Tatarstan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/20/2021 -- KOMOS GROUP LLC is one of the largest agricultural holdings in Russia with a full-scale production and sales cycle. It unites food-producing businesses. The portfolio of KOMOS GROUP includes Selo Zelenoe, Molochnaya Rechka, Dalnyaya Usadba, Toptyzhka, Kungurskiy Meat Processing Plant, Villa Romana and other brands.

The territory of the Company's presence covers the Republic of Udmurtia, Republic of Tatarstan, Republic of Bashkortostan and Perm Krai.

13.5 thousand employees of KOMOS GROUP ensure the smooth operation of the entire production chain.

PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGIES
System: Axapta 2009 based on Microsoft Dynamics and its integrations
ITSM: Omnitracker

KEY CHALLENGES
The ERP system was unstable, and the Customer began looking for Axapta experts to optimise it and implement the process approach.

The maintenance of the Customer's ERP system was carried out by several internal support specialists; however, the procedures and areas of responsibility were not clear. One employee could be responsible for the support, integration, administration and optimisation of the System, in connection with which the handling of tickets could take a long time, and the speed of solving problems was critical due to the specifics of the Customer's business. Moreover, the overall monitoring of the System was complicated, since there was no tool that would allow tracking current problems and progress on completed tasks.

The System had a large number of workarounds and temporary solutions, which negatively affected the search for causes that led to failures, since the System became unwieldy. Restarting Axapta services or the entire server was often required.

The customer required expertise and a process approach to implement a well-oiled approach to Axapta support, taking into account the criticality of the speed of solving problems.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
- Fast and efficient solution of tasks related to the operation of Axapta
- Optimisation of the System by improving the functionality based on the business requirements of the Customer
- Proposing ideas to speed up and improve service efficiency
- Rejection of ineffective and temporary solutions that were used previously

OUR IMPLEMENTED SOLUTION
Axapta is supported around the clock by a team divided into three lines:

1. Service Desk as a single point of contact.
2. Axapta support engineers resolving incidents and processing service requests.
3. Analysts and developers who are Axapta experts and optimise the System.

We implement the best practices for creating and using a knowledge base, which allows us to speed up the solution of typical requests significantly and also constantly offer ideas and solutions to speed up the operation and improve the efficiency of the service. The project uses a process approach to the preparation and implementation of changes in the System.

The team maintains the transparency of all processes and regularly informs the Customer about the state of the service, current tasks, solutions and ideas. We remain open to suggestions, take into account the needs of the Customer, strive to make our interaction convenient, comfortable and effective both for end users and for the business as a whole.

ACHIEVED RESULTS
To date, over 300 incidents and service requests have been resolved. Even taking into account the large share of atypical incidents due to the specifics of the System and a large number of integrations, the project team manages to improve the quality of the service provided: at the stage of transferring the service, the number of requests resolved on time was 75%, and after switching to the regular provision of services, this indicator increased to 98.6%.

As of today, sessions are regularly held to transfer knowledge both within teams and with the involvement of the Customer; more than 50 articles for the knowledge base were prepared and submitted to the Customer.

In addition, more than 25 functional improvements were implemented to increase the efficiency of the System. The number of emergency restarts of services and servers has decreased by more than 60% since the start of the project.

After the implementation of the functional improvements, the stability of the System increased without workarounds and temporary solutions. Incidents, which were numerous in the early days, are now minimised. We were able to apply our experience in servicing Axapta and implement a process approach to supporting the System. Today, we continue to work on improving the service, applying our best practices and developing new and more effective solutions.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/20/2021 -- One of the most important factors in ensuring corporate information security is the level of digital literacy among the staff. The importance of this factor became especially salient in 2020. As the Covid pandemic spread, most companies had to transition to remote working within a very short timeframe and today, some employees have been working remotely or in a hybrid mode for two years. Because of this, a number of information security attacks shifted their focus towards such staff members. And while ordinary mistakes and negligence had often led to information security breaches in the past, there is a lot more at stake now, so proactive steps are called for. Consequently, improving the information security literacy of staff is fast becoming a priority for ensuring data security. Furthermore, staff who are well-versed in information security are bound to be more likely to identify risks and incidents, optimise processes both within the company and on the customer's end, which, in turn, will help pre-empt information security threats.

ICL Services has customers both in Russia and abroad and we pay a great deal of attention to boosting digital hygiene among our staff. Since March 2020, more than 80% of our staff have been working remotely or in a hybrid format, so it is especially important that they should know and understand general and specific requirements for the processing, storage and transmission of information as well as the specific information security requirements of some of our customers and partners. Immediately after being hired, all new employees are introduced to the corporate requirements for information security. All new hires who choose to work remotely, as well as existing staff members who decide to start working remotely, undergo an information security risks assessment during which their remote workstation is analysed for information security risks and an action plan is developed for what the employee should do in unforeseen circumstances.

All ICL Services staff, regardless of their position, experience or the format in which they work, must abide by the following rules:

1) notify the company of any phishing messages or information security incidents as quickly as possible;

2) ensure information security in accordance with applicable laws and regulations;

3) get access to confidential information and corporate equipment strictly on a need-to-know/need-to-use basis;

5) notify customers of any business continuity incidents in a timely manner;

6) irrevocably destroy any confidential documents if such documents need to be disposed of;

7) refrain from repairing corporate equipment on their own;

8) in the event of the theft/loss of hardware that contains confidential information, an employee must immediately contact the appropriate services;

9) in order to prevent any leak of information stored on desktops or on physical media sitting on open surfaces in the office or elsewhere, all employees are to follow an empty desk/empty screen policy.

