Swedbank

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Swedbank

“By working with Fujitsu, Swedbank’s whole desktop management and support has become much easier and more cost-effective.” Mats Moberg - Head of IT Business Support, Swedbank

The Challenge

Swedbank is the leading bank in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with 16,000 employees serving over 9 million private and corporate customers. The bank’s aim is to make its customers’ day to day lives easier by providing a full range of easy-to-use and competitively priced financial services with access through nearly 800 branch offices, telephone or online banking.

With such a large number of branches, located across a wide geographical area, Swedbank chose to outsource the support of its desktop systems in Sweden. Mats Moberg, Head of IT Business Support, Swedbank, explains, “We have branches all over Sweden, but it is not our business to have the kind of technical knowledge needed to support all of our IT systems on site. It was much easier for us to outsource the desktop management and helpdesk.”

The Solution

Having collaborated in various ways for more than 30 years, Fujitsu was one of two companies originally chosen to provide a managed desktop service. However, Swedbank decided to consolidate the service delivery with one supplier and chose to work with Fujitsu.

Mats Moberg continues, “We looked at how good it was to have two suppliers and concluded that having just one was much better. Not only did it avoid the problem of knowing who to go if you needed help, but there were also advantages in terms of cost and quality. Basically, by working with Fujitsu, Swedbank’s whole desktop management and support has become much easier and more cost-effective.”

Under the desktop managed service contract Fujitsu provides break fix services and on-site support for all of the hardware in Swedbank’s branches, including 13,000 PCs and 800 servers.

Mats Moberg says, “We’re very pleased with the hardware support that Fujitsu provides. If something goes wrong with a PC Fujitsu has four hours to fix it and get the user working again.”

Fujitsu also operates a fully managed Advice Desk providing first line support and guidance for the bank’s unique business applications, standard infrastructure applications, operating systems, office applications as well as hardware problems.

In total, Fujitsu supports 13,500 Swedbank users and handles around 400,000 calls a year, of which around 70% involve providing advice and support for bank applications, while the rest are technical problems. The helpdesk’s ability to handle such a large percentage of application support issues is unique in Sweden.

“The helpdesk is going very well,” comments Mats Moberg. “Our users now have one easy point of contact for any support issues, which has made life a lot easier for them and reduced the hidden costs of IT support. Now, instead of having to find their own, often costly ways of solving problems Fujitsu can do it all for them, usually in one phone call – over 80% of all problems are solved immediately. In addition, every three months we send out a questionnaire to our users and the results are consistently good – over 95% of our staff are either pleased or very pleased with the service that Fujitsu provides.”

Recently, Fujitsu has managed the migration of Swedbank’s entire IT infrastructure platform from Microsoft Windows NT to Windows XP. The project was completed on time in just 11 weeks with 13,000 desktops and 800 servers in 800 branches being migrated in 49 days.

In addition, Fujitsu is currently working with Sun Microsystems to implement a pilot project for Swedbank designed to evaluate the use of thin-client technology.

Fujitsu is also continuing to work with Swedbank to identify new opportunities to improve efficiency. Mats Moberg says, “Fujitsu has a good understanding of how we work and what we want, and its experience of working with other financial services organisations is providing some interesting insights. So, we’re now getting some good ideas from Fujitsu on how to increase productivity and reduce costs. It is really trying hard to help us – and I’m trying hard to push the relationship that way as we’d like Fujitsu to do more work with us on a strategic level.”

The Benefits

Fujitsu’s desktop support services are enabling Swedbank to:

• Reduce costs – the goal is to significantly lower the cost of maintaining desktop systems and applications, and eventually eliminate “hidden” cost
• Optimise system availability – proactive management using proven tools and techniques is optimising IT performance and minimising downtime
• Increase productivity – faster problem resolution is minimising business disruption and enabling users to continue working longer
• Better management control – now have a single helpline to call and accurate cost control
• Access specialist resources – Fujitsu’s comprehensive range of business, technical and commercial expertise is available on an ‘as needs’ basis
• Budget accurately – costs are entirely visible and predictable over the contract life
• Simplify supplier management – using Fujitsu as a single point of contact for all service management issues reduces management time and overhead costs
• Focus on the core business – staff can concentrate on future requirements and higher value activities, rather than the underlying support processes.

“The key issue for us is to get our users back up and working in the shortest possible time. They have to serve the needs of our customers, so any problems that they have must be solved quickly. Fujitsu helps us do just that, which has lead to a very high level of satisfaction among the users, but it also means that Fujitsu is effectively enabling us to deliver a better service to our customers,” comments Mats Moberg.

“Thanks to Fujitsu’s desktop management services and helpdesk we have very good control of our local IT infrastructure, wherever it is, and can follow the costs across the organisation. Now we want to exploit those benefits even further, and there are a number of opportunities and ideas to help us in other areas.”

Our Approach

The success of the XP migration project was largely due to its extensive planning and preparation undertaken by Swedbank and Fujitsu. Fujitsu managed the physical migration of the platform that Swedbank had designed and developed. Fujitsu's proven skills in large-scale project management also ensured that progress was tracked effectively in order to keep the programme on time and within budget and to minimise the associated risks.

“The migration project involved a lot of hard work in planning everything before the roll-out started,” explains Mats Moberg, “but it meant that everything went very well with very little interruption to our staff or business operations. The preparation and co-operation involved was a real partnership effort.”

Our Expertise

With over 30 years experience of supporting the needs of customers, Fujitsu has a proven track record in providing complex systems integration and management services that reduce costs, improve productivity and customer services and deliver a compelling return on investment.

Mats Moberg says, “We are very pleased with our relationship with Fujitsu – we are definitely partners. We know each other so well and the limits of what we can and cannot do. There is also a very good level of trust and honesty – things are very open between us. It makes it very easy to work together.”