About Dentsu Aegis Network

Part of Dentsu Inc., Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) is made up of ten global network brands – Carat, Dentsu, Dentsu X, iProspect, Isobar, mcgarrybowen, Merkle, MKTG, Posterscope and Vizeum and supported by its specialist/multi-market brands.
DAN is Innovating the Way Brands Are Built for its clients through its best-in-class expertise and capabilities in media, digital and creative communications services.
Offering a distinctive and innovative range of products and services, DAN is headquartered in London and operates in 145 countries worldwide with more than 42,000 dedicated specialists.

The Challenge

Moving a service desk in-house

DAN’s existing IT service desk was reliant on a third-party organisation who were not contractually incentivised to provide a modern, reliable service. The outsourced model was operating at SLA’s (Service Level Agreement) of 80% – 90% and rarely fluctuated.
Although the out-sourcers offered a consistent service, there was room for improvement.
The third-party supplier did not show the capability to effectively support the company’s accelerated growth plans. Therefore, DAN decided to bring the service desk in-house. This would:

• Give better oversight of their
• Accelerate the ability to take on and manage new, digitally enabled services.
• Reinvigorate their employees’ experience, thereby facilitating innovation, passion and growth.

So, how do DAN bring a service desk in-house, serving 60 countries, 13 languages, 24/7, without any major reductions in service levels?

Before the service desk could be brought in-house, it was imperative that DAN understood the current processes and identified areas for improvements.
Establishing the correct operating model for the new organisation in terms of capability, tooling and process and the correct order for bringing services and capabilities back in-house was a priority.
However, this model would have to take account of several challenges and considerations.

• The most important challenge of all and the one which everybody wants to achieve is how to improve user experience.

To do this, DAN knew they must understand the end user, ask for honest feedback on how they should operate and align their operations accordingly.
They aimed to create an environment that supported user eccentricity, users who have more involvement, greater choices of service and control over the IT service they received.

• In a global network, location of the service desk is paramount.

The location must be cost efficient, supportive of the multilingual nature of the business and attractive to top service desk talent. Therefore, the location must be central and diverse.

• To be cost-effective and serve ambitious objectives, DAN needed to be sure they could attract and retain top service desk talent.

To meet DAN’s values, the new service desk agents would have to be agile, pioneering, collaborative, responsible and ambitious. The recruitment process would need to be designed to test for technical prowess and cultural fit.
To retain this top talent, leadership would need to build strong and trusting relationships with the new agents from the beginning. Together they would be creating something completely new and leadership would need to foster a culture of continuous improvement.

• Not only would the system need to be brought in-house, but also upgraded and flexible enough to accommodate rapid growth.

Many internal processes were outdated, manual and time consuming: prime opportunities for automation. For instance, the nature of the business requires a high volume of contractors, yet the manual ‘joiners and leavers’ process took roughly three hours to complete for each contractor.
The business also regularly grows through mergers & acquisitions. Integrating these new employees to DAN systems would also increase the volumes of calls into the service desk. A growth strategy would need to
be clearly outlined to support the inevitable increase in demand for the IT service desks.
The location must be cost efficient, supportive of the multilingual nature of the business and attractive to top service desk talent. Therefore, the location must be central and diverse.

• DAN would now begin to take control of their own data once the service desk was in house, therefore, would require a data strategy that utilised the incoming information.

DAN would need to break the data down into two facets of the service desks operations; day to day and long term. This would allow a holistic view of how to implement agile and strategic changes to the processes that supported the implementation and growth of the two service desks, their agents and Dentsu Aegis Network’s IT service operations.

The Vision

Standard – Simple – Automated

Innovative Client Solutions

• DAN wanted their technology activities more outwardly focused. Their priority was to continue the data strategy and push harder in developing innovative data products.

Effective Global Platforms

• DAN needed to operate internally to enable transformation of working practices to deliver better outcomes for clients and improve overall efficiency.

Flexible, Secure Operations

• Address the way DAN manages underlying infrastructure and how DAN keeps the organisation safe from increasing cyber risks.

Equipped Workforce

• DAN knows mobile and agile working is a fact of life. Their employees expect seamless, frictionless, technology that matches the best of their consumer experiences outside of work.

Global Tech Alliance

• This is about maximising the revenue opportunity for DAN by partnering with leading technology organisations. Together, everyone benefits by helping new or existing brands to use leading technology.

