How the thinking person’s service desk protects Reuters’ reputation
When no news, is good news.
Reuters haven’t become the world’s biggest news and information agency by doing things by halves.
Recently, their full-on attitude was demonstrated when they relocated 2700 staff from 7 other offices to a brand new headquarters in Canary Wharf.
Simple? Well, it could have been, but Reuters added one or two complications.
A desktop upgrade was one thing; having established a minimum standard for speed, software, memory and storage, Reuters wanted everyone’s PC to be assessed against the standard and upgraded as necessary, before moving to the new office.
Then there was the phone system. VoIP saves a fortune when it’s done properly and Reuters were interested in saving a fortune.
VoIP’s ability to attach documents to calls was also an attraction - ideal when discussing news stories from the other side of the world - so they chose to throw out the old phone system and switch to VoIP before everyone got back to work. They included IPTV too.
Then there were passers-by to consider. Financial Services organisations around the world rely on Reuters for Stock Exchange Data and banks based in Canary Wharf are no exception. So they decided to remind people of this fact, while also providing a useful service. Europe’s biggest LED stock ticker (45 metres long) was duly wrapped around the new building, sending instant market movements straight to the moving masses on the streets.
Oh yes and we mustn’t forget the 40-foot plasma screen. Erected by the entrance to the Canary Wharf rail station, this was intended to deliver news, information and entertainment free of charge, to millions of people every month.
As we said, Reuters aren’t the kind of people to do half a job.
So how did it go? you’re asking. Was it a smooth move for 2700 relocated Reuters staff? Did their newly upgraded PCs work properly? Did the stock ticker tick and the plasma screen impress its scurrying audience? And what about the VoIP transition? Bandwidth and network OK? Any quibbles about voice quality?
Well, the answer was not unlike the curate’s egg.
The good parts
The PC upgrades and the IT relocation part of the job, completed over 5 weekends by Fujitsu, went perfectly and Reuter’s ongoing staff productivity (4,000 people altogether including head office) continues to be supported by a Fujitsu Global Service Desk.
The VoIP, stock ticker and plasma screen, all supplied by 3rd parties, also went in with hardly a hitch. But Reuters realised they had a pretty complex set of systems at work, any of which could affect their brand or their ability to do business if things went wrong at any time.
So rather than have a disparate collection of first line support contracts, Reuters asked the Fujitsu service desk to look after these things too. The result is a remarkable approach – an intelligent support service that handles problems and gives priority to the company’s objectives and to external perceptions of its brand.
For example, if the screen or ticker should display incorrect or corrupted data, not only is it faulty, it’s also putting Reuters’ reputation for information accuracy at risk. If this happens, the first response is to switch to a backup system or, if it’s the screen itself at fault, to switch it off. Once the Reuters brand is protected in this way, the issue is escalated and the fault repaired.
More common sense from Reuters
You can’t write news without references and an Oracle database is Reuters’ primary source. Sensibly, it’s protected by passwords. Predictably, journalists forget them.
The old way of fixing the problem involved a call to the IT service desk and a longer than ideal wait for a technical expert with system admin privileges to call you back and restore your access.
– At one stage 18% of Reuters’ help calls were for password resets!
The answer that Reuters came up with was blindingly obvious (but then, the right answer almost always is): “Why not stop this being a service desk issue at all by putting re-set instructions and capabilities online? Oh yes and why not also put them on the staff intranet home page and make them big and red and flashy, so that busy people notice they are there?”
Result? Password resets are now done almost instantly. Journalists no longer lose valuable time. And the service desk can get on with really helping.
...and the bad
There is one problem to report, however. In the fevered activity of the relocation, a certain M Bonaparte’s advice was overlooked. He famously said “An army marches on its stomach” and the civilian version of this truth must be that an office (especially a newly relocated one) relies strongly on its coffee supply.
People didn’t like it. Instead of machines, there were fancy electronic hot water taps and funny little sachets and the coffee just didn’t taste right.
Of course, if refreshments had been included in Fujitsu’s wide-ranging support contract, things might have turned out differently...
