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SICK ag logoSICK AG

Leading sensor manufacturer improves efficiency and the user experience by applying advanced automation to service requests with OpenText™ Service Management (SMAX)

SICK ag logo

About Sick AG

SICK AG is the leading global manufacturer of sensor technology and sensor solutions for industrial applications. The company provides a portfolio of sensors, systems, and services designed to enhance productivity, improve safety, and drive innovation.

A woman walking through factory holding tablet
  • Employees:
    12,000
  • Revenue per annum:
    €2.3 billion
  • Founded:
    1946

Summary

Challenges

  • Future-proof IT with automation and enhanced global collaboration.
  • Replace an outdated and inefficient service management platform.
  • Balance the service management needs of many diverse departments.

Solution

  • Introduced central enterprise service management portal for thousands of users.
  • Improved user experience and productivity with automation.
  • Streamlined department onboarding with flexible licensing.

Results

  • Processed 14,000 monthly requests, 90% portal-led
  • Improved team collaboration with practice sharing
  • Increased efficiency through automation
  • Created a single source of truth

Challenges

  • Future-proof IT with automation and enhanced global collaboration
  • Replace an outdated and inefficient service management platform
  • Balance the service management needs of many diverse departments

Innovation drives SICK, and a few years ago it found itself at a crossroads. Its existing service management platform was outdated, inefficient, and unable to meet the evolving needs of a 12,000 strong workforce. The lack of automation and an inadequate service portal led to a high volume of manual tasks and a poor user experience. The system was rigid, making it difficult for departments to implement.

SICK’s IT Service Manager Dominik Schopp explained further, “Our service management offering is not just an IT service tool. It also serves many of our non-IT functions, such as People, Facilities Management, Finance, and Logistics. With a large community of non-technical users, it was clear we needed to enhance the user experience, while reducing complexity and costs. Automation was key to this, and we wanted to make sure that a new solution could be rolled out to multiple departments in a cost-effective manner.”

A person holding and viewing a laptop

SMAX gave us the ability to comprehensively track our service usage. By embracing a user-centric approach and staying focused on scalability, SMAX benefits many departments across our organization.

Dominik Schopp
IT Service Manager

Solution

Implementing OpenText™ Service Management (SMAX) fits well with SICK’s cloud strategy and provides licensing flexibility. Automating 25 percent of processes saves a significant amount of manual work every month, reducing response times and enhancing productivity and efficiency.

Products deployed

  • OpenText™ Service Management (SMAX)

    SMAX combines a SaaS service desk, ITSM, ESM software with embedded machine learning, and analytics for advanced IT and enterprise service management

Introducing one central service management portal for thousands of users

The quest for a solution led the team to OpenText Service Management (SMAX), which is designed to focus on user needs by offering an intuitive service portal that is easy to navigate for a seamless experience. Its advanced automation features allow manual tasks to be automated, improving efficiency, and saving costs.

At the start of the SMAX implementation, the SICK team had a clear vision. It aimed to introduce one central service portal offering many self-service opportunities for its users by leveraging out-of-the-box catalogues and service offerings, knowledge articles, outage notification, and process and infrastructure automation. SICK wanted to fully integrate all service-related information so that SMAX became a comprehensive single source of truth. The configuration management database (CMDB) was successfully integrated, and the team introduced the native service asset and configuration management system (SACM) module to discover and gather data within SMAX. SACM ensures that assets and configuration items required to deliver services are properly controlled, and that accurate and reliable information about those assets is available when needed.

Improving user experience and productivity with process automation

SMAX was deployed to address many of SICK’s identified challenges, and automation played a crucial role in the implementation’s success. With 25 percent of requests now fully automated, SICK has eliminated considerable manual work each month. This has dramatically improved response times and reduced the burden on support agents, resulting in faster issue resolution and a much better user experience. Smart contextual search provides incident resolution steps and automation fulfils requests.

The SICK team looks forward to piloting OpenText™ IT Operations Aviator. A private large language model (LLM) with deep knowledge access and information retrieval capabilities will further improve speed, efficiency, and accuracy. This generative AI (GenAI) virtual agent leverages domain-specific enterprise knowledge to simplify work for everyone. SICK’s Dominik Schopp, IT Service Manager commented, “As we move forward, artificial intelligence is becoming the cornerstone of progress. Our focus is clear: empower and transform our business to be able to adapt quickly to the evolving needs of the digital age.”

Streamlining department onboarding with flexible licensing

The SMAX implementation initially focused on IT service management, and was also rolled out to non-IT functions, such as people, facilities management, finance, and logistics. These projects showed the importance of easily

onboarding different departments. Schopp commented, “We focused on the user needs by promoting the central SMAX service portal. We helped teams to automate easy-to-use offerings, specific to their business case. Most teams just thought of SMAX as a ticketing service, but by integrating SMAX with a holistic SACM, we are giving our teams a feature they did not even realize they needed. For example, you can manage a company access card like a computer in the central Asset Management tool.”

