SSP Group

Xurrent Serves Up Enterprise Service Management for SSP Group

“SSP Group needed a solution that could deliver its services structure at speed across the world to our regional operational hubs. Out-of-the-box, Xurrent delivers the standard service management processes you would expect (Incident, Problem, Change and Service Level Management) but its capability to integrate all of SSP Group’s internal and external service providers has radically improved supplier collaboration.”

Nick Earp, Head of Global IT Operations

About SSP Group

SSP Group is a leading operator of food and beverage concessions in travel locations, operating restaurants, bars, cafés, food courts, lounges and convenience stores in airports, train stations, motorway service stations and other leisure locations. With over 50 years of experience, today SSP Group has more than 39,000 employees, serving approximately one and a half million customers every day. SSP Group has business at approximately 180 airports and 300 rail stations and operate more than 2,800 units in 35 countries around the world.

SSP Group operates an extensive portfolio of more than 550 international, national, and local brands. Among these are local heroes such as Brioche Doree in Paris, LEON in London, and Hung’s Delicacies in Hong Kong. The range also includes proprietary brands created for the travel sector including Upper Crust, Cabin Bar and Ritazza, as well as international names such as M&S, Burger King, Starbucks, Jamie’s Deli and YO! Sushi. SSP Group also create stunning bespoke concepts such as Five Borough Food Hall in JFK, New York and Norgesglasset Bar in Oslo Airport.

Multi-Workspace to Multi-Tenanted Service Management

SSP Group was using a traditional solution for some of its service management needs, predominantly in support of UK Operations. The organization originally implemented a system because it could create a dedicated workspace for specific support groups that could improve service management at a functional level, such as SSP Group Authorizations. However, it did not provide a universal and connected structure to support collaboration and supplier management across regions, all third-party providers and business service areas. SSP Group needed a multi-tenanted solution with Service Integration and Management (SIAM) as standard.

Before selecting Xurrent, SSP Group considered upgrading but performance from an on-premises solution could never match a SaaS service. SSP Group also thought about including leading vendors, such as ServiceNow, in a tender process but none could fully satisfy the three tenets required. These were:

• Collaboration – to seamlessly work with, and manage, multiple internal and external suppliers without losing sight of SLAs
• Knowledge – to continuously compile, author and present knowledge in a service management solution, to speed self-service adoption and reduce first-line support burden and email volumes
• Transparency – to track and openly report on service success and operational satisfaction and provide meaningful management information to service owners and business stakeholders.

Xurrent partner, Revo Xurrent Services, implemented Xurrent for the SSP Group UK Operations desk in 2016 at London Euston, which demonstrated that the solution had the capability to manage a service supply.

“The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of Xurrent has been very acceptable to SSP Group. The value of the product was a big driver, speed of implementation compared to many other products a real bonus. Important to SSP Group is the Agile way of working that has allowed SSP Group is to globalize service management.”Nick EarpHead of Global IT Operations, SSP Group

Nick Earp

Head of Global IT Operations, SSP Group

“The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of Xurrent has been very acceptable to SSP Group. The value of the product was a big driver, speed of implementation compared to many other products a real bonus. Important to SSP Group is the Agile way of working that has allowed SSP Group is to globalize service management.”

Implementation

As Xurrent is a cloud-based service that is optimized for IT service management out-of-the-box, SSP Group did not have to go through a long period of on-site consulting services to achieve the first implementation.

SSP Group started by implementing a pilot Xurrent project with TFS, SSP Group’s partner in India that operates nearly 200 food and beverage outlets in major travel hubs. The pilot demonstrated how well the Production and QA instances interoperated, moving customizations and adapted workflows into the live system. The Group also witnessed the ease with which upgrades were applied to their instance without any additional consulting or time-consuming system administration. This first tranche, involving 50 users, took just 20 days to implement and go live, quickly demonstrated the usability of the system.

Nick Earp, SSP Group Head of Global IT Operations, says: “I believe Xurrent is a solution that is quick to deploy, but to have Revo implementing meant that nothing got lost in translation and no project timelines became extended to our surprise or cost!”

