Achmea

Innovating IT service management and functionality with SMAX SaaS

The SMAX implementation follows the ITIL principles to create business value at scale and simplify the work, cost, and use of IT service management with a complete set of AI-based out-of-the-box ITIL best practices for key ITSM functions. The Achmea implementation covered request fulfillment, incident management, problem management, change management, IT asset management, configuration management, knowledge management, and service catalog management. With over 900 active offerings, and more than 1,000 active knowledge articles, user self-service is encouraged and boosts productivity.

With pervasive automation and SMAX’s codeless configuration, Achmea can respond easily to required process, workflow, or task changes. The team is not restricted by high customization, and this was a key requirement for its service management solution. Codeless configuration also means that the integrity of any user defined configuration is never compromised when upgrades occur. Achmea’s IT Service Portal Specialist Sander de Leeuw commented, “With the move to SMAX SaaS, in line with our cloud-first strategy, we no longer have to perform manual upgrades. This allows me to focus on providing innovation and new functionality for our users.”

Automating SMAX service ticket allocation to boost service agent productivity

“We encourage users to make use of self-service as much as possible,” commented de Leeuw. “With over 900 active offerings, users can request services and support. Requests created through an offering are automatically routed to the correct expert group. With more than 500 active functional groups defined within SMAX, automated routing saves much time. Some of our offerings are integrated with our Genesys call center technology. When using these specific offerings, requests that are created are automatically routed to the next available Achmea Service desk agent.”

He continued, “We have also automated user provisioning through SMAX. By integrating it with our LDAP directory, new users are automatically created in SMAX and assigned the correct authorizations, according to their Active Directory profile.”

Introducing effective ITOM solution integration for faster issue resolution

The SMAX virtual agent streamlined service management even further and SMAX machine learning provided automated change risk analysis for more informed decision making. The centralized, single view of the environment simplified the IT landscape and the integration capabilities have drastically reduced the average incident resolution time.

“We created an automated closed-loop incident process through effective integration,” said de Leeuw. “The health of our infrastructure is monitored through OpenText Operations Bridge. Native integration between Operations Bridge and SMAX automatically triggers a ticket creation if monitoring indicates an issue.”

Achmea also leverages OpenText Operations Orchestration (OO) to integrate and orchestrate IT services across its multi-vendor hybrid environment. Examples include automated password reset processes, daily regression testing of SMAX processes, compliance controls, and pipelines.

Managing security incidents effectively through SMAX SecOps functionality

In addition to supporting its IT processes, Achmea has a specific need to manage security incidents. These incidents need to be managed differently to standard IT incidents. They are assigned to specific security experts, require their own workflow, and have a special approval process to drive proper review and due diligence requirements. The team was pleased to discover a SMAX SecOps application package available from the OpenText marketplace. This provides full defined processes for managing security incidents and breach events based on a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compliant application design. Achmea has implemented this without the need for further configuration and the team benefits from SMAX Studio capabilities to finetune business workflows for future requirements.

Within SMAX, organizations can create their own custom applications to fulfill specific business needs. Achmea leveraged this functionality to create a Risk Letter application to manage security vulnerabilities and a Continuity Management application to manage its disaster recovery process.