Flying high with Ryanair Central control - 135 locations linked by single system for IT support at Ryanair

CASE STUDY Flying high with Ryanair Central control - 135 locations linked by single system for IT support at Ryanair I would have no problem recommending Background Numara FootPrints. When Ryanair needed a robust yet flexible Service It is extremely simple Management Solution, Numara FootPrints was the only to use, very product in the market to match its requirements. competitively priced Ryanair was established in 1985 by the Ryan family with a and an incredibly share capital of just £1 and staff of 25. Today, the airline has powerful service 4,800 staff, comprising of 25 different nationalities, based in management solution. 23 European locations and its fleet of aircraft carry around 52 million passengers during the course of the year. This makes Ryanair one of Europe’s largest low fare carriers, flying to There was also the need for the company to comply with over 10 destinations in the UK as well as covering a huge strict industry legislation that demanded organisations be area of Europe. accountable for securing their data, IT systems and process integrity. Delivering a fast and reliable service is of utmost importance to the airline’s continued success and this includes ensuring This meant that the airline needed to ensure audit trails and that the needs of employees are met as well as passengers. histories were all recorded correctly. With an increasing Ryanair has 22 IT staff supporting over 1,000 office and number of issues to deal with, Neville knew that he needed to engineering staff and 3,000 pilots and crew across 135 replace the service desk. different locations. This incredibly busy internal support team manages over 500 calls every week. Eric Neville, IT Director for Ryanair responsible for IT purchasing takes up the story: “Numara FootPrints had the same, if not more “Maintaining, upgrading and resourcing the in-house developed functionality as other market leading service system was our biggest challenge. When we started to review management products, but it was much potential new service desk solutions we already had two internal systems which were extremely cumbersome, with easier to set up and implement at a very cost limited usability, flexibility and they lacked visibility into open effective price.” issues. We needed a web based solution which could handle the constant changes within our business quickly and easily and could also scale to accommodate future projects.” Improving response times Ryanair has a strong commitment to service levels, resolving “We needed a web based solution which staff queries and issues with quick response times. Keeping downtime to a minimum is an imperative but this is not an could handle the constant changes within our easy task when dealing with many diverse geographical business quickly and easily and could also locations, multiple languages and cross cultural issues. scale to accommodate future projects.” On a daily basis, the IT team resolves a wide range of issues from system failures to PC/laptop setup, account lockouts, systems setup, printing issues, network link set up, new The devil is in the detail airport and base set ups and Ryanair’s customer facing website. The primary responsibility of the IT team is to Ryanair began the unenviable task of researching the market. oversee the internal systems, as the business understands In a relatively short space of time a long list of suppliers was that any delay in responding to internal queries and problems whittled down to a short list of three potential vendors. Neville could ultimately impact on the customer experience. continues: In October 2006, Ryanair appointed a new IT Director, Eric “We put together a key requirements document stating what we Neville who was tasked with reviewing the current IT support wanted to get out of a service management solution. We then system, as well as ensuring that the company achieved researched which of the tools in the market were able to meet Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) 404 compliance. some or all of these requirements. This quickly narrowed the choice down to three, Numara FootPrints being one of them. Neville found the airlines ‘home grown’ system was extremely Numara FootPrints had an amazing amount of flexibility and stretched and lacked the visibility, escalation and workflow was the only solution that met all our needs.” capabilities that he expected from a service desk. Tel: +49 2204 7398 10 Email: info@numarasoftware.de www.numarasoftware.de Through its technology partner, QMS, Ryanair arranged for a A multi-faceted solution demonstration of Numara FootPrints, which appeared to be the front runner. Even at this early stage, Ryanair found the As a result, the Numara FootPrints system has enabled the product extremely user friendly and was impressed by the Ryanair IT team to increase the visibility of the way in which functionality of product and, in particular, its customisation calls and requests are logged and handled. It has also capabilities. The decision was quickly reached to deploy reduced ‘corridor’ requests, as all open ticket requests now Numara FootPrints. have to be listed and tracked which, as a direct result, has also significantly improved escalation management. Rapid deployment The solution was straightforward and quick to implement. The entire system was up and running within 4 weeks. Representatives from Numara Software and QMS were on-site during setup and this partnership worked extremely well. The key features of Numara FootPrints include streamlined ITIL enablement tools and powerful workflow automation, along with bold usability features and advanced customisation options. Numara FootPrints process realisation functionality also enabled Ryanair to adapt quickly to the changing needs of the business without the costly administration and management overheads found in many other service Photo: Kas van Zonneveld management solutions. In the fast moving airline business, Ryanair craves the flexibility to make changes quickly, without The solution monitors all facilities and purchasing needs, fuss and without incurring expensive consulting fees. manages workflows and tracks all hardware and software. In addition, Numara FootPrints supports all Ryanair’s change management requirements providing a full audit trail so “Numara FootPrints is packaged with pre- that the company continues to comply with government customised templates so it is not only regulations and legislation. Perhaps most importantly it has enabled the airline to track statistics relating to performance, quick and easy to deploy but the ongoing which is delivered in easy to use management dashboard management and maintenance costs are reports. dramatically reduced.