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Cascais City Council logoMunicipality of Cascais

Cascais uses SaaS service management to advance smart city goals, driving efficiency across departments

Cascais City Council logo

About the Municipality of Cascais

Cascais, one of Portugal’s largest municipalities in the greater Lisbon region, is committed to enhancing urban quality of life. Guided by a smart city strategy, the city fosters sustainable development and public sector innovation.
Two business professionals smiling and looking at a smartphone outdoors in a city square.
  • Population served:
    215,000 inhabitants
  • Location:
    Greater Lisbon, Portugal
  • City origins:
    12th century

Summary

Challenges

  • Replace an outdated tool nearing end of life.
  • Scale to meet evolving service needs across departments.
  • Improve visibility into service metrics for continuous improvement.

Solution

  • Streamline services with ITIL best practices.
  • Adopt SaaS for seamless upgrades and new features.
  • Empower users with self-service for efficiency.

Results

  •  Streamlined supplier management to control costs.
  • Improved service experiences with 30% faster resolution.
  • Unified service management across departments.

Challenge

  • Outdated service management tool lacked scalability and modern functionality, hindering operational efficiency.
  • Fragmented service processes across departments led to inconsistent user experiences and limited transparency.
  • Absence of centralized reporting and performance tracking made data-driven decision-making difficult.

Municipality of Cascais serves more than 215,000 residents and employs nearly 3,000 people across multiple departments. To advance its bold smart-city, cloud-first strategy, the Council identified the need to modernize its service management capabilities.

“Our old tool was about to be discontinued,” said Nuno Brito Palma, information technology director at Municipality of Cascais at the time of the project. “It couldn’t keep up with our evolving requirements, and we saw an opportunity to make a meaningful change. We wanted to streamline our processes and enable true self-service for our employees.”

That shift also required better visibility into service performance. “To improve operational efficiency and transparency, we needed to measure response and resolution times and focus on continuous improvement,” Palma said.

To address these challenges, the Municipality partnered with Inoweiser, a leading technology services provider in Portugal. Inoweiser recommended OpenText™ Service Management as the ideal solution to support Cascais’ vision for enterprise service management.

“We were impressed by OpenText’s strong and ambitious roadmap,” said Palma. “Choosing SaaS aligns with our cloud-first, smart-city strategy and ensures we stay version-current to gain immediate access to new features as soon as they’re released.”

Coastal town with colorful buildings, a small harbor, and boats on calm blue water.

Choosing SaaS aligns with our cloud-first, smart-city strategy and ensures we stay version-current to gain immediate access to new features as soon as they’re released.

Nuno Brito Palma
Information Technology Director (at the time of the project), Municipality of Cascais

Solution

OpenText Service Management on SaaS was successfully deployed within four months, streamlining both IT and non-IT services through transparent, standardized processes.

Product Deployed

  • OpenText Service Management

    Switch to smarter, simpler IT service management software for better service experiences, faster service delivery, and lower TCO

Rapid implementation: Four-month rollout powered by ITIL best practices

Cascais began the transformation process by automating service management across key domains—starting with education and urban planning, then expanding to communication and social services.

Inoweiser partnered closely with Cascais’ IT department to define the implementation steps, beginning with the development of the service catalog, offerings, SLAs, approvals, and integrations. The collaboration also focused on improving existing processes and equipping the Council with the autonomy to scale OpenText Service Management independently, supported by comprehensive training and documentation.

The rollout began with service request management and is now expanding to include change management and additional processes such as contract management, knowledge management, incident management, and problem management.

“We supported the Municipality’s IT team with the implementation of a self-service-driven service catalog,” said Fernando Costa, Director at Inoweiser. “Out-of-the-box processes helped us align with the ITIL framework and ensure consistency across service management. We were able to deploy in just four months without heavy customization.”

Hands typing on a laptop at a sunlit desk with a small plant nearby.

Our enterprise service management implementation is now a showcase for other councils, demonstrating what’s possible when silos are removed and a culture of shared services is fostered through strategic use of technology.

Nuno Brito Palma
Information Technology Director (at the time of the project), Municipality of Cascais

Results

Cascais improved user experiences by standardizing and unifying service management across departments.

Streamlined supplier management to control costs

One of the Municipality’s key priorities was to strengthen supplier contract management. By streamlining procurement processes with OpenText Service Management, procurement became a driver of efficiency—delivering better supplier terms, full control over renewals and costs, and measurable savings. “We can now negotiate stronger supplier terms, avoid redundant renewals, and prevent excess costs,” said Palma. “Suppliers benefit from faster responses, and we can allocate resources more effectively.”

Improved service experiences with 30% faster resolution

With service management automation in place, Cascais now tracks, reviews, and approves requests more efficiently, resulting in a 30% improvement in resolution times. The city currently manages approximately 1,200 service requests per month.

Building on this operational efficiency, the Municipality leverages comprehensive reports and dashboards to maintain visibility into service activity. These tools enable real-time monitoring and prioritization of requests to enhance overall service delivery and support data-driven decision-making.

Unified service management across departments

Cascais standardized service management processes across departments, leveraging automation to support a wide range of functions—from urban planning and internal communications to school maintenance requests.

“Partnering with Inoweiser played a key role in the success we achieved with OpenText Service Management,” concluded Palma. “Our enterprise service management implementation is now a showcase for other councils, demonstrating what’s possible when silos are removed and a culture of shared services is fostered through strategic use of technology.”

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