Standardise and streamline helpdesk processes
ARPAVIE offers a comprehensive range of accommodation and services for elderly people—from the more independent to those who are frail and even those with disabilities—thanks to its network of nursing homes, retirement homes and homecare services. The group is responsible for more than 9,600 senior care homes across France.
As a result of the merger of two businesses in 2016, ARPAVIE's Information Systems and Innovation department needed to standardise and streamline helpdesk processes. At the time, email was the main means of communication between care home users and IT support when it came to IT issues. "In 2018, I started to roll out an internal client/supplier relationship approach. This involved establishing a service centre to offer a range of services, a call centre, level 1 and 2 maintenance requests, as well as regular reporting", explains Emmanuel Potet, Assistant Manager of Information Systems at ARPAVIE.
Serving homes and residents above all
The idea was simple: the group provides services to the residences as its customers, not the other way round. "In this context, it was only natural that all our support services should be clearly defined, that performance levels should be 'contracted', that the results should be transparent and that the group should seek to improve.
"The aim is to facilitate the work of staff members and ultimately the care of the residents as part of our approach to continuous improvement".
Although the concept was promising, the IT department still needed a tool that they could rely on to facilitate this process. Following a call for tenders, ServiceNow was chosen due to its broad range of features.
A simple, graphic, multi-task tool
In 2019, the IT department created the first portal for the group, using ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM). Thanks to ITSM, users can request IT support remotely or locally. Technicians have a dashboard to manage their ongoing activities and monitor their performance. They can also access the users' equipment inventory.
In terms of governance, monitoring indicators were created with Microsoft Power BI in line with ServiceNow. They are displayed on a supervision screen either in real time or cumulatively, available to users via the intranet.
The result: 85% of IT issues are now resolved within one hour and the user satisfaction score was 4/5 in 2023.
In Emmanuel's opinion: "ServiceNow was the right choice for several reasons, one of which is the quality of the graphical user interface and the back office and how easy it is to configure. It's the best tool that I have ever used for process management. It has allowed us to fully adopt our client-supplier relationship approach. Combined with the continuous improvement of skills and knowledge of the helpdesk team, this has resulted in a high level of user and technician satisfaction scores. As with any project, success is not only dependent on the right choice of the right tool but above all it depends on the people behind it. To this end, I would like to thank my entire team, as well as Francis Manzac—the group's Chief Information Officer—who has supported me throughout this journey and our partners, Noveane-groupe Scalian and TIBCO, for the quality of their services".
A tool open to other environments
The fact that the IT department has succeeded in changing mindsets and processes to achieve a better overall service whilst maintaining the same number of people, 12 engineers and technicians, proves that the solution is truly open and adaptable. It's in this spirit that Emmanuel realised that his approach could be beneficial for other head office departments that also manage support requests from residential homes, such as payroll, property and purchasing and HR (training and talent management).
After a presentation to members of the Management Committee, the ServiceNow ITSM scope was extended to also support these departments. In May 2023, the 'Property and Purchasing' service catalogue was opened, as well as the 'Payroll Management' and 'Talent Management' catalogues in November.
The success of this project is the result of the partnership with the consulting company, Noveane-groupe Scalian. The partner was able to adapt to the context and needs of the group, allowing the ServiceNow project to be rolled out to departments other than IT. ARPAVIE's IT department relied on the quality of the services provided by Noveane-groupe Scalian.
"This partner has allowed us to create a service portal that all users like and to ensure the security of all data shared between different departments, while working remotely in Agile mode. They carry out version updates annually and provide us with support, guidance and development, as well as technical monitoring", explains Emmanuel.
"We have now achieved all our IT helpdesk-related goals. The quantitative performance indicators increased by 40% in four years. Users have 'voted' 4/5 in terms of their overall satisfaction rate. Expanding into other domains will facilitate supporting users in residential homes".