IT service desk: fast, reliable, and global

Carl Zeiss AG (ZEISS) is a German manufacturer of optical systems and optoelectronics and was founded by Carl Zeiss in Jena in 1846. ZEISS is active in approximately 50 countries in the business fields of industrial quality and research, medical technology, consumer markets, and semiconductor production technology. The company has more than 30 production plants and around 25 development facilities around the world, and it earned EUR 8.8 billion in sales.

Carl Zeiss AG (ZEISS) is an internationally active enterprise with more than 30 production plants and approximately 25 development facilities around the world. The company operates an extensive, heterogeneous IT infrastructure that has grown over the years and has a large number of data centers, operating models, and service providers. A large IT service provider that was previously responsible for their global first-level support service desk was no longer able to meet the increased requirements. ZEISS‘s IT decision makers therefore looked for a new professional partner with the goal of increasing the quality of the service desk.

ZEISS brought Fujitsu on board in 2018 as its new global service desk provider. Since then, Fujitsu offers dedicated first-level support for all IT demands of ZEISS employees
with a team of 65 highly qualified agents and operators, also providing further services in German and English through its Global Delivery Center (GDC) in Portugal. The Fujitsu team has in-depth knowledge of processes in order to supply consistent and high quality end-to-end IT service and 24/7 support. ZEISS works together with many IT providers around the world. Fujitsu‘s first-level agents are able to directly answer around 30 percent of the inquiries directed to the global service desk, such as resetting passwords, how-do-you-do-this questions, and problems with Office programs. For the other 70 percent, which are passed on to the various IT service providers, first-level support offers first fixes or workarounds as needed. Fujitsu‘s service desk agents know which questions they need to ask the users in order to rapidly grasp problems and forward the necessary information to the other service providers so that they can analyze and eliminate the problems as quickly as possible.  

Along with meeting its contractual obligations, Fujitsu also pursues the goal of improving the interaction between ZEISS‘s many IT systems and service providers. In doing so, it plans to minimize problems and outages for the IT users over the long term. Each time a ticket is closed, the user is asked to evaluate the friendliness and expertise of the service desk agents. Fujitsu regularly exceeds its objective to achieve a 90-percent rate of positive feedback and is pleased with the positive comments it receives. In addition, ZEISS has made security its top priority. It is therefore important that the company reliably protects its data and intellectual property. In August 2022, an on-site security audit in Lisbon assured ZEISS that all work areas were password-protected, and all necessary fire safety precautions were precisely followed.

Fujitsu does not only handle the global service desk but also provides what are known as special services. These include regular maintenance of the knowledge base, which is used by both the service desk and ZEISS employees. For example, service desk agents point out recognized errors, solutions, or workarounds, which result from calls they have processed. Continuous updates of the knowledge base enable the users to increasingly help themselves. This significantly reduces the number of necessary service calls and noticeably relieves the workload of the service desk team. Another special service is move-to-production support. For example, when a new IT system is introduced, Fujitsu organizes training sessions for everyone involved and makes sure that the knowledge base is updated accordingly. As part of the ticket control, Fujitsu monitors service providers to ensure that they process their tickets in compliance with proper procedure and agreements. Fujitsu also manages the resolution of major incidents, that means IT problems that can result in a significant interruption of work or lead to high financial loss. These include, for example, the outage of a production system or a network in a production location.

„Fujitsu is a reliable service provider who responds quickly to our needs, is thoroughly familiar with ZEISS‘s internal process environment, and supplies high-quality results in short time,“ remarks Stefan Spiller, Head of IT Contact Center at Carl Zeiss AG. Fujitsu processes and resolves approximately 12,000 tasks per month, one ticket often initiating multiple tasks. „In extreme situations, Fujitsu always proves to be a partner capable of fast and flexible action. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, Fujitsu set up a complete infrastructure within only one week for moving the service desk team from the office to working from home. We experienced no service restrictions. In addition, Fujitsu service desk employees with Spanish language skills were able to help out without complications when our local service desk in Spain ran into a human resource bottleneck,“ Stefan Spiller adds. „Every single Fujitsu agent takes responsibility for resolving problems as quickly as possible. This approach provides optimal IT support to our staff.“ Due to the high level of satisfaction, ZEISS extended its contract with Fujitsu in November 2022 without issuing a tender.

In addition to the global Fujitsu service desk, ZEISS provides its own local service desks (LSDs) in some countries, which cover local languages. ZEISS and Fujitsu continuously check whether the Fujitsu support team can also provide added value for these ZEISS locations and thus further expand the range of services. Fujitsu would also like to increase the rate of first fixes by equipping its own employees with more knowledge about the systems of other service providers. This helps ZEISS staff members even faster, improves productivity, and lowers the overall IT support costs medium term.