LEGO

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

assyst makes Service Management child’s

play for LEGO
Global toy manufacturer now has control of IT assets and
non-IT service offerings.
Lego
The name LEGO is an abbreviation of two Danish words the scalable needs of the business and did not provide
www.lego.com - “leg” and “godt”, meaning “play well”. The LEGO the required visibility of assets. Through implementing
Group, founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen, a consolidated CMDB, LEGO also planned to reduce
Country: Denmark
was passed from father to son and is now owned by asset support costs and improve financial planning.
Industry: Manufacturing
Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, a grandchild of the founder.
Key Statistics It has grown from a small carpenter’s workshop to a Strategy – Create central nervous
modern, global enterprise that is now the world’s 5th
system for IT and consolidate all global
ƒƒLEGO group had total revenue of largest manufacturer of toys and largest manufacturer
DKK 9,526 mio (EUR) 1 of construction toys. processes into a single system
ƒƒLEGO group has group workforce
“To avoid favoring one of the existing systems, we
of close to 5,000 people 2 The Challenge – automate processes kick-started a project to choose one system that would
ƒƒ60,000 incidents per year in order to streamline operational best serve all of our requirements”. Lene continues,
ƒƒ5,500 changes per year efficiency “We needed to consolidate the four systems without
ƒƒ16,000 assets losing the benefits each of them offered. The solution
ƒƒ5,000 end-users LEGO was one of the first organizations in Denmark had to be flexible enough to be maintained without
1
1 DKK = 0.134 EUR to implement a Help Desk solution in 2002. Prior to increasing the IT headcount, and at the same time be
2
data for 2008
assyst, there were four systems in use to automate aligned with ITIL in order to offer effective control of
Key Challenge different processes for: all the processes.”
ƒƒChanges in development
ƒƒCombine four separate applications Creating a global Service Desk was seen as the
into one system to reduce TCO ƒƒChanges in IT infrastructure necessary means to provide the rapidly growing
ƒƒCreate a consolidated Service Desk business with a pro-active service. This involved
ƒƒAsset Management
for pro-active service provision creating a single, central point of contact between the
worldwide ƒƒThe general Help Desks. end-users and IT department to achieve a consolidated
ƒƒIncrease visibility of assets, reduce view across Incident, Problem, Change, Asset and
In 2004, a strategic decision was made to combine the
asset support costs and improve Configuration Management processes.
4 systems into one application, and ITIL was seen as an
financial planning
ideal framework to do this effectively.
After extensive research of various vendors, assyst
Key Strategy
Lene Dueholm, Director of Project & Administration by Axios Systems was chosen as the most flexible and
ƒƒImplement a flexible, ITIL aligned Support at LEGO, who initiated the project and configurable platform with the lowest TCO.
solution without increasing IT introduced ITIL to the organization in order to streamline
headcount that would offer a
transparent view across all ITIL
operational efficiency and service availability, 5000
commented: en
processes
d
ƒƒImplement a federated CMDB to “We wanted to consolidate these 4 applications us
Maintenance costs & TCO

control assets and improve costs into one to reduce our maintenance costs and Total
er

Key Benefits / Results Cost of Ownership (TCO). Integration between the 4

sw
t
en

systems was already costing us too much time and,

cid
In

o rld

ƒƒA single, consolidated Service Desk with the business rapidly growing internationally, it
created to serve all corporate offices was becoming increasingly difficult to import data
globally from one system to another. Besides, we wanted
wid e

lem
ƒƒCMDB provides comprehensive to enforce ITIL processes, and thereby common Prob
visibility of more than 16,000 IT procedures, throughout the company”.
assets
ƒƒImproved license portfolio Another challenge was to consolidate the multiple Chan
ge
management and financial planning Help Desks, located in Denmark, Mexico, USA,
ƒƒSAP team equipped with an Czech Republic, Hungary and the UK, which
effective tool to manage changes offered support locally, into one single Service
Desk in order to ensure an improved and more assyst &
As

ƒƒLocal Service Desk implemented for

se

transparent overview of all incidents.

