EMAPTA is an offshore service provider based in the Philippines that partners with clients to provide staffing in the areas of office support, finance, sales, marketing and IT.

As the CTO, Henry Vassall Jones is responsible for IT performance today and for establishing future service delivery goals. Among his objectives for the organization are achieving ISO/IEC 20000 certification which requires the implementation of a service management system. In working towards this, the team tried five solution desk systems within a three year period of time, each of which failed to provide the flexibility that the team needed to add value to the company.

Finding a solution was important for establishing and supporting agent workflows. Said Mr. Vassall Jones, "Our goal was to first implement structured workflows in a seamless way that they would benefit our agents." He sought a solution that would not simply manage tickets, but would also give supervisors the chance to identify knowledge gaps and coach agents through delivering better service.

While some tools offered ticketing, many did not prove scalable. Structured workflows was simply a first step: Mr. Jones wanted a solution that would allow the team to manage more than 10,000 IT assets in a CMDB, automate workflows and integrate with their proprietary time and attendance system as well.

"We'd had a difficult time finding a service management solution that worked for the team, so it was really important to me that we systematically evaluate our options and be able to prove that the selected system would meet the organization's needs today and into the future," said Mr. Vassall Jones.

Towards that end, the team began their due diligence. They selected nine possible systems and evaluated each of these against 70 criterion. Only two options proved possible: These were set up as test systems, and the team ran 45 test cases on each system.

After such a detailed review process, the team was convinced that OTRS would meet their requirements today and would be able to support their vision for the future.

Said Mr. Vassall Jones, "Flexibility is one of our core values at EMAPTA. It's critical that we're able to adapt seamlessly to the needs of our customers. So, we needed a service management solution that would support us in that effort." For example, if a customer requires an SLA that does not match the standard system settings, the team needed to be able to overwrite this on a case-by-case basis.

While OTRS is initially being used as a ticketing system and reporting solution, plans to expand use are already underway. Within the year, the team expects to transition to the OTRS CMDB. Additionally, they intend to integrate their time and accounting system with OTRS so that clients will be able to create tickets directly from the EMAPTA system. The integration will also allow the EMAPTA team to be able to supply clients with detailed reporting about the number of tickets created and SLAs met.