Modern and future-proof helpdesk at Krifa
An outdated on-premise helpdesk system and new demands for flexibility and cloud operations created the need for a more modern and scalable solution
Krifa’s journey towards a future-proof support platform
Krifa is a multidisciplinary trade union and unemployment insurance fund with headquarters in Aarhus and 12 branches around the country, three legal centers and a contact center. The organization has approximately 650 employees who serve around 185,000 members on a daily basis.
Krifa’s previous helpdesk system ran on Windows servers, which would be unsupported within half a year.
Therefore, they needed a new solution that was also less heavy and more flexible to work with.
A future-proof and scalable platform
Jira was identified as the best alternative because it is a future-proof helpdesk platform that can be rolled out to the entire organization
With Jira Service Management, Krifa will save time when creating cases, as forms will be better integrated and support staff will receive more qualified inquiries that they can solve more easily
The results
Better data quality: Optimized forms provide more accurate inquiries and faster resolution time.
Strategic Cloud solution: Helpdesk has moved to the cloud as part of the IT strategy.
Scalable standard: A flexible standard system that can easily be expanded with new features.
Increased self-help: Users can do more for themselves, freeing up support time.
Stronger collaboration: Easier knowledge sharing and integration with tools like Teams and DevOps.
Development areas
In the search for a new system, Krifa wanted the following criteria met:
- The system had to support ITIL Incident Management processes
- Need for a cloud-based and more flexible solution
- One standard system that should be able to handle the same types, or more, of the functionalities they have had until now
- Easy administration and continuous expansion options
- Intelligent categorization of support cases via AI
- Integration with Microsoft 365, including Teams and DevOps
Implementation
To meet Krifa’s needs, Aety assisted with the implementation of Jira Service Management as the new helpdesk system. Krifa was already familiar with the Atlassian platform, which made the transition easier.
Jira Service Management was established as a single point of entry for internal inquiries, supported by Confluence as a knowledge base for IT guides and self-help.
The goal was to reduce the number of support cases by 20% by 2024 through better structure and increased self-service
The solution gave Krifa the opportunity to:
Integrate Jira Service Management with Teams
With Jira’s integration options, support agents from Jira can quickly create Teams calls and chats with relevant parties. In addition, support agents can convert personal Teams chat messages into cases in Jira.
This helps to create an overview of the total number of inquiries. With the integration, you can also, in Teams, assign a Jira ticket to yourself and write a comment on the case, which will be synchronized in Jira.
This avoids having to leave Teams to switch to Jira. The synchronization between the two programs is beneficial for Krifa, as they use Teams on a daily basis, and therefore they will save significant time having to switch between the different programs.
The integration between Teams and Jira has been set up at Krifa, but is not yet in use. This is also one of the exciting tasks waiting to happen at Krifa.
Building forms in Jira Service Management
In Krifa’s previous system, it was not possible to build forms with custom fields. This meant that Krifa, in the old system, was limited in their forms.
In some forms, they therefore had to embed a Word document for users to fill in. However, this did not work as intended and was too cumbersome for users to use.
In the long term, Krifa will therefore also benefit from the forms in Jira, which employees can maintain themselves and use to make different types of requests.
Move IT guidance to Confluence
With Jira comes the knowledge base, Confluence. Krifa has moved all their IT guides to Confluence so that the articles can now be made searchable for users. The fact that Krifa can now present their IT guides to users when creating a support case means that users now have the opportunity to correct errors themselves before contacting support. This should result in users becoming more self-reliant and support becoming more efficient.
After the implementation of the new system, Krifa now has a more user-friendly system than before. The system has generally been received very positively by the agents and Krifa employees.
After a running-in phase, only minor adjustments have been needed. These have been reviewed continuously over status meetings.
Easy scaling
In the future, Krifa also wants to implement Jira in their HR department, where the department will handle their tasks. Krifa has the opportunity to set up the system themselves, and we will act as a sparring partner along the way.
How to proceed
The implementation was launched at the end of August 2023 and completed over a period of five weeks, after which Krifa went live on October 2, 2023.
The approach was adapted to Krifa’s wishes and needs, which resulted in the following three core principles:
01
Minimal Viable Product
An MVP (Minimal Viable Product) approach was agreed, where the initial focus was to transfer the existing setup and form structure to Jira Service Management. Already after 1.5-2 weeks, employees gained access to the system and could begin testing, after which the solution was continuously adjusted in close dialog between Krifa’s project group and Aetys consultants
02
Development of internal onboarding materials
As part of the implementation, Aety created online video guides for both end users and support agents. These were supplemented with online meetings to clarify questions. Krifa’s project team consisted of representatives from the different helpdesk areas, who acted as super users.
03
Competence development
After going live, Krifa has also invested in Jira training courses to be able to make adjustments and further develop the solution. In the future, there are also plans to use Jira in the HR department with Aety as a sparring partner.
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