t

Facilities and HR Global ITIL

Service Desk
CMDB replaces
ƒƒFour different systems gathered into 4 systems
one single application, providing Additionally, in order to further develop their
Asset Management, a comprehensive, federated reducing TCO
improved transparency on a global
level CMDB had to be put in place as the in-house CMDB
08 10 CS lego EN v1.0
that integrated with the LEGO Help Desk did not meet
www.axiossystems.com
 LEGO
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY
In addition, LEGO has the opportunity to reduce to the relevant department. All
Benefits – Consolidated global Service costs through more efficient use of technology and maintenance activities carried out are
Desk with transparent view of over resources. logged against the request, enabling
16,000 assets the Facilities team to track the progress
and run reports on all activities related
Application — LEGO also uses assyst to a specific request or building.
Consolidated Service Desk
to manage changes within their SAP
One of the main aims of this implementation was for application. The HR Service Desks that serve LEGO
LEGO to create a single global Service Desk to serve employees globally are located in
5,000 end-users in their corporate offices worldwide. “With assyst, we can provide our business Denmark and the US. Any questions
Currently LEGO has offices in 34 countries, all of which customer, in this case the SAP team, with stability that an employee might have, from
are served by 6 local first line support centers. Local and required availability levels of the SAP allowances to holidays and company
support specialists register the calls in the same system application. All changes to our SAP solution are cars, can now be logged through
and have access to a single knowledge base. There handled by assyst,” explains Lene Dueholm, “We the self-service portal or over the
are 2 Global Support Centers, located in the US and manage the full lifecycle of changes from request, phone. The questions are routed to
Denmark, which handle calls from territories where through to approval, implementation and review. the corresponding department and
LEGO has no local support, and are also responsible This has provided us with better visibility and control answered by the local HR team. The
for escalations and major changes. Second and third over changes and has reduced the timescales for employees are then able to track
line support is managed by the team in Denmark. implementing changes.” feedback and current status of their
requests. All of this is managed within
As a result of this consolidation, incident resolution Multi-level workflows have been developed in the assyst system.
times have been reduced significantly, and the first assyst to manage the change process, providing
line resolution rate has increased. By using Axios’ LEGO with a proactive, automated and integrated Providing Improved Transparency Lene
assystNET self-service portal, LEGO gave its business approach to minimize business risks. They also Dueholm continues, “The aim of our
users the ability to log their own incidents and track the enable better assessment of costs for proposed project was to consolidate 4 different
progress of their resolution, thus reducing the workload changes before they are incurred. systems into one single application, in
of the Service Desk. The web interface is available to order to gain more control and have
users in their local language. By offering a single point Applying ITIL Principles to Facilities Management a clearer view of all IT processes. For
of contact, LEGO simplified the interactions between the and HR Lene Dueholm continues, us, it is extremely beneficial to have
end-users with the IT department, which in turn improved Incident, Asset, Configuration and
communication, business productivity and overall “We have also implemented Service Desks for Change Management consolidated
customer satisfaction. Facilities Management and HR, using exactly the into one tool – it saves a lot of time
same assyst application as IT. Now Facilities are and money.
For the IT staff, the consolidation reduced the equipped with a system which helps them manage
number of routine calls they received, thus the building maintenance.” Another important benefit we have
providing them with a more varied and achieved is transparency. Having
interesting work environment, and Local Service Desks for the Facilities functions in one single system in place provides
creating further opportunities for Denmark, Mexico, US, Hungary and the Czech us with an overview of our IT
career development. Team work and Republic all use assyst, which has been configured infrastructure and environment. We
communication have improved and to manage maintenance requests. The requests are now all speak the same language
staff retention has increased, which for registered in the system and assigned and feel that we have chosen the
LEGO has resulted in a higher Return On Investment right solution to achieve all of these
(ROI) for staff training. goals”,
Lene
Asset Management concludes.

Implementing a comprehensive CMDB provided LEGO

with excellent visibility of more than 16,000 IT assets
and all software licenses globally. In order to keep the
database up-to-date, auto-discovery is run twice a day
and the information is imported into the assyst CMDB
through the CMDB gateway. This provides LEGO with
accurate information on all IT assets, which has led to
significant cost savings through improved equipment Local First line support centers employ
utilization and license portfolio management. localized versions of assystNET to
enable users to log their own incidents.
The assyst CMDB is also widely used by the
Finance department for financial planning and
managing costs. All costs relating to Configuration Items Axios in Manufacturing
(CIs) are registered in the assyst CMDB – including
Axios Systems has been providing ITSM solutions to the manufacturing industry for more
the employees’ mobile phone bills, which are logged
than 20 years. Our focus on helping companies deliver top-line value by managing
manually in the system against the corresponding effective operations, optimizing efficiency and driving business transformation has been well
telephone. As a result, Finance has a comprehensive demonstrated in the manufacturing sector with customers including Sonae Industria, Nucor
overview of all equipment-related costs, providing Steel, Clinphone and Leaf International.
them with a solid foundation to forecast future costs. www.axiossystems.com