• Northrop Grumman

Meeting the Needs of Demanding Customers

 

Outsourced maintenance of computers is a highly competitive business where million dollar contracts are won and lost on the ability of a maintenance company to save their customers a few cents a month on the cost of maintaining a PC. To succeed in this environment, you must have business processes and computer systems that enable you to offer the highest customer service levels for the lowest possible cost to highly demanding customers.

 

One of the companies offering outsourced maintenance services is a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, Grumman Systems Support Corporation (GSSC). GSSC is a national information technology services company, providing systems solutions and support services to commercial, institutional and government clients. Through its established staff of IT service professionals, GSSC offers an integrated suite of service and contract options tailored to meet individual customer needs.

 

Faced with the need to offer a major customer accurate and up-to-date information about the status of repair work orders, GSSC's management investigated how they could link their customers help-desk systems to their own field service management system. They were looking for a solution that had a number of key characteristics:

 

- No change to existing systems - as the help-desks were owned by the customers, GSSC needed a solution that would link to these systems without making any changes to them.

- Minimal operational disruption - the system had to be implemented without disrupting the day-to-day operations of the help-desks and impacting service levels.

- Rapid implementation - the system had to be implemented quickly as GSSC was looking to develop a competitive advantage over other outsourced maintenance vendors.

 

Solving the Problem

 

In its search for a solution, GSSC turned to Mobile Agent Technology, Inc (MAT), and its advanced software technologies. MAT's proposed solution to GSSC was based on connectAgent, a revolutionary software product. connectAgent uses Java mobile agent technology to integrate applications over the Internet in a simple, secure and robust manner. Using connectAgent, legacy, packaged and Web-based applications can be seamlessly integrated across platforms and enterprises, delivering business-to-business application integration such as that required by GSSC.

 

Delivering Real Benefits Through Automation

 

After careful analysis of GSSC's needs, MAT's team pro-posed, developed and implemented a solution that linked GSSC's field service management system with the help-desk system of one of GSSC's major customers.

 

This solution gave GSSC and its customer the following benefits:

 

- Faster, more accurate, information about the status of repair work orders.

- Ability to easily administer information across dissimilar service management systems.

- More efficient business processes that free employees to focus on customer service rather than administrative issues.

 

 

[ Help for your Help Desk ]

 

Mitch Portnoy, Director of Customer Services at Grumman Systems Support and the owner of the connectAgent project within GSSC, says: "connectAgent's capabilities allowed us to integrate key aspects of our service management system with our customer's system, and that helps us remain competitive in the field service game."

 

GSSC is now looking for other ways to apply connectAgent technology within its business operations. GSSC's plan is to enable itself and its customers to benefit from increased integration of their business systems.

 

 

Summary

 

connectAgent enabled GSSC to develop a seamless, automated process for sharing repair work order information between enterprises, resulting in better service for its customer.