Application Support System Helps FileNet Solve More Problems More Quickly, Without Increasing Staff
by Lori Wizdo, Identify Software

FileNet Corporation (Costa Mesa, CA), helps organizations make better decisions by managing the content and processes that drive their businesses. FileNet’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions allow customers to build and sustain competitive advantage by managing content throughout their organization, automating and streamlining their business processes, and simplifying their critical and everyday decision-making.

CHALLENGE How does the leader in enterprise content management solutions reduce the cost of supporting complex business critical applications at remote user sites? SOLUTION Using Identify’s AppSight™ Black Box software, FileNet, can automatically receive critical support data from customer sites & pinpoint configuration and performance problems. RESULTS • Reduced fault isolation by more than 25% in a three month period. • Reduced average time-to-resolution by 50%. • Reduced labor hours—fewer and shorter on-site visits for deployments. In some complex cases, 10x savings. • Increased customer satisfaction & loyalty due to improved ability to forecast time-to-resolution.

Assisting FileNet’s worldwide customer base of over 4000 installed systems is Vice President of Customer Support Services (CSS), Robert Roach. Roach’s 120 Global Call Center personnel support over 80 products and field approximately 9000 customer calls a month. Roach found that, historically, it took his team 15 times more effort to find a system-level problem than to fix it.

“Our customers are large financial organizations that have 24-by-7 mission-critical production needs. Any downtime results in loss of business totaling millions of dollars a day,” said Roach. “Faster resolution of critical issues eases the impact on the customer and builds their confidence in our products and services, leading toward a higher level of customer satisfaction.”

AppSight Black Box Accelerates Problem Resolution by 50%
In order to improve customer service and satisfaction, CSS would need to improve overall efficiency in its fault isolation process. Using AppSight Black Box software from Identify Software (Raleigh, NC), Roach hoped to reduce fault isolation by 25% and reduce average time-to-resolution by 50% or more.

The benefits went far beyond: Typical system-level problems, such as erroneous configuration and component integration failures, were discovered in less time and without field deployment of support personnel. In addition, the Call Center was able to concentrate more time on solving the problem rather than finding it. Roach commented, “We solve more problems quicker without increasing our staff when we use AppSight and this directly affects customer satisfaction and impacts favorably on the cost.

Pinpointing Configuration Problems
The CSS organization receives and triages calls as they come in. “Eighty percent of the time, the problem is a configuration issue within the customer’s environment and is handled immediately by the Call Center with the help of AppSight,” said Roach.

Out of six typical escalations, CSS saved 1040 hours of labor using the AppSight Black Box. “With AppSight, we experience excellent results in reducing our labor hours associated with fault isolation,” said Roach. For example, the Black Box isolated a complex customer production error in five hours that normally would have taken Roach’s team hundreds of hours. “We encounter these types of escalations on average six to 10 times a year,” said Roach.

Eliminating Costly Remote Site Visits
If a problem requires escalation, Roach sends his “SWAT Team”—a special group of senior support engineers on a four-hour standby—into the field at no additional cost to the customer. In the field, the SWAT Team found that 30% of the problems were due to network issues where a quick fix could have been done, had the customer relayed accurate information. Other times, after hours of tracing, the SWAT Team would find that customer changes to the system had caused the problem.

Using AppSight, Roach’s team was able to catch the network and system issues without deploying the SWAT Team, saving his organization time and money. With the Black Box’s ability to capture problems at remote sites, the Call Center and SWAT team were able to solve system-level problems without escalating them through the CSS organization. “By using AppSight, we dramatically reduce the fault isolation time, which then reduces the overall time to resolution,” said Roach.

FileNet Customers Realize Benefits
Since FileNet deployed AppSight in their CSS organization, feedback from customers has been very positive. In fact, several FileNet customers have noticed that their system-level problems have been isolated faster, thus saving them time and money. Feedback from CIO level customers has also been positive, as they are happy to see FileNet using innovative tools. “Overall, we reduced fault isolation in Customer Support Services by more and one-fourth in a three-month period and overall average time-to-resolution by 50% or more,” said Roach.

About the author
Lori Wizdo is VP of Marketing & Business Development for Identify Software. For information on resolving your application support problems more quickly, visit www.identify.com or contact info@identify.com.

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