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Municipality of Mafra logoMunicipality of Mafra

Portuguese municipality improved productivity and cut operational costs with OpenText AI-driven automation and ITIL compliance

Municipality of Mafra logo

About the Municipality of Mafra

Mafra is a city and municipality located in the Lisbon district along Portugal’s western coast. Part of the urban agglomeration of the Greater Lisbon subregion, Mafra employs a workforce of 1,300 municipal employees.
Two people looking at a tablet
  • Population:
    Approximately 80,000 residents
  • City origins:
    Neolithic period
  • Area:
    Approximately 300 km²

Summary

Challenges

  • Basic tool limitations forced manual workarounds.
  • Manually managing core IT processes was difficult and inefficient.
  • Without reporting and analytics capabilities, accountability was limited.

Solution

  • Improved productivity through ITIL compliance and advanced automation.
  • Achieved faster time to value and lower TCO.
  • Promoted team collaboration and communication.

Results

  • Reduced costs and optimized resource allocation
  • Streamlined change management and decreased downtime
  • Enabled ITIL compliance and enhanced decision-making

Challenges

  • The current tool could not classify, categorize, or prioritize requests—forcing cumbersome manual workarounds
  • Manual, fragmented processes made it hard to track interventions, keep accurate records, and maintain centralized oversight
  • Tool limitations made it hard to measure performance, optimize processes, or make data-driven decisions

Half of the municipality’s 1,300 employees are registered in Active Directory and use IT systems and services. In addition, some operational needs are outsourced to several contracted companies. The organization used eDoclink, a document and workflow tool, to manage key IT service processes. While this was effective to centralize documentation and enable ad-hoc workflows, it lacked the critical functions needed for structured service management.

For instance, though it allowed automated request submission, the system could not classify, categorize, or prioritize requests. Internal teams needed to manually sift through submissions to identify those relevant to their area of expertise, delaying resolution times and impacting service quality.

The municipality’s IT Director, Nuno Branco, explained, “We also had to manually manage core IT processes that eDoclink could not support, such as contract management, asset management, and request management. We were doing this through Word and Excel shared documents, and it was very difficult to track interventions and maintain accurate records. This resulted in inefficiencies and a lack of central visibility. We were also aware that aligning our service management with ITIL would really help us to improve operational efficiency and transparency.”

eDoclink offered no reporting or analytics capabilities, which made it difficult to measure performance, optimize processes, or make data-driven decisions. The team was clear that the limitations of the systems and processes in place prevented a scalable and structured approach to service management. The organization’s accountability needed to be improved, and this required an alignment between IT services and the operational goals.

The team looked for a purpose-built solution to automate, standardize, and streamline IT service management processes.

Municipality of Mafra building

Thanks to our effective partnership with Inoweiser, we have reduced our operational costs, improved transparency, optimized our contract and supplier management, and are now able to fully leverage clear data to make strategic decisions for the future.

Nuno Branco
Information Technology, Director Municipality of Mafra

Solution

Introducing OpenText™ Service Management through local partner Inoweiser drastically improved productivity by automating many processes that had previously been manually managed. Process standardization simplified the infrastructure and system maintenance.

Products deployed

Improving productivity through ITIL compliance and advanced automation

Branco wanted to introduce a robust service catalogue within an ITIL-aligned framework. Automating workflows and introducing advanced features such as reporting and dashboards would give the organization the insight necessary for continuous improvement and informed decision-making.

Local partner Inoweiser is dedicated to building a better world through technology, and the Municipality of Mafra turned to them for advice and implementation support. Inoweiser Director Fernando Costa commented, “We introduced our client to OpenText and its OpenText Service Management (SMAX) solution. This is designed to improve productivity with ITIL best-practice templates, advanced reporting capabilities, and easy-to-maintain AI-powered process automation. It empowers users to make requests, get answers, and resolve issues in an intuitive service portal.”

Branco said, “Our own research showed OpenText Service Management to be a top-tier ESM market solution, and we liked OpenText’s vision of continuity for the portfolio. The company demonstrated a strong and ambitious roadmap for the service management solution.”

Achieving faster time to value and lower TCO

The team collaborated closely with Inoweiser experts on the OpenText Service Management implementation, leveraging out-of-the-box capabilities across the whole range of IT services, including service portfolio management, change management, and service request management.

Processes that were previously managed through manual efforts were included in the OpenText Service Management implementation. “We introduced automated processes for time management, knowledge management, vendor and contract management, survey management, software and service asset management, and incident and problem management,” Costa said. “Using the out-of-the-box codeless configurations and native REST APIs for seamless integration with existing systems meant we could achieve a fast time to value and lower total cost of ownership as we didn’t require much customization and so simplified future system maintenance.”

Promoting team collaboration and communication

Users can open requests, get answers, and resolve issues from a personalized self-service portal or mobile app. OpenText Service Management hot-topics analytics and smart search help identify patterns across incidents to quickly spot problem areas for further investigation so that future problems can be preempted and resolution times improved.

By breaking down interdepartmental silos, the implementation of OpenText Service Management fostered collaboration and communication between different departments and teams within the Municipality of Mafra. This promoted a culture of shared service and responsibility.

Results

A user-friendly and comprehensive service portal streamlined IT operations and reduced operational costs while improving request resolution times. The team aims to extend the capabilities to non-IT departments for a fully integrated service delivery.

Achieved cost savings and optimized resource allocation

The organization achieved significant cost savings by enhancing contract management practices and improving response and resolution times. This allowed them to optimize resource allocation and introduce better supplier management practices. The current implementation is focused on IT service management, but plans are afoot to extend this to other non-IT parts of the organization, such as HR, Finance, or Facilities.

Branco said, “Leveraging OpenText Service Management to define a future architecture for integrated service management enables us to make data-driven decisions, leveraging clearly presented metrics insights, and prioritizing investments and initiatives aligned with our smart city strategy.”

Streamlined change management and decreased downtime

The user-friendly OpenText Service Management portal creates full transparency and allows users to track the progress of their requests to promote accountability within the organization. By introducing a comprehensive service catalog and improving response and resolution times for service requests, the team has streamlined operations and reduced operational costs associated with manual or inefficient processes.

The difference is clear to Branco. “Once we leveraged OpenText Service Management to streamline our change management, we could clearly see an increase in the number of successfully implemented changes,” he said. “And thanks to the transparency within the system, we have decreased our system downtime with clear approval checkpoints, right from the change planning stage.”

Introduced ITIL compliance and data-driven decision-making

The new service management framework is fully ITIL-compliant to achieve consistent service delivery across the organization. The Municipality of Mafra looks forward to introducing OpenText Service Management-driven project management, aligned with its quality processes. The latest version of OpenText Service Management, as deployed by the Municipality of Mafra, includes OpenText IT Operations Aviator, a private GenAI chatbot powered by a large language model (LLM). Once fully deployed, this will boost users’ ability to self-service their requests. It leverages the organization’s own domain-specific enterprise knowledge so that answers to user requests are relevant, while proprietary data remains secure.

“The OpenText Service Management implementation was very well received within our organization,” concluded Branco. “Thanks to our effective partnership with Inoweiser, we have reduced our operational costs, improved transparency, optimized our contract and supplier management, and are now able to fully leverage clear data to make strategic decisions for the future.”

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