the very beginning had a huge benefit because my team understood how everything about how the product worked from the moment we went live.”

Training

The initial training was done with the online Xurrent modules and videos. At Fiskars Group, people are used to classroom training, but for most users, the online training worked, and for those who were struggling, the team arranged extra help.  

The Xurrent video training was also used to train business partner HCLTech (help desk/support team). As Xurrent was different in look and feel from Fiskars Group’s previous tool, which is what they were using before, it was a bit of a change, but they were able to quickly adapt and felt more comfortable with Xurrent.

Scope

• Request Fulfillment
• Incident Management
• Configuration and Asset Management
• Service Level Management
• Change Management
• Risk Management
• Xurrent Shop

The Xurrent Shop is used for ordering devices like laptops, mobiles, etc.

Integrations

Fiskars Group likes Moogsoft, Azure, Intune, SSO, and Events. Mike: “We love the integrations and are happy with how smoothly they go.” 

Simon Martin, CEO at REVO Xurrent Services, says: “One of the most used is the major incident management integration, which we built to be able to send emails and text messages. Fiskars Group has a solid major incidents process now, all via the portal.” 

Mike: “We are very happy with the collaboration with Xurrent and REVO; they are nothing but supportive and are always there for us. REVO understands our business and our pain points. They challenge us where necessary, give us good direction/advice and keep us moving forward.” 

“It’s nice that it’s a smaller shop; you can build a personal relationship where both parties really understand each other and where they’re coming from. At other bigger companies, we are just an account.”

Go Live

Mike was amazed at how well it went:

“We went live on a Tuesday at 9 am UK time, and by the time I got in at 10 am UK time, there was no feedback. I was thinking, what is going on? By the end of the day, we had no complaints; it just ran, it was that good, so we’re really happy with it. Over 5,000 happy people all at the same time.”

Mike’s team consists of 5 people that manage IT Services across the group. With Xurrent, it is possible for a lean team like that to manage everything globally. Every change goes through that team; that keeps it all lined up. Countries that want changes have to go through the team first. They know exactly what’s going on, and if they change something in one place, they will know if it may also be of interest to another team or country.

Result: Improved processes significantly increased user satisfaction and efficiency

User satisfaction is excellent at 96%. Before, this was not as easy to measure. Thumbs up and down have made it much easier. Users like the ease of use and the much faster response times. The team has just started publishing user stats to the user community, letting them know where they are. 

Mike: “The teams and departments using Xurrent are IT, the Security team, the Data Privacy group, and we’ve just launched a Xurrent Freemium account for one of our third-party suppliers, which is huge for us, and really cool. It is very slick; we’re very pleased about that.” 

Xurrent Freemium makes it easy for providers to collaborate with Xurrent customers. Providers who do not use Xurrent themselves can link to a Xurrent account, and customers can securely pass requests and collaborate without having to build an integration. 

In addition, Fiskars Group will be expanding Xurrent to support a new POS solution, managing Master Data requests and Facilities Management. 

There are now over 5,000 end users in Xurrent, working in offices, factories, and distribution centers around the world. 

Fiskars Group already had 263 services in the catalog, 369 service instances, and 38,000 completed requests in the first six months of Xurrent. The requests have increased significantly compared to before, partly thanks to the local language feature. Also, thanks to Xurrent, Fiskars Group will save 41% on service management costs over the next five years.

Mike: “Bringing in Xurrent gave us the opportunity to reset and align everything. And thanks to Xurrent Auto Translation, nobody has an excuse not to log into the system.”

“For me, a great improvement is the ability to search upfront; that has made my life much easier; everybody can find what they are looking for. It’s been phenomenal. And the language/translation feature was the number two, two big plusses.” 

“Xurrent has enabled us to improve the processes, and we are able to add services at the speed of the demand, making us more agile. Six months on, we already have nearly 3,000 completed workflows. Whereas everything was scattered before, these are now all in Xurrent.”

Mike concludes: “The launch of Xurrent was a huge success for Fiskars Group; it brought our service teams together, it made it easier for us all to work together and communicate, and it has improved our service management process, absolutely.”