CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY ATU safeguards sales and service quality with CA Infrastructure Management solutions CLIENT PROFILE Industry: Automotive Company: ATU Employees: 12,000 Revenues: 1.16 billion BUSINESS Auto-Teile-Unger (ATU) is Germany s largest provider of automotive services, delivering high quality servicing and repairs to consumers and fleet management companies across six European countries. CHALLENGE To safeguard its competitive position, ATU was keen to improve the speed and quality of service to customers, while controlling costs and optimising its existing IT infrastructure and resources. SOLUTION ATU deployed CA Infrastructure Management solutions to enhance network and application availability. The company has accelerated fault resolution and improved availability of core systems. BENEFIT High levels of system availability enable ATU s employees to safeguard sales and quality of service. Insight into performance and business impact also allows the company to effectively prioritise IT resources and increase efficiency. agility made possible
Business Quality car servicing and repairs Auto-Teile-Unger (ATU) is Germany s largest provider of automotive services, delivering high quality servicing and repairs to consumers and fleet management companies. Founded in 1985, the company today operates 650 branches in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland. The company has approximately 12,000 employees and achieved revenues of 1.16 billion in 2012/2013. ATU operates specialised branch stores selling spare parts for nearly all makes of car. A wide range of automotive accessories and OEM (original equipment manufacturer) quality parts are held in stock at every one of its locations and the company also operates an online shop. The company s repair and servicing workshops are equipped with the latest technology and provide a comprehensive range of services and repairs at competitive pricing. ATU ensures high standards of car servicing through regular staff training at its professional development centre, the ATU Academy. Environmental awareness is an integral part of the company s business strategy. With a capacity of 14 million tires a year, ATU operates Europe s largest tire recycling facility. Other materials from the company s German branches are also disposed of at recycling centres in Weiden and Werl. Challenge Safeguarding quality and cost-effective service ATU focuses heavily on customer satisfaction and providing value for money services as a way of keeping ahead of the competition. With thousands of customers visiting its sales centres and workshops each year, it is essential that the company s technology is highly available in order to support front-line staff. In particular, efficient and timely access to the company catalogue is critical. Containing more than 140,000 SKUs (stock-keeping units) for all makes of car, it is the backbone of ATU s sales and service operations. Inability to access the application can mean lost sales or delays in obtaining parts for servicing or repairs, which would have a negative effect on customer satisfaction and the company s reputation for quality. In addition, in order to maintain its ability to deliver high quality at competitive prices, ATU must ensure that operational costs are minimised. This means achieving high levels of staff productivity, both for customer-facing employees and those in supporting roles such as IT. ATU was using an array of different tools to monitor systems and applications and as a result did not have a central, end-to-end view of the performance of its IT infrastructure. This was hampering efforts by the service desk to correctly diagnose and fix problems, leading to longer resolution times and resource-intensive support processes. 02
Klaus Vogl, CIO at ATU explains, Supporting our infrastructure involves vendors and hosting partners as well as our own IT staff. Lack of integration between the different monitoring tools made correct diagnosis difficult and problems were often passed in circles from one party to another. This caused confusion and delayed fix times. Lack of integration between the different monitoring tools made correct diagnosis difficult. Klaus Vogl CIO, ATU In order to maintain high levels of service and productivity, ATU needed an infrastructure management solution that would help it keep IT systems highly available as well as ensure that its IT resources and processes were optimised. Solution End-to-end visibility for faster fault resolution ATU researched the market to select a solution to meet its needs. Several criteria needed to be fulfilled, as Vogl explains, We sought a solution that could provide end-to-end monitoring of the entire infrastructure and that could provide a service-oriented view. We wanted to diagnose and fix problems more quickly but also ensure that support was prioritised. Following a rigorous selection process, ATU shortlisted and subsequently selected a number of solutions from CA Technologies as they not only met all the selection criteria but also enabled ATU to view and manage its entire infrastructure via a single interface. The solutions implemented include: CA Service Operations Insight CA Spectrum 03
CA e-health CA NetQoS Reporter Analyzer. Project managed by CA Technologies, the implementation was completed within nine months, and included the training of ATU staff on the tools. Using the CA solutions, ATU now has a single, centralised view of its entire network infrastructure across 650 branches, including 650 routers and all network components, with additional devices to be added in future. The breadth and depth of information available enables the company to identify and resolve problems much faster. Whereas previously it could take several hours to diagnose and resolve faults on the network, they can now be resolved in much less time with the CA Technologies solutions, comments Vogl. In addition, CA NetQoS Reporter Analyzer provides insight into ATU s business-critical retail application with response time analysis and data around the performance of Cisco networking devices. CA ehealth enables us ensure that our IT systems are performing optimally. Klaus Vogl CIO, ATU Optimised processes and resources As well as providing faster and more effective fault resolution, ATU has also been able to improve efficiency and productivity within IT. With CA ehealth, the company is benefitting from greater insight into its infrastructure. The solution distills data from disparate sources networks, systems, databases and applications to provide clear, actionable information. For example, ATU was able to analyse bandwidth consumption and system utilisation in planning a recent software update. CA ehealth enables us ensure that our IT systems are not only performing optimally, but are also being best utilised, which helps us to better manage and plan IT infrastructure upgrades and investments, says Vogl. The integration and interoperability of the CA Technologies solutions further increase efficiency by enabling support staff to easily manipulate and manage one or more of the different tools as and when required. 04
Benefit Safeguarding quality and value for money By deploying the suite of CA Technologies solutions, ATU is now able to more quickly resolve problems and improve the performance and availability of its core infrastructure. It has also been able to adopt more efficient support processes and ensure that resources are optimised. Vogl says, Thanks to the CA Technologies solutions, we now have the processes and level of visibility that enable us to be much more efficient. These increased levels of performance and efficiency have enabled ATU to: Increase productivity of front-line and back-office staff Free up IT resources to focus on continuous improvement Contain operational costs while providing better service. We now have the processes and level of visibility that enable us to be much more efficient. Klaus Vogl CIO, ATU As a result, the company is able to maintain speed and quality of service to customers and so safeguard the company s sales and reputation. CA Technologies solutions help us to deliver the levels of performance and availability that are needed to maintain our quality of service at competitive costs, comments Vogl. 05
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