Integrate to Collaborate

SSP Group uses specialist Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in business-critical areas, such as Database Support, Networking, SAP and In-Unit Maintenance.

Multiple integration services were deployed to fully automate integrations with SSP Group suppliers and ensure that third-party service provider adoption was rapid and seamless. This allows Xurrent to connect the Trust Accounts, so request data and processes can be containerized, and tickets can flow between providers so they can collaborate without compromising the SLA with the business or employee, even if another service management solution is used by a provider.

Knowledge to Serve

Xurrent’s partner Revo ran workshops with SSP Group to establish the Service Catalog and, by integrating Xurrent with OneLogIn, it was able to match and assign Active Directory users to its services. This enabled the creation of the services structure against which knowledge could be attributed and this became a significant factor in successful end-user adoption. When SSP Group went live, Self-Service adoption was at 40% in the UK, and has been maintained at this level – across the Nordic & Spanish regions the self-service adoption is now even higher. This compares with current industry estimates of 21%.

Xurrent is a knowledge-centered solution and uses machine learning to continuously refine the presentation of articles based on service entitlement. It now delivers a highly personalized service to SSP Group employees. SSP Group staff can rate the usefulness of every knowledge article to improve its relevance within a service, and to help drive self-resolution.

Solution

• Xurrent integrates SSP Group suppliers to ensure third-party service provider adoption is rapid and seamless. Xurrent connects the Trust Accounts, so request data and processes and tickets flow between providers. SSP Group and its suppliers collaborate without compromising the SLA with the business or employee
• Xurrent uses machine learning to continuously refine the presentation of knowledge articles based on service entitlement. It now delivers a highly personalized service to SSP Group employees
• Xurrent reports ensure SSP Group can see the real-time status, from measuring supplier performance through to request trends and emerging issues and, above all, employee and customer satisfaction

Results – Transparency in Information

Transparency of management information has given SSP Group the ability to reduce First Line Support while also reviewing supplier performance and value provided from their MSPs.

Industry experts, such as Gartner, suggest the average cost of a support analyst handling a request is $15. Thanks to SSP Group’s high level of self-service adoption, the organization has seen this channel become fully optimized. As Nick says, SSP Group’s aim is to “get the volumes down and remove email as a support channel”. SSP Group has increased its ability to respond quickly to incidents, and automation in Xurrent assigns requests direct to the right support team rather than the 1st line.

The Xurrent reports ensure SSP Group can see real-time transparent status of everything, from measuring supplier performance through to request trends and emerging issues and, above all, employee and customer satisfaction.

Furthermore Xurrent has allowed greater collaboration between SSP Group IT and Data Teams around the world. Xurrent provides full transparency to the user and has greatly improved 1st line fix rate, which has allowed the whole of IT Operations to transition more support into the core functions and reduce the overall time to fix for the end user.

The Benefits Go Beyond IT and the UK

By 2019, Xurrent was fully live and used by nearly 200 specialists across internal support functions such as IT and Operations supporting over 5000 users across retail operations and the concessions run by SSP Group.

Nick says: “SSP Group needed a solution that could deliver its services structure at speed across the world to our regional operational hubs. Out-of-the-box, Xurrent delivers the standard service management processes you would expect (Incident, Problem, Change and Service Level Management) but its capability to integrate all of SSP Group’s internal and external service providers has radically improved supplier collaboration.”

Martijn Adams, General Manager of Xurrent, says: “Had Revo not started to transition SSP Group to Xurrent, they would not have the connected service supply chain it now has. Xurrent has delivered truly global service collaboration for SSP Group.”

SSP Group is also looking at implementing Xurrent in other areas of the business, including Marketing Services. It is also looking at a change and authorization process for non-service procedures.

Moving forward SSP Group have deployed the solution to the Nordic, Spain, France and Belgium regions as well as working with the business to see if they can incorporate Supply Chain, Purchasing, HR & Payroll functions into the single tool. This is a big piece in making sure end-users have a single support destination for any query.