XAL Lighting

XAL Lighting (XAL) is an Austrian-founded company that designs and manufactures high-quality LED lighting systems and custom luminaires for commercial and residential spaces, working with architects and designers for over 35 years.

The team sought to replace its existing Service Management solution with one that was more self-explanatory, easier to work with, and that would work now and in the future.

With 1,100+ employees globally and its own research, production, logistics, distribution, and sales sites in over 40 locations (including 22 international) and a partner network that spans five continents, XAL needed a future-proof and service-oriented IT Service Management (ITSM) tool.

As Norbert Pint, XAL's Head of IT, said, "Our previous tool just didn't suffice." It was, in Norbert's words, implemented in a "quick and dirty" manner and was not self-explanatory. This made it "very hard to work with."

Xurrent partner, Blueponte, helped facilitate the process

Blueponte, an independent service integrator and SIAM expert (and Xurrent partner), worked with Norbert and team to share the key functionalities and strengths of Xurrent. In short order, XAL was convinced Xurrent was the right Service Management platform for them, now and in the future.

As part of its due diligence, they also evaluated ServiceNow and Jira, but these tools didn't cover everything they needed.

Norbert: "In Xurrent, we found a very complete, ITIL-compliant solution — one that is service-oriented and covers all the main parts we need in IT out of the box.

Previously, the company wasn't thinking in terms of services; there was no service philosophy. But IT does offer services, and these should be of high quality. With Xurrent, valuable insights and real-time reports per service help us improve service quality and cost efficiency."

Another issue with the previous solution was the need for constant customization. And, without the necessary in-house expertise, XAL needed an outside vendor to "help with things like setting up a workflow or preparing the services — all costly and time-consuming."

"With Xurrent," shared Norbert, "we received a short training on how to do this, implementing services and service instances and all the necessary basic requirements. We did it together, and it was easy to do it ourselves."

An "absolutely perfect" implementation

Not only did Blueponte help find (and recommend) Xurrent, but the team was also instrumental in the quick implementation.

As Norbert shared, "The implementation of Xurrent was absolutely perfect. It was implemented really fast, three months from signing the contract to go live."

Norbert was also impressed with how well Blueponte managed the project: "With a tight schedule, and they forced us to support them with all they needed, which is why we could start after three months and reach all our goals."

Following the initial go-live, XAL continues to fine-tune the system and processes, implementing more departments and services. They've been able to do a lot on their own, but lean on Blueponte, as necessary.

Lots of Xurrent ❤️: Reporting. Real-time dashboards. Self-service portal.

Norbert's team is loving all of Xurrent.

Not only are close to 80% of XAL employees using the Xurrent Self Service portal, but Norbert reports that the IT team loves the "rate my service" feature so they can measure customer satisfaction and improve services where necessary.

He also commented on how "excellent" Xurrent's reporting and real-time dashboards are: "The dashboards are used intensively; we can now see exactly what the status of a ticket is and how each service performs."

Mini Success Story: The team also created a dashboard for its external first-level partner in Graz, showing them how many tickets they can bill XAL for. They receive that information in an automatically generated dashboard every first of the month, which saves everyone a lot of time. In the previous tool, the team had no reports. It took ages, at least a week, to summarize the data for the monthly billable, for example, and they had to work with Excel sheets.

More Norbert love: "Implementations in Xurrent are easier, quicker, and simpler. I have 24 people on the IT team who are all heavily loaded, and there is no time to allocate 1-2 people to focus solely on the tool. With our previous tool, that was necessary, but with Xurrent, it isn't. We keep track of the weekly development updates ourselves to see if anything is interesting there for us."

5 more reasons Xurrent is the right fit for XAL

Norbert shared even more reasons why he's been thrilled with Xurrent. Specifically …

1. Xurrent listens to customer feedback

In February, we surprised Blueponte by announcing our plans to use the new Xurrent Shop. When we identify potential improvements, we notify Blueponte, who then notifies Xurrent. Sometimes the actual release of the update follows quite soon after.

2. No additional fees

With Xurrent, all necessary functionalities are already included in the license. There is no need to buy "separate, expensive modules for everything."

3. Ability to self-manage

XAL can manage everything on its own, in one tool with one overview. Bonus: "Everyone in the company likes working in Xurrent."

4. High adoption rate

"The adoption is better than expected," said Norbert. "The ease of use for end users as well as admin/specialists really helped. Xurrent is so intuitive and easy to use. You think you would need an instruction manual of some sort, but it all speaks for itself."

5. Cross-department workflows that can be implemented without external help

XAL "uses workflows quite intensively." For example, its onboarding processes include HR in cross-departmental workflows. And all of these workflows (or services, automations, or the processes behind them) can be managed without external specialist support. IT can "do it themselves" — a significant time saver.

5. A great partnership with Blueponte

Nobert proudly shared that his experience working with Xurrent and Blueponte has been "excellent." Specifically, he commented on the stellar communication: "When we have questions, the reaction/ response time from Blueponte is great, as are the solutions they come up with."

The quote that says it all

In Norbert's own words: 

"Most companies search among old-school Service Management solutions, like Ivanti and ServiceNow. In my opinion, Xurrent is the new player on the market that people should be looking at. If you want a future-proof ITIL-based solution and you want to implement it fast, go for Xurrent."

Thank you, Norbert & Team XAL. We can't wait to see what's next.