He continued, “The SMAX portal provides transparency of software license usage to the end user resulting in clear cost efficiency. For instance, we are seeing departments realize significant cost savings on their software licensing, by automating renewal notifications to users in SMAX, so that only actively used software licenses are renewed. Users receive an instant response with request automation, rather than waiting for manual fulfillment which could take up to a week. This, combined with the optimized processes made SMAX a central and indispensable tool for our diverse departments and users.”

Additionally, SMAX's user-friendly set-up forms allow departments to start small and extend the solution step by step. OpenText’s cloud SMAX model suited the team’s needs, fitting well with its cloud vision and eliminating the need to maintain an on-premises infrastructure or manage version upgrades. The flexible concurrent licensing model also helped get departments up and running without heavy upfront investments.

two people reviewing content on a laptop

Leveraging SMAX capabilities to automate processes and introduce smart ticket routing provided a significant reduction of manual effort. We are excited about the potential for further automation to gain even more efficiencies.

Dominik Schopp
IT Service Manager, SICK AG

Results

SMAX’s effective process automation and smart ticket routing have significantly reduced manual work and wait times, improving response times and overall efficiency. This has led to significantly enhanced team collaboration and increased user satisfaction.

Processed 14,000 monthly requests, 90% of them portal-led

Since SMAX was implemented, the SICK service management team has gone from strength to strength. Schopp commented, “AI is a key topic for us, and the clarity it can give us in data analysis. It’s all about changing our mindset to do things differently and allowing AI to help us do our job more efficiently.”

He continued, “We are pleased with the adoption of the single SMAX service portal by our users, from 12 different SICK departments. Through our effective integration with CMDB and SACM we manage over 110,000 assets and subscriptions in SMAX. In an average month we process more than 14,000 service requests. 90 percent of these are directly entered into the portal, guided by nearly 600 SMAX template-based service and support offerings to help users through a request creation. With over 150,000 views of the published knowledge base articles, many users help themselves without any service agent assistance.”

“Looking ahead to the benefits that AI can bring us, we are embracing a smarter way of working, ensuring efficiency, and charting a course for the future,” said Schopp.

Improved collaboration with best practice sharing

The SICK team recognized the importance of different departments learning from each other in their SMAX journey. The central Service Management team aimed to bring process, content, and automation together and arrange training and coaching sessions to empower departments to create their own content. The SMAX community in SICK enjoys best practice sharing through blogs and community events that inspire colleagues with new ideas and innovation. SMAX provides clear dashboards so that KPIs can be defined and tracked by all contributing departments. This creates transparency and a shared celebration of success.

Gaining efficiency with SMAX process automation

The SMAX implementation significantly improved process efficiency by reducing the need for manual intervention in service requests and operational tasks. Schopp commented, “Already, 25 percent of user requests have been automated with SMAX, relieving service agents of routine and repetitive tasks. This made SMAX a central and indispensable tool for our diverse departments and users.”

Schopp recalled a great example where SMAX process automation was invaluable, “Recently, we changed our authentication solution. Without having SMAX and the automation, I honestly cannot see how it would have been possible to implement this otherwise, as every user’s change would have needed to have been managed manually. This effort would have consumed resources that were needed elsewhere. With SMAX, the transition to our new authentication tool was seamless and fast.”

Meanwhile, as a result of introducing pre-defined routing definitions, 50 percent of all SMAX-driven service requests no longer need tier 1 service desk involvement at all and are instead automatically routed to the relevant department for resolution. This reduces the burden on the tier 1 service desk while improving response and resolution times by approximately 20 percent.

Created a single source of truth

As a result of innovating its service management approach with SMAX, SICK realized a remarkable transformation. Enhancing the user experience was a key priority, achieved by embracing automation and user self-service. Positioning SMAX as the central service portal created a single source of truth leading to reduced manual workloads, improved team collaboration, and efficiency gains across the board.

Schopp commented, “Leveraging SMAX capabilities to automate processes and introduce smart ticket routing significant reduction in manual effort. We are excited about the potential for further automation to gain even more efficiencies, continuing to improve the user experience and increase user satisfaction”

Schopp concluded, “SMAX gave us the ability to comprehensively track our service usage. By embracing a user-centric approach and staying focused on scalability, SMAX benefits many departments across our organization. In a world driven by data, we can see that AI is the key to unlocking meaningful insights. We want to use AI as our guiding force paving the way forward with data-driven strategies and a clear vision for the future. We continue to thrive and gain a competitive edge in today’s ever-evolving digital landscape”.

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