efcom is a provider of premium factoring software and has a passion for detail and innovation.

For sensitive and success-critical business areas such as Support, Consulting, HR and Office Management, stable service management software, individually adapted by experts, is often of immense importance.

Prior to OTRS Group's involvement with efcom, the factoring software provider used the six-year-old open source ((OTRS)) Community Edition. This now-obsolete version neither offered the new features that the significantly improved OTRS 7 has, nor did it meet the individual needs of the customer, nor was it professionally supported.

On top of this, hosting and maintenance generated running costs, and system updates were only sporadic or done upon request.

In some cases, third-party providers were involved with the system which made processes even more complicated and time-consuming.

These circumstances made it difficult for the efcom teams to guarantee consistently high quality customer service.

100% customer satisfaction is the standard that efcom sets for itself in terms of service. In order to achieve this and to be able to guarantee it in the long term, the company was constantly looking for ways to optimize and improve its support and consulting services.

For this reason, efcom gmbh decided to convert its ticketing system directly to OTRS and to work directly with the manufacturer of the service management software. Since they had already been using the ((OTRS)) Community Edition, the advantages of a ticketing system quickly became apparent. Communication was more structured and transparent, and the system has become absolutely audit-proof. "Every process is recorded and automatically documented. What is there is there and can no longer be deleted," remarks Florian Hinse, graduate business economist and assistant to the management.

With the upgrade to the fully managed OTRS 7, service goals could now be taken to a new level.

In addition to the support provided by OTRS Group's experts before and during the implementation, the latest OTRS version offers a completely new user experience – both for efcom's agents and for the company's customers. Immediate ticket classifications, targeted assignments to support staff or the automation of internal processes allow for optimal use of resources and enable particularly efficient processing with short response times.

Even supposedly small options, such as the insertion of screenshots or search options, simplify workflows and ultimately result in improved customer service.

OTRS is software that grows with the company. Flexibility, modularity and adaptability are among its strengths. This is why OTRS is the right choice when looking for a future-oriented solution.

During the evaluation workshop with the OTRS consultant, future adaptations were discussed and planned. As a result, efcom is about to make changes to the OTRS structure in the near future, which should once again optimize their processes even further. The aim is to achieve a significantly leaner structure, away from the multitude of queues, towards a greater use of the services. In plain language, this means a reduction to two queues divided according to products, within which requests are then assigned to the respective areas of support, consulting, etc. with the help of so-called service attributes.

This further optimization will result in a significantly leaner and clearer OTRS version, which will also benefit the end user, i.e. the efcom customer in the external interface, and will bring increased usability. This will also be supported by a knowledge database, which will be built up after streamlining the structure.