ICL Services has introduced a policy of holding corporate events during which it is explained to every team member that it is vital and necessary to abide by the information security requirements designed to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of data. Such information security seminars look at specific information security incidents that happened at the company or highly publicised information security breaches that happened somewhere else (for example the script for Star Wars Episode 9 that was put up for sale on eBay or the conflict between Rambler and the developer of Nginx).

Security induction is a corporate information security procedure that all new hires must complete as part of their probationary period. As part of the security induction, new hires independently identify the link between specific cases and information security rules and then go on to offer their own solutions. This allows them to understand the requirements of the company's information security policies in practice and see how they apply to their own duties. During the security induction, a new hire answers questions such as what the correct way to destroy confidential information is, why is it important to transmit information over secure channels, how information about partners can damage stakeholders if it gets disclosed to third parties or others — allowing them to identify the relevant cause and causal relationships on their own. At the end of the security induction, all the participants are sent an email with links to corporate resources with useful information and a request for feedback to help update and improve the contents of the procedure to improve its effectiveness in the future.

After the company transitioned to remote work en masse, some changes were made to the security induction procedure. First, a section has been added on why it is vital that information security rules be followed while working remotely, which emphasises that corporate information security is the responsibility of all the staff with no exceptions. Second, the format in which the security induction is conducted has changed. While in the past, the number of participants was limited by the capacity of the conference room where the induction was held, it is now held as an online seminar with far more participants connecting to it in the ways that are most convenient for them (from a PC, a smartphone etc.). The online training features interactive sessions with staff such as surveys, discussions, stories told by the participants and others. In order to increase the engagement of the online participants, the content used for security induction has been revised: the presentation now features memes and short videos, which work very well in the context of the mostly visual presentation delivered as a sequence of slides.

New hires also complete information security courses, learn about the rules of using passes to access company premises, complete a test of their knowledge of the passwords policy and media interaction policy, as well as the policy for handling confidential information, the non-disclosure agreement and various workarounds.

Having completed all the stages of the security induction by the end of their probationary period, the new hire is able to join the company's business processes as a full-fledged team member and identify potential information security incidents in both work-related and day-to-day activities. Meanwhile, our customers can rest assured that their data are handled by staff who are well-versed in information security.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Tatarstan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/20/2021 -- Kalashnikov Izhevsk State Technical University has 64 departments and 8 educational buildings.

KEY CHALLENGES

The Kalashnikov Izhevsk State Technical University's IT infrastructure has developed over the past 20 years; it's built up of different solutions and systems that were introduced by the staff, students and third-party contractors. As a result, the infrastructure became hard to maintain – cables were wearing out; the equipment was idle and kept breaking down; solving each problem was taking too much time.

Furthermore, computer performance could no longer satisfy the requirements of the departments and laboratories, and old hardware did not support the university's engineering software.

To get a subsidy for IT infrastructure modernization, the university had to provide project documentation along with a list of necessary equipment. To do so, the university contacted VimpelCom, and the latter outsourced the development of the IT infrastructure modernization project to the company's strategic partner, ICL Services.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The project's goal is to plan out a new IT infrastructure for the university based on the customer's business needs. The new project has to:

- take into account the requirements of different institutes and laboratories in terms of computer performance, network connectivity and information security;

- incorporate the existing equipment from different vendors as much as possible;

- ensure high performance and fault tolerance.

BUSINESS ADVANTAGES

- ICL Services has extensive experience in planning and implementation of IT infrastructure across a diverse range of facilities, from control rooms to regional governments and organizing low current systems for large logistics centers to developing IT and security systems for a car manufacturer.

- In addition to infrastructure planning, the company also carries out the implementation and maintenance of systems and equipment. This allows specialists to take into account any problems with IT infrastructure operation and minimize the risks at the planning stage.

- ICL Services plans and implements engineering systems, infrastructure services, as well as information security, cloud infrastructure and virtualization environment solutions

OUR IMPLEMENTED SOLUTION
During the pre-project inspection, ICL Services specialists travelled to the customer's facility, interviewed university staff and assessed the spaces. This resulted in a project timeline that was used to coordinate the choice of tech solutions and methods of their implementation with the customer at every stage.

The project can be divided into several modules.

Server infrastructure
The project includes four servers, one storage system, one slow storage, a control switch, two data center cores, backup site switches and a backup storage system server. The plan features over 20 firewalls, 500 optical transceivers for access switches and 50 aggregation switches. Huawei was the main equipment vendor.

Engineering infrastructure
The project involves setting up a small data center, a diesel generator, UPS units for fault tolerance, a power supply system and lighting.

Automatic gaseous fire suppression system
The planned out gaseous fire suppression systems will automatically detect fires, calculate the required amount of the extinguishing agent and start extinguishing the fire automatically. The plan includes a separate automatic gaseous fire suppression system for the data processing center.

Monitoring systems
The project includes a LAN management and monitoring system and a general monitoring system for all equipment.

LAN and wireless networks
A Wi-Fi network with 250 access points was planned out for seven multistory university buildings. This solution helped increase the coverage to 95%.

CCTV and PACS
ICL Services specialists also developed project documentation for the closed-circuit television system and physical access control systems.

At the end of the pre-project inspection, the customer received a printed set of drawings and an electronic copy of all documents. ICL Services experts also helped create the terms of reference for project implementation.

ACHIEVED RESULTS

The customer received a detailed description and a specific plan for IT infrastructure development and organization. The project involves:

1) Doubling the server capacity, which will provide all divisions with the required capacity and help create a virtualization environment.

