Alinma Bank
OpenText™ Service Management supports zero-touch IT operations goal with AI-driven self-service and automation
About Alinma Bank
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Founded:2006
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Headquarters:Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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Branches:180+
Summary
Challenges
- Introduce self-service capabilities and automation to streamline service management.
- Minimize manual effort to eliminate human error and enable service agents to add value to the user community.
Solution
- Introduced a service catalogue with 200+ offerings.
- Automated 70% of requests while respecting SLAs.
- Managed requests end-to-end.
- Streamlined previously manual processes.
Results
Saved 1,500+ man hours/year by automating VPN renewal
Implemented smoothly with codeless configuration
Improved user experience and sped issue resolution
Challenges
- Introduce a single point of contact to better serve 3,000 end users
- Automate at least 70% of IT operations, including asset and stock management
- Resolve reported issues promptly and in priority order based on SLA commitments
Alinma Bank is relatively young and established a technology focus from its early beginnings. While it always had a tool to manage its information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) processes, it still lacked sophistication as the bank’s Head of Operations Support Systems, Ahmed Mohamed Zaher explained, “We serve about 3,000 end users who come to us for their basic and more advanced IT support. This community also includes approximately 500 support engineers, change owners, developers, project managers, and administrators who rely on our service desk for the success of their various projects. With just 15 service desk agents, we sorely felt the absence of a self-service portal. We also relied on manual execution for our IT operations, and we didn’t feel we had a good handle on our assets and stock.”
With over 5,000 requests submitted by email or phone calls each month to the service desk, it was very difficult to resolve issues in a timely manner and ensure that problems with the highest impact on productivity received the appropriate priority. The bank worried that these shortcomings collectively contributed to inefficiencies in the current operational framework, hindering its ability to deliver services with optimal efficiency and control. As the bank had an existing partnership with OpenText through its service management solution, it looked to them for an answer.
Leveraging OpenText Service Management, we improved our user experience with self-service capabilities, faster service delivery and incident resolution, and higher service quality. We have enhanced our efficiency and productivity, realized substantial cost savings, and can now take truly data-driven business decisions.
Solution
Through codeless configuration and ITIL best-practice templates, Alinma implemented OpenText™ Service Management. Automatic ticket assignment and routing ensured faster issue resolution, while integration drove end-to-end visibility.
Products deployed
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OpenText™ Service Management
Automate IT service management (ITSM), IT asset management (ITAM), and enterprise service management (ESM) with built-in AI and analytics
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OpenText™ Universal Discovery and CMDB
Increase IT visibility and reduce service disruptions with robust discovery, service dependency mapping, and proactive impact analysis
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OpenText™ Automation Center
Automate, integrate, and orchestrate on cloud or off IT processes with low-code/no-code workflow authoring and an API-rich, extensible platform
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OpenText™ Network Node Manager
Implement powerful capabilities enabling NOCs to manage modern networks and specialized environments, reducing time to resolve issues
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OpenText™ AI Operations Management
Through automated discovery, monitoring, and remediation, fast-track your move to full-stack AIOps across multicloud and on-premises environments
Introducing 200+ service and support offerings
OpenText introduced the Alinma team to OpenText Service Management, designed to streamline tier 1 support with clever use of artificial intelligence (AI). Leveraging OpenText Service Management, Alinma can adapt quickly to new business requirements with codeless configurations and ITIL best-practice templates. The team recognized it could accelerate incident resolution and they were also very interested in exploring the solution’s asset management capabilities. Alinma Bank also uses other OpenText ITOM solutions, and the native integration offered by OpenText Service Management will help to create end-to-end transparency that will benefit all staff and executives.
Once the decision for OpenText Service Management was made, the implementation took just six months and was mainly done in-house, following some expert training. Mr. Zaher commented, “We created our service catalogue from scratch, introducing over 200 service and support offerings for our users. The single point of contact with our portal made it easy to submit requests. We noticed straightaway that this offered amazing added value to our business and IT users, while additional self-service features such as our global search capability helped our users find the right answer without needing live support.”
Respecting SLA commitments, automated 70% of requests
Alinma introduced modules for incident and problem management to streamline all requests coming through the OpenText Service Management portal. Automatic ticket categorization and routing ensured that each issue is assigned to the correct service agent to support faster incident resolution. OpenText Service Management compares the content of any new incident with its knowledge base of other incidents, articles, problems, known errors, and external intelligence. Its Hot Topic Analytics looks at the population of incidents and automatically categorizes them based on natural language processing of the unstructured data. This information can prove helpful in finding the resolution as quickly as possible, without having to reinvent the wheel, or manually search across the vast knowledge base.
When incidents are reported, it is key that service agents understand the service level agreement (SLA) time that they need to adhere to, as the impact on productivity will differ by incident. OpenText Service Management is essential in this effort. Service agents can view service level targets for each incident and can filter to prioritize the incidents with the shortest remaining SLA time, to ensure full compliance. Notifications for upcoming SLA breach conditions can be sent automatically through OpenText Service Management to maximize the likelihood that the target will be met.
