"One solution for everything: structured communication, knowledge database, documentation, analysis, and planning"
CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 12, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- ISBJ, the software division that supports the Department for Education, Youth and Family Affairs of the state government of Berlin, Germany, centralizes and automates the processing of all relevant information and service requests with the OTRS platform. The benefits are numerous: transparency and quality in the handling and processing of queries, 24/7 accessibility, a high level of consistency in the quality of external communication, continuous knowledge documentation and structured, service-oriented communication.
According to the ISBJ (Integrated Software Berlin Youth Welfare), having been predominantly organized in a decentralized way, the youth welfare offices of the 12 districts of Berlin operated autonomously. This meant that the processes related to the provision and organization of assistance services were treated differently in each office. Which generated costly maintenance in terms of financial resources, staff and time spent on operation.
To offer optimal support in the form of processing and documentation, ISBJ decided to adopt the OTRS service management software, to control more than 1,000 monthly tickets, handled by 50 agents. Among the requirements for choosing the OTRS platform were: audit evidence, accessible documentation, operational reliability, transparency and free interfaces for integration with legacy systems.
Today, OTRS is used to map all communication for upkeep, first and second level support, incident management, and all communication with customers and service providers. Exchanges take place via tickets, with expert ISBJ agents using OTRS.
The ongoing maintenance of data in OTRS is of particular importance to the ISBJ. This includes 15 dynamic fields, plus the ranking, prioritization, history, and tracking process for each ticket.
For Luciano Alves de Oliveira, Director General Brazil, and Portugal of the OTRS Group, the two great advantages of the OTRS process automation platform for public sector companies are the reduction of time and costs involved in the execution of tasks. "It's a solution for everything – structured communication, knowledge database, documentation, analysis, and planning. Public institutions around the world can manage documents, workflow, create forms, send and receive files, and much more." Oliveira adds that OTRS also offers advanced features to help companies maximize their operational efficiency and improve the service provided to their customers.
With OTRS, the ISBJ unit currently manages 33 specialized procedures and requests from 6,000 internal users in district youth offices and about 4,000 external users.
"To keep up with the ever-increasing requirements, the implementation of OTRS has definitely been a plus, especially in the areas of knowledge documentation, structuring, role understanding and service orientation," says Sebastian Erb, Head of the Operation Procedure and Development of the ISBJ unit.
Advantages of OTRS
The main benefit of OTRS for ISBJ tasks is clearly recognizable. First, it is about the efficient and structured handling of queries and incident reports and the associated communication – internal and external.
The features of OTRS which allow tickets to be assigned and prioritized, or ticket history to be viewed and completed, and audit-proof documentation to occur, are particularly important in this regard. The same applies to the availability of knowledge bases and the possibility of individually configuring the software solution.
Using OTRS also makes it easier for the ISBJ department to take over tickets in the event of a replacement attendant – be it due to illness or vacation. Continuous documentation of all the steps already taken on a request helps, such as the option to set an agent's status to away, thus ensuring that the reopened ticket is not forgotten, but processed by teammates.
For recurring processes and procedures, the freely configurable response models in OTRS are also used, ensuring the quality of communication, and guaranteeing legal certainty in external communication, even in stressful situations.
In addition to supporting all communications and thus ensuring efficient and quick processing of all incoming requests and messages, the ISBJ department also uses OTRS for assessment and planning. It is crucial that all relevant data and information is stored and available in OTRS. For example, the unit can use OTRS to assess the volume of requests. It can be evaluated how many tickets are received from which district and which topics are most reported. This information makes it possible to assess whether there is a need to optimize the procedures themselves, or whether and where there is a need for staff training.
Monitoring expenses and budget planning
In addition to the original process operation itself, the department also includes the downstream development area. This department takes care of any necessary adjustments to specialist procedures, for example if required by a change in law. The necessary communication for this is also carried out via OTRS and supports this area with the same advantages as the procedure operation.
The flexibility of a service software solution required by the ISBJ and provided by the OTRS will be further increased in the future by even more consistent conversion of queues to free fields.
Media Contact
Rachel Minihan, OTRS Group, 1 408 549 1717, [email protected], https://otrs.com/
SOURCE OTRS Group
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