2) Introducing a system for backups and hardware fault tolerance, which did not exist before.

3) Developing a local area network management and monitoring system for all equipment.

4) The modular design of the IT infrastructure and the description of each element in each system will make it easier for the customer to operate the systems and scale them up.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/06/2021 -- The Covid-19 pandemic has posed a significant threat to one of the fundamental human rights: the right to physical and mental health. Protecting this right was the job of not just the WHO and the state but also of every single company capable of taking concrete steps in protecting the health and well-being of its staff.

The UN international covenant on human rights states that every human being has the right to the maximum possible level of physical and mental health they're capable of achieving. From 2019 to 2021, this fundamental human right was dealt the most severe blow it had seen in decades in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to the WHO, as of early August 2021, almost 200 million people had contracted Covid-19 and almost 4 million of them had died. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus believes that the actual numbers are far more serious as the pandemic has had a major negative impact on the mental health of millions of people. Meanwhile, other WHO representatives note that the world was not ready for the pandemic.

In this situation, the task of protecting the life and health of the public fell to every state, region and business. And this is how the issue was handled by ICL Services, an IT outsourcing company with more than 3,000 employees.

Protecting the company's staff: ICL Services, a case study

Prior to the pandemic, the vast majority of the company's staff worked out of the 5 offices in several Russian cities and in Belgrade, Serbia. Remote work was offered as an extra option to:

- staff who didn't live in any of the cities in which the company has offices;

- staff who couldn't go to the office for some personal or business-related reasons.

By early 2020, about 10% of the company's staff were working remotely. Everything changed when the novel coronavirus started spreading around the world.

Since ICL Services has foreign customers, the company's management knew from the get-go what the worst-case scenario for the pandemic might be like. As early as February 2020, the company upgraded its plan for ensuring business continuity for a possible global pandemic and had considered several scenarios for how the situation might unfold.

The first step the company took to protect the health of its staff was to impose a quarantine for all employees who had come back from a business trip or vacation: the new rule was introduced in early March 2020. Meanwhile, the company's own IT department was working 24/7 prepping for the worst-case scenario: a total lockdown. Employees of the business departments were also working hard: ICL Services' clients wanted to protect their staff by having them work remotely but a lot of them didn't have the requisite IT infrastructure to do so. ICL Services' engineers were quickly rolling it out.

As soon as mid-May ICL Services staff began transitioning to remote work. By April, more than 85% of the company's staff were working remotely. This allowed the company to protect their lives and health and, luckily, during the pandemic not a single ICL Services employee died from Covid-19.

Dozens of technicians continued to work from the offices; these comprised those who supported customer IT systems or were monitoring customer IT infrastructure in a 24/7 mode. These technicians were taking a calculated risk to ensure the company's customers could carry on their operations so that pharmaceutical companies could carry on making medications, retailers could continue supplying people with groceries and consumer goods, energy companies could carry on supplying energy to households, etc. ICL Services put a special action plan in place to protect these employees. The plan emphasises effectiveness over simplicity, the idea being to ensure social distancing and disinfection. All surfaces such as door handles, elevator buttons, desks and even the handrails in the corporate buses that bring people to the office are disinfected as often as possible. Antiseptic, mask and glove dispensers were set up in the halls. Access to conference rooms and cafeterias were organised in such a way as to automatically ensure social distancing. Meanwhile, employees were being constantly reminded about the rules of safe conduct.

In 2021, the company also began promoting vaccination in addition to everything mentioned above. Employees were able to get both components of the vaccine at the office along with medical consultation. Employees who got a vaccine jab were given a day off afterwards in case they might experience side effects such as fever or fatigue.

Taking care of mental health
The atmosphere of fear and uncertainty brought about by the pandemic took a serious toll on people's mental health. And the company tried to address that by inviting doctors to conduct webinars for employees and answer questions about the new virus. The company's management regularly held video calls with staff, sharing the latest news with them and telling them about the measures the company was taking to protect its staff and preserve its business. In?2020, every tenth item in the corporate newsfeed (and in March through May?2020 every other one) was about Covid, reminding people of the recommended safety measures, sharing stories about personal experiences of working remotely during the lockdown and offering other similar stories.

In June 2020, after the first wave of the pandemic, employees were surveyed about their general health. About 90% of the respondents praised the company's response to the pandemic and noted that the communications they received from the company were quite relevant and useful.

In addition, the support service staff completely redesigned all their internal processes. Recruitment and assessment, documentation processing, IT support and many other processes were redesigned to accommodate remote work. Managers got pointers on remote interaction in order to safeguard their staff against burning out. Meanwhile, the HR department held online events for staff during the lockdown aimed at helping people feel part of the team, such as quizzes, joint exercises and even Zoom parties.

Safety as an extension of corporate traditions
In pre-Covid times, physical and mental health and safety were always a priority at ICL Services. Employees were always able to work from home if necessary or work on a flexible schedule: the company had the requisite business processes and IT resources in place for that. The corporate medical insurance was sufficiently broad, including dental care and emergency hospitalisation; even before the lockdown, medical check-ups were offered at the offices along with vaccinations against seasonal diseases; in addition, staff also received compensation when they joined a gym and had access to various fitness facilities. These well-established health and safety traditions made it a lot easier for the company to quickly transition to remote work and offer remote support to staff during the lockdown.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/06/2021 -- The ASA is a multifunctional solution that can analyze the text of support requests, classify requests and assign them to the teams that are best equipped to handle them, route requests to the most competent engineer available, notify engineers of events in the ITSM system, new assignments and other events, monitor the quality of service and adherence to the SLA, as well as suggest solutions based on the history of how similar requests have been handled in the past.

