B+N Referencia Zrt. is a Hungarian facility management service provider that has been offering comprehensive facility management services for over 26 years. It operates in approximately 2,600 locations across Hungary, with more than 6,000 people employed by the company group. B+N also has a research and development team that has produced innovative solutions such as the Robin R3000, its in-house developed cleaning robot, and an RFID chip-based textile monitoring system.

Jira implementation

The company first encountered Jira-based solutions in 2017. At this time, it primarily used Jira to optimize IT operation and development tasks and track partner and service provider contracts. In the same year, they also launched an IT Service Desk service that handles more than 8,000 reports and data stored related to the washing system available for the commercial textiles division. This service also ensures effective management of orders, complaints and change requests. The company also uses Confluence, which integrates with Jira Service Desk.

Challenges

The planning stage was crucial to making the company's internal workflows more transparent, as measuring report types and related processes was a serious challenge. No one had previously set out to understand the path of company employees and implement a transparent set of rules. As a result, the company created seven types of notifications that comprehensively tracked the employee's career path within the company.

Transitioning from paper-based documents to digital was another significant challenge for both HR staff and clients. During the project's implementation, the hardest task was minimizing software expenditure.

The solution

In the end, it was possible to resolve this issue by using a single technical Jira Service Desk agent that performs all report-related tasks without manual intervention. Requests received in the Jira Service Desk portal are processed by automated rules and assigned the appropriate status. In the background, two basic Jira work projects were also created – one for the labor department and one for HR. The tasks received are cloned into related work projects where HR staff can process the requests. Communication related to the tasks can occur via email or on the Service Desk portal. The Jira Service Desk and work project clone tasks are constantly synchronized so that the status and comments for notifications can be tracked.

HR Service Desk implementation

After a long planning process, the new HR system was implemented in November 2019, though it brought numerous logistical and technical challenges. Training took place with division groups of 10 to 20 people, and the entire implementation was completed in four months. Under the previous working method, every business division sent employee notifications to HR according to ad-hoc procedures developed over the years. Jira enabled the company to unite these processes and systematize and structure task management in the fields of HR and work distribution. The system integration improved efficiency, and resulted in a shorter turn-around time, transparent tasks and clear deadlines.

It was essential for the system to ensure data privacy for the staff of the various companies and divisions, while also storing the data in a shared database. The system's implementation also aided HR staff working from home, allowing them to hand over tasks, organize substitutions, and transmit physical documents.

More than 150 people submit reports each day in the system, which processes around 700 reports a month, most of which are related to onboarding and quitting. The data is currently manually recorded in the LOGA HR system, and the data provided in the Jira system is also processed here. The company, however, is planning the development of a Jira LOGA data interface to automatically transfer data to the HR system to reduce the number of errors resulting from manual recording. In addition, the company also uses numerous add-ons in the Jira system. It works with approximately 40 email templates with the help of the META-INF Email This Issue plug-in.

Insight for Jira Service Management - Integration with the corporate system

1. Excel

With B+N Kft., most of the data and tasks were stored in an Excel file: not the ideal solution when it comes to tracking changes and connecting data. With this in mind, the company identified four main goals:

• Create a unified database
• Connect related data
• Develop an ability to track changes
• Integrate with existing systems

Insight makes it possible to retrieve, receive and manage data from Excel. This meant that descriptive data could be mapped through the Insight lens so they could be easily transferred to the database. Tasks and events are transformed into easy-to-manage Jira projects, with the visualizations provided by Insight. By the same reasoning, a workbook corresponds to a Jira project, an Excel worksheet to a task type, and the rows in Excel to Jira tasks. In addition, a wide range of data can be imported and records can be easily created, even without programming experience.

2. SAP

Insight also helps manage the asset inventory, which contains the company's IT and communication tools and employee data. The system is an integral part of the Jira Service Desk and, synchronized with the SAP system, enables assets to be charged to different projects and cost centers. The system synchronizes project codes, cost center codes and organization codes on a daily basis. However, one challenge came from the fact several of B+N's branches have their own SAP systems, which use the same codes. Because the same code can be found in several company databases, Insight takes into account the company name and other data in addition to the code for identification purposes.

3. HR Service Desk

HR Service Desk uses the Insight system as an intermediate database, which means it isn't necessary to search for data directly in the LOGA payroll system, which would present a data privacy risk. The system also complies with GDPR, as the names and IDs are stored separately.

4. Vehicle fleet register

The company created two independent vehicle fleet registers. Data on B+N passenger cars were recorded on one register, while related events, such as the expiry of a repair or a technical inspection, were recorded on the other. The entire descriptive database was migrated to Insight to facilitate the search, and a Jira project was created to handle it. Therefore, The Insight system acts as an asset inventory and provides a simple and efficient way to manage asset management tasks.

The textile company has already built up its vehicle fleet register based on this experience. A separate Insight database has been created for each site and the descriptive data for each vehicle has been separated. In Insight, administrators at each site have access only to the information relevant to their area, while managers have access to the entire database. The system is also linked to MOL's refueling database, so the company regularly receives vehicle refueling information. This means it receives not only up-to-date information on vehicle mileage, but events, invoices, and technical deadlines for repairs are also all stored here.

What's next?

The company wants to continue Jira implementation for its business divisions and back office teams. In addition, implementing a Jira Service Desk solution is planned for the textile business, which will also provide customer service, displaying data generated in the textile washing system and providing customer lists. Developing a task management system for the facility management division is also underway.

Source: Customer Story – Service management in the Atlassian environment | META-INF Virtual Atlassian Day - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RCuECnA95Q