High Performance Team

• We’re continuously looking to develop the technology team globally and build on the operating model to help employees achieve their goals and DAN’s ambitious strategy.

The Solution

 Build a Global Service Support Function – Project Hive

Implement a new cloud based technology service desk with 100+ agents to a multinational organisation, servicing IT in 60 countries and to 13 unique languages in two different locations.

Before delivering a project of this size and disruption, it was crucial that the new Digital Operations Centre (DOC), it’s values and operations, aligned with DAN’s current values and operating model. In doing so, DAN would benefit from an efficient crossover period, from outsourcer model, to a ready to go in-house service desk.

The values applied to the DOC, as a best fit to DAN:

Agile – highly responsive to customer needs, with users able to access support and services when and where they like and via any device.

Pioneering – establish a global centre of excellence, setting standards as the flagship operations hub within DAN.

Ambitious – recruit and nurture exceptional talent and make best use of tooling, minimising risk to our operations and cultivating a forward thinking strategy.

Responsible – everything we do is driven by the user experience

Collaborative – establish new, collaborative, cross-functional working models, standardising the way we design and deliver services.

• Build a Global Service Support Function that underpins DAN in line with the regional hub operating model.
• Build a Global Service Support Function that supports and delivers exceptional service through industry standards.
• Build a Global Service Support Academy that empowers and supports development resulting in motivated and skilled colleagues.
• Innovate to enhance our customers experience, productivity and agility.
• Build a Global Service Support function that is simple, standard and automated.

A Robust Cloud Platform

The Genesys Cloud platform is the next-generation, all-in-one cloud contact center solution that helps you manage and understand omni-channel interactions in a seamless customer journey.
Managing interactions across voice, email and web chat on one platform:

• Reporting and Analytics    
• Global Call Routing
• Integration to ServiceNow

Why Genesys Cloud?

Resilient. Automatic failure recovery, micro services design, AWS geographic fault tolerance.
Leader. Innovative, easy to deploy, leader in global contact centre technology.
Continuous Improvement. No downtime for upgrades, continuous features – fast.
Simple. A single, purpose built, expandable cloud platform.
Scale. Scales up and down with business demands.
Agile. Agile Development & Delivery.
Open. API & Delivery.

A Follow The Sun operating Model

Operating globally, on a 24/7 basis, comes with its challenges! To overcome them, DAN decided the best option would be to implement a follow-the-sun operating model. This would allow for agents to be available at any time of the day, for all the languages and all the time zones.
DAN elected for sites in Manchester and Kuala Lumpur. Following the sun, When Kuala Lumpur is approaching their end of the day, Manchester would have already begun theirs.
One Service. Manchester and Kuala Lumpur are connected to allow them to operate as one highly efficient and effective Global Digital Operations Centre.
Survivability. Allows one site to act as both if the other’s connectivity is lost.
Quality. Genesys Cloud, providing high quality voice capability and in conjunction; skill, language and time of day routing capability.

An acrinax Transformation

acrinax’s role as System Integrator was to deal with some of the key technical and transformational challenges.

Technology and Integrations

A new DOC required new technologies and services. 49 new incountry numbers servicing 117 countries, intercontinental SIP lines, Service Now for service management, Genesys Cloud for customer interaction, OKTA for SSO, and Microsoft Teams for unified communications. Plus reporting and analytics. acrinax’s role was to define and manage the integrations, ensuring each site worked in unison but also had independent survivability.

Transition

As two new sites, with new staff, new technology and new processes were going live within a few days of each other, the transition from the old service to the new service had to be seamless. acrinax designed a transformation plan which started with a simple transition to the new service.

Project Delivery

Our professional services team worked closely with the DAN project team across Manchester and Kuala Lumpur to deliver the transformation model.
Regular weekly meetings, bi-weekly status reports and daily stand ups when it needed tracked progress against a detailed SOW and project plan. Strong project governance, the formation of strong working relationships, and a culture of openness and honesty in relation to potential risks and issues was key to a successful delivery.

A Specialist Technology Partner

acrinax are a specialist contact centre and service desk technology provider, we design, build, implement and support contact centres for some of the most driven and customer focused businesses in the UK. We help drive value from the current investment in technology, improve customer service and create engaging places for agents to work.