The automatic smart assistant developed by ICL Services to optimise the provision of IT services has undergone a number of innovative changes in 2021. Making use of modern machine learning technologies, the automatic smart assistant offers a broad range of functions today, but as time and use in practical applications have demonstrated, there is always room for improvement.

In the past year, the company's specialists continued improving the functions of the smart assistant in accordance with the approach the company had previously developed for it. And the proposals come from end users — the ICL Services' staff who provide services to customers. In 2021, this has allowed to add new functionality to the assistant in the following areas:

Automatic resolution of support requests (auto-resolve)
The auto-resolve tool was designed and tested in late 2020. The platform is based on the following principles: security, efficiency and versatility of the solution at a minimal cost of deployment and subsequent support. Therefore, it was decided to implement the platform as a native Windows application. The platform has been undergoing trials since early 2021 in one of the service projects (O365 support, 2nd and 3rd lines of support): in this time, 350 support requests have been resolved automatically (the average resolution time per request is under two hours). Next, the plan is to increase the number of projects that use ART as well as Azure DevOps for the development, testing and delivery of automated services and the ART platform to automate the delivery of software through MS Intune.

Assessing the complexity of an incident
While in the past, when working with ITSM systems, developers tracked the number of requests resolved by an engineer, now the goal is to make a qualitative assessment of every support ticket resolved. There are several criteria used for that. For example, how unique the ticket was, how many comments were made about the proposed solution and the number of teams that took part in resolving it. In addition, it is also being analyzed how the ticket was received. If it was submitted by a user, it is assigned by one weight, if the ticket was submitted by the monitoring system, different weight is assigned. Such analytical data is used to determine a complexity score for the ticket, which can be high, medium or low.

This allows to assess the performance of support engineers not only by looking at how many tickets they resolved in a given period but also by assessing the complexity of the tickets they dealt with. For example, John resolved 10 tickets and Peter only resolved 5. At first glance, it might appear that John's performance is twice as high as that of Peter's. But if we look at the complexity of the tickets they were dealing with, it may well turn out that all the 10 tickets that John resolved were low complexity tickets and our model assigned them a total score of 50, while Peter was dealing with high complexity tickets and our model assigned them a total score of 100. So, ICL Services is already using this functionality on one project but the plan is to start testing it on other projects as well.

Automatic demand and trend analyzis on unstructured data
For example, there are several teams that don't have classifiers in the ITSM system and so users just type in some text comments. Analyzing such text comments is a very labour-intensive task: when there are a lot of events like that, it's difficult to assess their parameters, such as degree of recurrence, etc. So, a solution powered by machine learning has been developed which makes use of unsupervised learning and natural language processing to analyze such unstructured data. The model analyzes the text of customer requests and groups them into clusters: the larger a cluster is, the more relevant and popular the problem is judged to be.

Additional technician notification scripts (the notification bot)
To build these, ICL Services' specialists considered what other events could be monitored automatically. It was decided to use an escalation algorithm: if some event happened and there was no response from the assigned technician within the allotted time, the notification gets passed on to their team leader. A bot is a unit that monitors ITSM processes based on such parameters as timeframes, tasks, assignees and event triggers.

With the expanded functionality and all the innovations implemented so far, the automated smart assistant allows to save over 5,200 work hours for the staff, coordinate more than 170,000 support requests and incidents per year and making more than 130 recommendations on how to resolve support tickets every day.

Next steps
The company plans to link up the smart assistant with the corporate knowledge base of ICL Services. The goal is not only to suggest a solution based on how identical incidents have been resolved before but also to direct the support technician to a relevant article in the knowledge base that might help them resolve the ticket better and in less time.

Furthermore, it is planned to improve the ITSM interaction subsystem to manage it via the chatbot and implement automated incident resolution using machine learning. The new system will decide whether a ticket should be routed to the auto-resolve system or a human technician and classify tickets to pick an auto-resolve process that a specific incident can be routed to and the solution that should be launched for it.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/06/2021 -- Every year, more and more information technologies emerge and the number of ways to manage business processes grows accordingly. Services are constantly becoming more and more complex and people can hardly be surprised anymore: drones are delivering groceries while car-sharing and autonomous vehicles are becoming increasingly common sights on the streets of major cities. In reality, though, the more companies offer, the more customers demand: more and more customers are talking about the need to modernise and innovate services that have already been provided.

IT service companies learn the art of adapting to the changing reality by getting feedback from customers and providing top-notch services while keeping track of economic performance. In order to boost flexibility and efficiency, companies are constantly on the lookout for new management methodologies, digital solutions and frameworks for their business process.

One such methodology is lean manufacturing, which focuses on goal setting and the creation of value for the customer while ensuring continuous improvement of the quality of service and minimisation of risks and waste. As an IT outsourcing company, ICL Services has adopted the following Lean principles for the provision of a full range of IT services to its clients:

1. Employee engagement in the company's efforts to continuously optimise processes and the creation of an environment of trust and transparency. Under these conditions, management is deeply engaged in comprehensive improvement efforts while goals are set within each team in accordance with customer requirements.

2. Experience-based learning within a team through case studies and the sharing of practical experience. Recognition of personal success and an emphasis on learning from errors.

3. Standardisation, documentation of the most optimal method with a view to maintaining performance at least at the current level.

