SOHNER

Packing Efficiency and Customization into a Digital Transformation Journey

With SysAid, Söhner’s IT team automated processes, standardized self-service, centralized asset management, and is sharing knowledge across the company. 

About Söhner

Söhner Innovative Packaging Solutions (Söhner) is one of Europe’s leading suppliers of returnable industrial packaging for internal and external transport. Specializing in plastic thermoforming technology for over 50 years, the company’s portfolio is widely diversified and includes both off-the-shelf and customized products for the largest firms in the automotive sector (such as BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes Benz), various military branches, and other major industries. 

Söhner has offices in Poland, Spain, France, and Italy, as well as partner companies in North America and Scandinavia. The company’s corporate headquarters and production site are in Schwaigern, BadenWürttemberg, Germany.

Some Numbers to Consider

Very manual, very limited 

Söhner’s central IT department in Germany provides hardware and software support for all company departments, from the factory floor to the global sales offices. The department is thoroughly integrated into the corporate culture and is heavily involved in any meetings touching on anything IT-related. 

Despite the recognition of its importance to the company, the IT department was carrying out its responsibilities without a system for incident and request tracking. End users from various departments were emailing or calling the office with their issues, while the IT support staff were responding using the same channels – with no systematic record at all. 

For asset management, the IT department was dependent on manually updated Excel files. It was impossible to see all the company’s assets in one place. There was also no efficient, easy-to-manage way to track all the licenses for software in use by Söhner.  

Anything else related to service management was taken care of opportunistically, creating a homegrown patchwork of very manual, very narrow solutions.

The choice of experience When Maximilian Haag came on board as Systems Administrator for Söhner, he identified right away where a well-designed ITSM system could make a significant difference in terms of efficiency, systematization, reporting, and more. He was very familiar with service management technology, and SysAid in particular, from his work at previous companies. Haag therefore proposed implementing SysAid at Söhner. 

After initial testing, the management team, end users, and the IT department were all pleased with the results. As Haag said, “We knew we could do a lot with SysAid for an appropriate price.” 

Söhner implemented SysAid for management of incidents, requests, assets, and projects, as well as for its knowledge base to help end users get answers for common IT issues. 

Customization, automation, and centralization

Employees at the Söhner offices, factory, warehouse, and distribution center turn to the IT department to handle standard PC and mobile problems (e.g., printing errors, screens or apps that don’t work, etc.), as well as issues with specialized machinery and manufacturing equipment. The latter are considered high priority for Söhner, so IT personnel leveraged SysAid’s automation features to customize tickets and workflows that more specifically address those priorityone issues.

Taking ticketing and self-service to the next level

The SysAid self-service portal makes it easy for end users to request services, find information, and register and resolve issues, often without the need for intervention by the service desk agent. When the IT team’s services are needed, for more complex issue resolution or other tasks, the portal helps ensure the support provided is more efficient and precise. 

To make the self-service portal even more powerful and convenient, Söhner enabled the unique SysAid F11 keyboard hotkey. When an end user hits the F11 key, whatever is on their screen is captured in a screenshot or video recording, the self-service portal is automatically opened, and a ticket is prepared with the image or video already attached. This vital additional information speeds up resolution of the issue, avoiding ping-pong digging for information by the service desk agent. 

SysAid’s service desk automation capabilities for issue escalation are helping Söhner meet its service level performance standards, by ensuring end user problems or requests are addressed quickly and thoroughly. If a normal priority ticket is not addressed within 24 hours, for example, it is automatically escalated to high priority to ensure SLAs are met. 

Streamlined workflows, seamless asset management 

Having asset management natively built in to the service desk makes it possible to get a comprehensive view of which assets Söhner has and what their status is at any time. The IT team added customizable fields for tracking all the software licenses (registration and renewal dates, etc.), as well as seamlessly linking assets to tickets. As a result, it is now possible to know which assets and which users have been the source of a lot of tickets, indicating possible performance weak points.

With the workflow engine, IT built new workflows for requests relating to new hires, terminating users, and new software and hardware (the latter getting especially frequent use). The workflows established in SysAid streamline processes that involve multiple departments, speeding up service and issue resolution times. For example, when a request is made to create a user in the CRM used by Söhner, then the IT department and HR each get a notification automatically, so they can update data as needed in their respective fields. 

Learning, measuring and improving within the IT department

The project management module is being primarily used for managing internal IT projects, such as migration of an exchange server, upgrading the CRM system, and the like. The ITSM solution presents all the steps necessary and the activities performed in an organized fashion, and documents the process. This tracking capability has helped the IT staff be more efficient in managing internal IT projects, especially since managers can always see realtime progress through the module without having to get personal updates from IT staff. 

Söhner’s IT team is also using SysAid’s reporting tools to measure their own performance. The reports provide insight as to whether IT support is being as efficient as it can be and leveraging relevant SysAid features. The team customized the grouping of tickets by department, as well, letting each department know how many tickets they submitted each month and the time it took to resolve them. 

Finally, Söhner is finding the SysAid knowledge base to be an important addition to the IT department. It is being used regularly to enrich and engage end users and IT administrators alike.

Future plans

Söhner’s business is rapidly expanding internationally and this is expected to continue in the near term. In this context, the company is likely to expand the IT department as well. 

At the same time, the IT department intends to do much more to promote the use of the self-service portal for ticket submission and the knowledge base, as well as to familiarize employees with the workflows designed thus far. For example, opening tickets will be gamified, with rewards to users who make the best use of the self-service portal. IT administrators will also be adding the automated self-service password reset feature to their self-service portal, as well as implementing ITIL change and problem management practices. 

In the more distant future, Söhner will look to embrace enterprise service management, as other departments across the organization (e.g. HR) start to deploy SysAid to handle their own workflows more efficiently.