Enterprise Service Management, Automation Bring Efficiency & Consistency to Casino Arizona and Talking Stick Resort
CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT
Enterprise Service Management (ESM), a holistic approach that extends the idea of IT Service Management (ITSM) to other parts of an organization, can streamline workflows and facilitate collaboration between departments—leading to a better experience and resulting in a “win-win” for employees and customers alike.
Casino Arizona and Talking Stick Resort have doubled down on this approach to service by improving their ESM capabilities with the help of TeamDynamix, a cloud-based ESM platform.
Independently owned and operated by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Scottsdale, Arizona, these casino and resort properties employ about 3,500 people altogether. For more than a decade, they’ve benefited from having a “one-stop” service portal that employees could use to request everything from housekeeping services to clean a room before a special event, to the purchase and provisioning of new technology or a security badge for a visiting vendor.
“We looked at a number of systems. In TeamDynamix, we found the one that was most user-friendly.”
However, the legacy ESM solution these properties were using had serious limitations. For instance, there wasn’t a way for employees to log into the system remotely from a smartphone or other mobile device to track or make service requests on the go. What’s more, making changes to the system’s configuration involved expensive updates to the software’s code.
Limitations with Legacy System Leads to Search for Modern ESM Tool
“With our legacy system, as you added different service categories, you couldn’t retire others,” said IT Support Manager Jonathan Vorndran. “We just kept growing our list of different service categories, because the application wasn’t dynamic enough to be able to retire old services. We had one subcategory in our IT ticketing system that had over 300 options. As you can imagine, that was very daunting for our users.”
Unfortunately, what users would do is choose the closest service category they saw that resembled what they needed, because they didn’t want to scroll through all 300 options. This not only resulted in delays in connecting employees to the services they needed, but it also compromised the integrity of service data.
“From a reporting standpoint,” Vorndran said, “we were getting dirty data. If we were trying to figure out how many tickets we were getting for a particular piece of hardware or software, we weren’t getting accurate figures.”
As Program Manager Adam Dunn notes, “Our legacy platform didn’t have the flexibility to grow along with us as our needs evolved.”
Wanted: More ESM Flexibility, Better Usability
In looking for a new ESM platform, Casino Arizona and Talking Stick Resort wanted the ability to configure the system easily and make changes flexibly and dynamically. “We looked at a number of systems,” Dunn says. “In TeamDynamix, we found the one that was most user-friendly.”
With its “low-code, no-code” design, TeamDynamix is highly configurable, allowing organizations to create personalized service categories (both simple and complex) and build customized workflows for managing multistep processes.
In addition, the platform’s enterprise Integration and automation capabilities allow IT staff to create customized integrations between TeamDynamix and other software programs using a simple, drag-and-drop flow builder. As a result, TeamDynamix customers can build workflows for automating almost any service function to fit their needs.
Finally, because TeamDynamix is easy to use and configure, it lends itself nicely to ESM and can be easily adopted by departments outside of IT.
Benefits of TeamDynamix
Phase one of the properties’ implementation of TeamDynamix has involved the IT and AV departments. Phase two includes housekeeping and security.
In housekeeping, for example, one of the areas the tool will be used to help with is resource capacity planning around events.
“We have an event space where we host a variety of different things,” Dunn said. “We’ll be using the tool to get out in front of these and schedule housekeeping for room cleanings before and after these events. All of these housekeeping requests can be scheduled and managed through a ticket. This allows our housekeeping department to see what events are upcoming that they need to plan for and staff appropriately. And if we have a performer coming into our nightclubs, a lot of times housekeeping is tasked with clearing space, so they can see when those requests come in and make sure the right resources are available.”
Although they’ve only recently switched to TeamDynamix, Dunn said the team has seen many benefits from using the new system. These include:
A more convenient experience for users and technicians
The ability for users to submit work or service requests directly from their phone, wherever they might be, “creates a lot of value for our customers and for us,” Vorndran says. “It gives us so much more leeway in how we approach customer interactions.”
Faster approvals through automated workflows
Casino Arizona has set up workflows within TeamDynamix that automatically request a manager’s approval when needed. For example, if someone needs temporary access to a physical location or a software application they wouldn’t normally have access to, they can request this access through the service portal, and it triggers the appropriate approvals.
“Being able to see requests in real-time and resend notifications as needed has been a huge asset to our department.”
With the casino’s legacy ESM platform, requests for approvals would sometimes sit in managers’ email inboxes for days. But with TeamDynamix, users can easily track the status of requests from the convenience of their phone and resend a request as needed. The system also can be configured to resend a request automatically after a certain amount of time has passed without a response.
“Being able to see requests in real-time and resend notifications as needed has been a huge asset to our department,” Vorndran said. “It helps move the approval process along faster.”
“I would say we averaged four or five days to obtain proper approvals with our previous system,” Dunn adds. “Now, we’re looking at one or two days. We’re talking about a 70-percent decrease. If you need access to an application, waiting four days for all the approvals to take place and get you into the system keeps you from being able to do your job. Getting that down to just a day or two has been critical for us.”
“It has helped us be able to report accurately.”
More accurate reporting
Having the ability to change and configure service categories on the fly “has been quite a blessing for us,” Vorndran says. “It has helped us be able to report accurately.”
With more accurate data on the volume of requests for various service categories, casino and resort managers can see where their employees’ efforts are being spent, identify key trends and staff appropriately.
“Being able to say, ‘We spent this amount of time servicing our customers in this area,’ helps us justify our headcount,” Dunn says. “I need those metrics to be able to show what’s really hitting the desk of our service technicians and make the case for additional resources.”
Better cross-departmental collaboration
Many processes and workflows involve multiple departments. For instance, provisioning new employees involves coordination between security and IT. Using a single ESM platform facilitates this cross-departmental collaboration. It ensures there’s a seamless handoff from one division to another while eliminating the need for employees to interact with multiple ticketing systems to request services that touch more than one department.
With TeamDynamix, Casino Arizona and Talking Stick Resort have found a modern enterprise service management platform that’s powerful, yet highly customizable and simple to use—one that will grow along with their organization. The system empowers staff to do their jobs more effectively, ultimately resulting in a better experience for the properties’ guests.