4. Recognition of the customer requirements and selecting team performance indicators that are aligned with them. Efforts should be made to promote among employees an understanding of the value they create for the customer.

5. Visualisation with an emphasis on the aspects of the service that are key to the customer. Visual presentation of the outcomes of teamwork and timely identification of deviations from the standard.

6. Eliminating the waste of time and resources. Increasing customer satisfaction by eliminating superfluous steps in business processes and cutting costs.

7. Re-engineering business processes. Focus on the performance indicators that the team is responsible for. Emphasis on the link between what customers want and the outcomes from what the team does.

Using these principles in day-to-day work allows the company to strengthen its culture of continuous improvement. Thus, there are three scenarios of how Lean practices can be applied, and the real-life cases to describe what steps would be taken and in what kind of outcomes the process would result can be used.

The scenarios mentioned include several constants:

- the company has first- or second-line tech support in place;

- the company has an ITSM system that can export support ticket statistics.

It is important to stress that the examples come from the IT services domain. However, the most important lessons offered in this article can be used in any kind of business.

Scenario 1: reducing the number of routine operations.

Goal: support requests received by the second-line tech support team result in an increase in the routine operations and tasks tackled by technicians. Support technicians end up spending a significant amount of time tackling these tasks so it's important that these processes should be optimised.

How to do that: use visualisation at work, get every team member engaged with the process and measure the results that are achieved.

Steps:

1. Prepare statistics for support tickets, categorise and sort data for the number of support requests in each category.

2. Get the team to optimise how they tackle the categories for which the largest number of support requests are received.

3. Write down any ideas and conclusions that emerged during the brainstorming session, publish them somewhere the entire team can access and track their subsequent implementation.

For example, export data from ITSM into a spreadsheet. Then categorise requests and sort the categories by number of requests. The grant access category is in the first place. Conclude that this is the category in which we need to start optimising.

Thus, using an identical table in the form of a Pareto chart, we can easily identify the 20% of request categories that produce 80% of the work. Focus on the Grant Access and Block Access categories.

Outcomes:

- we get optimisation priorities;

- we know the requests that can be passed on to the first line support team. If this step is implemented, the team will get rid of a portion of routine operations and free up time for other tasks;

- we find new areas for optimisation;

- we expedite the business process by using visualisation in the form of charts and tables.

The implemented case: optimisation of incoming requests

While analysing incoming requests, our technicians identified that the leading category was Other. The team analysed the content of the requests in detail to try and find out why so many support requests ended up in this category. To optimise time expenditure, instructions were developed for the first line support engineers on how to handle support tickets without getting second-line support involved. The Other category was reduced by 85%, thereby significantly reducing the work time technicians spend on handling and closing support tickets.

Scenario 2: Improving the quality of service

Goal: the bulk of support requests on both the first and second lines are comprised of incidents. The goal is to establish their causes and set up a process for eliminating them.

How to do that: learn from experience and measure the results.

Steps:

- Gather incident statistics and determine the most popular category.

- Identify what actions should be taken to eliminate the category as a whole or to reduce the number of incidents.

- If no solution can be found to reduce the number of incidents, hold a problem resolution session to discuss the situation.

- Write down the ideas and conclusions and break them down into specific tasks, deciding who's going to be doing what. Track the progress of every task and measure the number of incidents. An effective solution is a key to reducing incidents.

Outcomes:

- we free up time to deal with other issues by reducing the number of incidents;

- we prevent potential incidents by identifying their causes, and that generates positive user feedback;

- we get more technicians engaged in the efforts to optimise the support-ticket-handling process. Teamwork is key to boosting performance.

The implemented case: reduced amount of routine work

The second-line support team analysed the stack of monitoring incidents. The most popular ones include:

1. High CPU load — 600 incidents per month.

2. High memory usage — 350 incidents per month,

3. Low disk space — 50 incidents per month.

It takes about 5?minutes on average to process one support ticket in each of the categories presented. The team then started looking for the root causes of the incidents: a script was developed that eventually tracked down the process that was overloading the CPU and hogging memory during off-hours. In the end, for 3?months, the number of incidents in the categories presented was halved and the team freed up 40?work?hours per month.

Scenario 3: Do more for the customer

Goal: resolving incidents and support tickets take a lot of time. The process needs optimisation.

How to do that: eliminate waste, standardise, understand the customer's needs.

Steps:

1. Gather statistics.

2. Where the number of support tickets cannot be reduced, the focus should be shifted to optimising how they are processed. One option here is to analyse how each support ticket gets processed. For example, the process of granting access to work folders can be analysed to identify possible waste and find answers to the questions that get asked most often.

3. Standards should be developed to describe the most effective way to handle support tickets.

Outcomes:

- we identify wasteful steps and reduce the time we spend completing them;

- we find ways to scale up operations by moving ticket handling from one support line to another or by making use of online services to process support tickets;

- we optimise teamwork by standardising the support ticket handling process;

- we identify growth areas in the support ticket handling process for support tickets that are not included in the list of services the company offers at the moment. For example, these can include support tickets grouped in a separate category that could be included in the scope of delivery under the contract.

The implemented case: new opportunities to provide services.

The number of support requests submitted over the phone and registered by the first line tech support team turned out to be less than the number of phone calls fielded. Apparently, not all support requests are covered by the service. Analysis of all the phone calls received allowed us to identify popular new categories of requests that were not included in the original contract in effect. We discussed the issue with the customer regarding the inclusion of the new categories in the scope of the service.