“Over 70 percent of our requests are now automatically routed and assigned through OpenText Service Management,” said Mr. Zaher. “It makes our work more efficient, avoids incorrect assignments and delays in resolution, and allows our service agents to focus on adding value to our users, rather than manually managing processes.”
Managing requests end-to-end
Alinma uses OpenText AI Operations Management and OpenText Network Node Manager to monitor its network health and performance and dynamically discover services and dependent resources. All event data is consolidated and correlated within OpenText AI Operations Management. However, managing services goes beyond just monitoring. It means managing the entire lifecycle of an event, including automatic incident submission to OpenText Service Management. That is the role of the closed loop incident process (CLIP). OpenText supports CLIP with native integration between OpenText AI Operations Management and OpenText Service Management.
Alinma was an early adopter of OpenText Universal Discovery and CMDB and has developed a high level of maturity. It is used to discover, map, and manage any IT assets and configurations within the organization. Leveraging OpenText Universal Discovery and CMDB–assisted service modelling, the team built over 270 service models to improve service management quality through impact change analysis, incident, monitoring, and compliance. “Through integration between OpenText Service Management and OpenText Universal Discovery and CMDB, our service models are dynamically updated when changes are made,” said Mr. Zaher. “For instance, if an application owner decided to double their application cluster to increase capacity and performance, no manual intervention is required, and OpenText Service Management and OpenText Universal Discovery and CMDB will automatically update all relevant information.”
Streamlining request approval and change management processes
When a request requires management approval, OpenText Service Management auto-routes and tracks this process. However, when an assigned approver is on vacation, this process can halt. Through effective integration between OpenText Service Management and the bank’s Oracle® -based ERP solution, the team configured an approval delegation process based on vacation rules held in the ERP solution so that requests continue to move through approval uninterrupted. This process also allowed them to flag VIP users. These are typically high-level executives whose requests don’t necessarily need to follow a standard approval process.
OpenText Service Management also integrates closely with the software development lifecycle tool that Alinma uses. Leveraging the solution’s change management module gives the team full visibility of a change request and its associated analysis, risk assessment, and approval documentation. To add further value to this process, OpenText Service Management can offer insights based on existing change management data, and suggestions for improvements based on best practices.
Over 70 percent of our requests are now automatically routed and assigned through OpenText Service Management. It makes our work more efficient, avoids incorrect assignments and delays in resolution, and allows our service agents to focus on adding value to our users, rather than manually managing processes.
Results
OpenText Service Management delivered tangible time savings through AI-driven automation and seamless integration with existing solutions. Users enjoy faster issue resolution and higher service quality, while improved efficiency and productivity realized cost savings.
Saved 1,500+ man hours per year by automating VPN renewal
The latest ITOM addition for Alinma is OpenText Automation Center to design automated workflows and reduce manual effort. To demonstrate the value of OpenText Automation Center and to support the cost justification, the team piloted a workflow to automate VPN renewal requests. During the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working increased significantly, but because of the sensitive nature of the bank’s business, VPN access was only granted for three months at a time. Unfortunately, there was no system in place to notify users that their VPN renewal was due, and the only way to renew it was to ring the service desk. This caused downtime and a loss of productivity which the team felt could be easily fixed.
The OpenText Automation Center–driven workflow is designed to automate VPN renewal and open an OpenText Service Management request 10 days prior to VPN expiration. The user will be notified of their VPN renewal without any interruption to their service. Based on the pilot’s success, the team estimated that over 1,500 man hours per year will be saved.
Delivered easy implementation with codeless configuration and containerization
OpenText Service Management’s codeless configuration capabilities were a main reason the team was so successful in configuring the solution to their specific requirements and integrating it with the existing ITOM infrastructure. This allows the team to configure tasks and workflows without writing any code. Mr. Zaher commented, “The OpenText Service Management codeless configuration ensured an easy implementation. And with the user-friendly drop-down menu interface, I found I could easily do some OpenText Service Management administration or configuration myself. This, combined with the solution’s container-based platform, means that upgrades are seamless and fast. We’ve upgraded twice and our users experienced no more than an hour maximum downtime which is amazing compared to our previous environment.”
Because OpenText Service Management is based on microservices, it is consistent across environments with a single host optimizing infrastructure costs. This means it is easy to scale when the organization grows and the team can look forward to embracing agile DevOps practices.
Improved user experience and sped issue resolution
To overcome a lack of transparency in its stock status, the Alinma team plans to streamline its stock and asset management through the OpenText Service Management service asset and configuration management module, supported by a 2-way federation between OpenText Service Management and OpenText Universal Discovery and CMDB. Furthermore, it plans to create zero-touch operations by introducing advanced and AI-driven automation to eliminate at least 70 percent of manual IT operations. OpenText Service Management will support this objective with its virtual agent and mobile app to give users more choice and flexibility in how they engage with the service desk agents.
Mr. Zaher concluded, “Leveraging OpenText Service Management, we improved our user experience with self-service capabilities, faster service delivery and incident resolution, and higher service quality. With advanced automation in place, our service agents no longer need to spend time on manual and routine tasks, instead preferring to work on adding value to our user community. We have enhanced our efficiency and productivity, realized substantial cost savings, and can now take truly data-driven business decisions.”
