Central platform for global service management
The agricultural research center CIRAD integrates services from different departments with Matrix42 and ensures greater transparency and faster processing of requests.
About CIRAD
CIRAD (Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement) is the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development. The organization puts its expertise at the service of everyone, from producers to political decision-makers. CIRAD promotes the protection of biodiversity, the agroecological transition, the sustainability of food systems, the sustainable development of rural areas and their resilience to climate change. CIRAD is represented on all continents in around 50 countries and draws on the expertise of its 1,650 employees and a global network of around 200 partners.
The initial situation
CIRAD had a purely IT-centric service portal through which all incidents and service requests were handled. The solution was provided by a managed service provider, so CIRAD had no control over the portal. This had several drawbacks. First, CIRAD did not own the solution and therefore risked losing the product if the managed service provider changed. Second, the portal only covered IT requirements and could not be extended to other business units or departments. In addition, the service catalog was very specific: it was developed by hand and was not integrated with the ITSM tool. Adding new functionality was therefore very complex.
Setup and support from partners
In 2020, in the middle of the COVID 19 pandemic, CIRAD decided to replace its tools. The idea was to be able to offer a unified portal for all the organization‘s services in the future and to try to realign all the services offered as much as possible. CIRAD wanted to create a global and unified service portal. It had to be a responsive application that could be easily connected to other IT components. It also needed a workflow engine that was comprehensive and easy to learn, so that it could develop and translate its own processes from a technical point of view. In addition, the tickets of the different departments should have different authorization structures. The goal was to maintain a level of confidentiality with clearly separated approval cycles and administrator roles.
To meet all these requirements, CIRAD chose the Enterprise Service Management (ESM) solution from Matrix42. The organization then turned to two partners to implement the solution.
Econocom integrated the product and initially managed the implementation of the project. This partner was very important in the initial phase of the project, as it supported the launch of the first version in a difficult environment. Quodagis joined later and helped with its practical experience in adapting the processes. The partner was able to provide answers to very specific questions and contribute its expertise. The solution was implemented in two stages. In the first phase, the tool was set up with a fairly extensive IT service catalog, incident management and support request handling - limited to IT. This was followed by a complete redesign of the graphical user interface to meet the needs of the users.
The third phase has now begun, which will focus on integrating the support services and publishing new applications. CIRAD is also planning to introduce the Matrix42 solution in all other departments. Only the HR department could use its own portal in the future.
Time savings and better traceability
With the Matrix42 CIRAD has been able to reduce the processing time of service requests and accelerate the delivery of new IT services. The organization also benefits from better traceability of requests and incidents. The administrators appreciate the complete configurability of the solution and the native connections between all Matrix42 products. From users' point of view, the new solution provides a standardized portal with complete transparency regarding the current status of their own requests. It also provides easy access to services from all departments.
Today, the solution is used throughout the organization. All 1,650 employees have access to the portal, as do all partners who work with CIRAD but are not employed there. In total, around 3,500 people can log on to the platform.
CIRAD intends to take further steps with the Matrix42 solution in the future. The integration of non-IT services is a high priority. There are also plans to set up a new communication channel, in particular for working with the service desk.