Thus, based on the current terms and conditions of the contract, only registered requests were billed and the project's margin increased by 8%. In turn, the users received an optimised service: their support requests were now handled along with all the incoming messages.

Conclusion

The identified scenarios demonstrate how lean practices can improve and standardise the way that tech support tickets are handled, optimise the service and its performance indicators (time, financial etc.), and identify the potential for more services to be provided under an existing project.

A large range of tools can be used in these scenarios such as Excel, Power BI dashboards as well as various software systems for machine learning-powered analysis of quantitative indicators, etc. At the same time, it's important to bear in mind the vital principles outlined in this article that allow the effect to be maximised:

1. Visualisation of teamwork: correctly designed charts help people better understand the current performance of the team and identify the ideal areas for optimisation.

2. Understanding customer needs: identifying the factors that create value for the customer and those that expend excess resources.

3. Engagement of all team members to track the process and its outcomes, learn lessons and standardise processes.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world, an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/06/2021 -- Protecting the environment is no longer a fashionable trend but rather a pressing need without which the Earth may not be able to cope with climate and environmental disasters. Thus, more and more companies are joining environmental protection initiatives and making their contribution to environmental protection efforts. ICL Services and its staff are at the forefront of environmental initiatives and are adopting green practices at work and at home in earnest.

On the way to achieving sustainable development goals

Environmental protection at the global level is carefully coordinated strategic work. In September 2015, the UN General Assembly identified 17 sustainable development goals to transform the planet, 5 of which directly aim to protect the environment.

ICL Services employees actively support the implementation of such goals as responsible production and consumption, combatting climate change, preservation of land ecosystems and others. The company's corporate portal and social media pages feature educational publications about what these goals are and what contribution every employee can make. Activists are increasingly getting together into initiative groups, sharing success stories and ideas about new environmental initiatives. After the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, most communications went online, but that only added more activists to existing communities.

The company has issued special pass ribbons featuring the symbols of one of the sustainable development goals to raise awareness of sustainable development among staff. An employee can pick which sustainable development goal they like better and choose a ribbon representative of that goal so that then they can tell their colleagues about it when they ask.

Environmental initiatives and events

As a socially responsible company, ICL Services holds environmental events. Employees often volunteer to participate in major environmental events or invite interested colleagues to take part in more environmental activities.

One such initiative was participation in the Cycling to Work campaign. Bicycle parking facilities were set up outside the office and many employees are now opting to use this mode of transport to commute to work. In addition to the benefits for the environment (or rather the lack of harm from cycling) cycling also has many health benefits for the rider.

It has become a tradition to plant trees on the campus grounds. 20 trees and brushes have been planted this year, including such species as thuja, pears, apple trees and hydrangeas. One positive development is that the initiative is transforming from a corporate campaign into a family activity: employees are increasingly turning up with their kids, teaching them to care for the environment from an early age.

Trips to the arboretum of the Volzhsko-Kamsky State Reserve enable people to learn more about the biodiversity of the region and its fragility. Meanwhile, efforts to collect clothes to donate to social organisations that support the poor help popularise smart consumption.

Major campaigns with participants from all over the world remain relevant as well. As part of Earth Hour, colleagues share recommendations on how to save energy at home and in the office, develop checklists and inform each other of environmental problems.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the way of organizing environmental events was revised and adapted to the online format. For example, an online seminar was organised on how to sort waste during which the attendees learned about the various categories of solid domestic waste, where to take it for recycling and the key principles of waste sorting. Meanwhile, the one-week online environmental marathon on Earth Day, during which the participants tried to save water and electricity and learned how to sort waste and tell those around them about environmental problems, has since evolved into an online community of employees that remains active to this day. They publish advice articles, relevant news and share ideas on how to organise new activities.

Green habits in the office

Environmental events target specific issues, but the daily routine is here to stay, so green habits must be developed. Some of them have become part of the daily office activities:

- The workers do not print more than they need. There are only several printers per floor, and that greatly reduces the likelihood that unnecessary documents get printed out.

- The elevators are not used frequently. The employees climb the stairs to at least the first four floors;

- The employees try to take the shuttle bus to work rather than drive in our personal cars. They save on petrol, reduce car emissions, and fraternise with colleagues from the moment of boarding the shuttle bus: and these steps are now strongly immersed in the corporate culture.

- The waste is sorted with the usage of waste sorting containers that have been installed in the canteens and halls;

- The staff collects spent batteries as they can do great harm to the environment if discarded improperly.

During onboarding, the new hires to the company's environmental friendly culture are introduced

When a new hire first joins the company, HR Managers try to immerse them in a green environment. Few new hires bring their own dishes on the first day, and to discourage them from using disposable utensils, the new hire's package comes with a ceramic cup and a metal spoon. The welcome package is issued in a paper rather than a plastic bag. We try to use packaging as little as possible. Employees' old cups don't get discarded either, instead, they get reused as pots for office plants.

Thus, even if someone may not have been particularly aware of environmental issues, ICL Services' corporate culture teaches them green habits and, before long, they start participating in environmental events and revise their attitudes towards environmental protection.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/27/2021 -- In 2021, ICL Services turned 15. In this time, the company has grown from a 2-person startup to a team of 3,000 people, becoming one of the largest IT services companies in Russia, working with clients in more than 30 countries. A key factor in this successful growth has been the use of the best labour relations practices throughout the entire employee journey through the company.

Going digital
A prospective employee gets their first impression of the company by searching for information about it on the Internet. And ICL Services is completely open and transparent online:

- The company maintains social media accounts on vk.com and Instagram where people taking an interest in the company can find out some basic facts about what life at the company is like. The company's business accounts on Facebook and LinkedIn offer information about its business and performance.

- And if a job seeker wants to get a feel for the expertise of their possible future colleagues, they can always check out the corporate blog on Habr.

- The company always stays in touch: all questions get answered quickly regardless of the communication channel through which they were asked. This makes interaction with ICL Services transparent and easy to understand.

Engagement with students

Students often first learn about the company offline at various events the company organises specifically to engage with students (open house days, vacancy fairs, etc.) Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, representatives of ICL Services attended such events at universities that offer programmes relevant for the company and the plan now is to resume this practice as soon as it's safe again. HR staff tell students about the company and the working conditions while employees of the engineering units tell them what the work is all about, what kind of tasks they're expected to complete and also share personal stories. Even during the pandemic in 2020, the company held 14 events for students in cities ranging from Kazan to Vladivostok, albeit in online mode, for obvious reasons.

Other ways students can engage with the company are through thesis internships on real projects or through paid internships.

In addition, ICL Services offers free schools for graduates and young professionals. Universities offer good training in fundamentals, but university graduates often lack the practical skills needed in the workplace. ICL Services schools aim to close that gap: in 3–4 weeks, inexperienced graduates get the key skills to start working in IT as RPA experts, system administrators, service desk operators, project managers and in other positions. The company uses its own equipped classrooms with classes taught by experienced engineers. In 2018–2019, the company offered 13 schools (attended by more than 200 students with over 50% of them eventually getting a job with the company). In the spring of 2020, the corporate schools had to be suspended for obvious reasons, but the company soon developed an online platform to teach classes remotely and, by the end of the year, corporate schools were already being offered online.

New hire onboarding

The company makes every effort to make new hire onboarding at the company as smooth and painless as possible.

- Every new hire gets a mentor/buddy for the first three months who helps them with work-related issues as well as with socialising in the workplace. The buddy is always ready to answer any questions, whether work-related or not. The Buddy programme at ICL Services received the IT HR Award.

- The induction plan exists in digital format and makes the onboarding and adaptation process predictable and transparent for the new hire.

- All new hires receive introductory training in which top managers take part. During this introduction, new hires learn about the company, its corporate culture, the professional growth opportunities it offers and they can also ask questions at the end.

After the lockdown went into effect and the company switched to remote work, the onboarding programme was adapted to the new conditions: all the orientation classes and interaction with the buddy mentor now take place online. The new approaches and solutions help new hires feel their buddy's helping hand even when they can't necessarily meet them face to face.

Safety during the pandemic

When the Covid-19 pandemic began, ICL Services made the health and safety of its staff a top priority. Prior to the pandemic, 90% of the company's staff worked in offices. However, in the spring of 2020, the company's IT infrastructure and business processes were repurposed in record time for 100% remote work. By April, 85% of the staff were already working remotely. This allowed the company to protect their lives and health and, luckily, during the pandemic, not a single ICL Services employee has died from Covid-19. A special action plan was put in place to ensure health and safety for those staff members who had to keep coming to the office. It included the frequent disinfection of all surfaces in the offices, free access to antiseptics, masks and gloves as well as measures to ensure social distancing in office spaces. In 2021, the company also offered vaccination in offices and an extra day off after the jab.

A number of measures were put into place to reduce the anxiety that people were experiencing as a result of the uncertainty and fears caused by the pandemic. For example, the company organised webinars to which it invited doctors. Company managers held video conferences with staff and sent out newsletters to answer any questions people had and tell them about the actions the company was implementing to preserve its business.

All the business processes such as hiring, documentation process, IT support and many others were redesigned to be done remotely. The company's managers learned to run their teams remotely and learned about ways to prevent their team members from burning out. Meanwhile, the HR department held online events for staff during the lockdown aimed at helping people feel part of the team, such as quizzes, joint exercises and even zoom parties.

As a result, when the company surveyed its staff about how they were doing during the pandemic in June 2020, 90% praised the company's response.

Corporate transparency: corporate communications

The company tries to be as transparent as possible for its staff. Thus, in 2020, the company's news portal published more than 900 news items (12% of them had to do with the pandemic, including safety reminders, personal stories about remote work during the lockdown and much more). More than 700 posts were published on social media. Three times a year the company holds meetings with top management, which, in 2020, were held completely online. During these meetups, any employee can learn about the company's plans and ask questions (anonymously if desired). Every department holds similar meetings at their level and any staff member can get in touch with managers at any level.

Performance assessment, professional development and career advancement

Just as with communications, the main principle here is transparency. Performance is assessed using an automated system of key performance indicators that rules out any bias. The KPIs depend on the position and department of each staff member — all staff members know and understand their KPIs in advance. All employees complete an annual assessment during which the focus is helping the employee find ways to grow professionally within the company. This allows staff members to have a clear idea about their career trajectory and understand what skills and knowledge they need to acquire to proceed to the next step.

Staff members move up the career ladder through promotions: any employee can apply for any open vacancy within the company for which they will be considered ahead of any candidates from outside the company. This approach allows employees not only to advance up the career ladder but also change their specialisation within the company and move, for example, from system administration to dev-ops or to project management (naturally, on the condition that they meet the requirements for the vacancy). Every year, 18–20% of the company's staff get promoted.

Employees have a lot of opportunities for training: corporate courses (both technical and soft skills), language instruction, the candidate pool programme, subsidised training outside the company and certification paid for by the company. Nine out of ten staff members complete a training course at least once a year.

Benefits and remuneration

In addition to payment and bonuses, company employees have social benefits. These comprise several key categories.

- Health benefits include corporate health insurance, dental care and emergency hospitalisation, as well as medical check-ups, X-rays and vaccination at the offices (when they're not closed during a lockdown).

- Sports: the company partially compensates staff for gym memberships, offers corporate discounts for fitness club membership, leases sports grounds for team sports, builds sports facilities next to offices, subsidises employee participation in marathons, the Heroes Race and other similar events.

- Financial aid is provided for important events such as weddings, the birth of children, partial compensation of mortgage interest and interest-free loans. In addition, the company also pays for the construction of residential housing for staff, which is then provided to employees at special discounted prices.

- Recreation: entertainment, social and family events for staff members, vacation bonuses, extra days off for working mothers and employees with disabilities.

What's interesting is that, in 2020, the company held 95 events, 10 more than in 2019. The pandemic had an impact on their format, however — while in the past such events were held in person, during the Covid restrictions they were mostly held online.

- Recognition programmes are special award ceremonies held at the end of a year or quarter to recognise the efforts of volunteers and activists taking part in social and environmental programmes, and to award specific teams for positive customer feedback.

The last milestone in the employee journey

Having overcome the market pessimism that arose from the pandemic, ICL Services found new opportunities in the current situation. The existing clients expanded cooperation, adapting their IT services to remote work; the company also acquired new clients as today, a reliable IT infrastructure is a must for success in business. As a result, the company kept hiring in 2020, expanding its staff by 19%.

Nevertheless, there are always people who choose to leave the company. Offboarding is an important final step in the employee journey. An HR officer interviews employees who are preparing to leave the company to understand the reasons why they have chosen to leave and, if possible, offer alternatives, such as a transfer to a different department. In addition, the information about why people choose to leave the company offers invaluable insights and can serve as a starting point for subsequent major and minor improvements.

The company also tries to keep in touch with its former staff members, inviting them to corporate events, paying them bonuses for recommending new hires and remains always willing to hire them back (former staff members often return to ICL Services).

Outcomes

The growing turnover and size of the company's workforce are evidence of the effectiveness of the course that the company has chosen to pursue. There are other indicators, however, such as public recognition. As such, in 2018, ICL Services won the official title of Russian Organisation with High Social Effectiveness and in 2019 and 2020 it was ranked among the best employers in Russia by HeadHunter. And while there were a lot of factors that played a role in these outcomes, our finely tuned HR processes have been some of the most vital among them.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/27/2021 -- Automating the routine tasks of supporting IT infrastructure is an important area that allows IT companies to offer businesses better quality of service. Automation systems take over a number of routine tasks and free up the time and resources of human technicians so they can attend to more important issues.

One good example of such an automation tool is the TOC-automation system that ICL Services uses to support the IT infrastructure of its customers. We talked to the head of the Enterprise Management Group, Vladislav Mukhametzyanov, about how the system was developed and how it is used now.

What is a TOC and what sort of work do they do at the company?

A TOC is a technician on call. Essentially, it's a highly qualified engineer who supports a customer's IT infrastructure outside the standard business hours, in the evenings, during holidays or at weekends. A technician on call doesn't have to come into the office but they have to be on call at their business phone number at all times. If there is a problem with the IT infrastructure of a customer, the technician on call gets a call from the on-call engineer of the monitoring service, which operates in 24/7 mode. After the technician on call gets the call, they connect to the customer's system remotely and fix the issue.

What's the main idea behind the TOC automation project?

TOC-automation is a system that is directly integrated into the customer's IT service management and monitoring systems and, whenever there is an incident, the system automatically notifies the technician on call. The kind of incidents we're talking about here are IT infrastructure issues that can affect the customer's business processes and cause serious damage to their business.

Essentially, a TOC automation system allows us to eliminate the need for a monitoring service operator to manually call the technician on call because the notification will be automatically sent by the TOC-automation system. The system is programmed in such a way that if the call to the technician on call fails to go through, it automatically escalates it to the project manager. All relevant information about the incident is simultaneously sent to the technician on call by text.

How did the project come about and how much time was spent on it?

The history of TOC-automation began with the establishment of an initiative research group. The group started its work in July 2019 and had completed it by September of that year as it had achieved all its goals.

Over a period of two months, the team studied and analysed foreign notification solutions. The SaaS solutions currently available in the market were scrutinised, such as PagerDuty and Voximplant. These solutions have very good tools for notifying staff of IT incidents but they are extremely expensive. The group decided to develop an in-house system and soon had a prototype up and running. Then a proof-of-concept system was implemented for one of the accounts, which demonstrated the viability of the solution.

Once the project management approved the project and it was confirmed that a minimum viable product was ready for deployment, the business case for the project was successfully pitched for deployment on 4 accounts. The results of the deployment of the minimum viable product once again demonstrated that the solutions selected were correct and that there was a demand for this kind of system and it could potentially save the company a lot of money.

What functions does the TOC-automation system offer and how have they changed over time?

Since 2019, a lot of new functions have been added to the system. Today, in addition to calling and texting technicians on call, the TOC automation system can also email them and send messages to a pre-selected Telegram channel. Furthermore, the security policy has been improved, a reporting module has been developed and, in order to abide by the Service Level Agreement, functionality has been added to notify the technician on call only after the expiration of a pre-set waiting period. A special algorithm has also been developed to prevent technicians on call and management from getting spammed with messages in the event that a customer's IT infrastructure experiences a series of recurring incidents of the same type.

What are the competitive advantages of the TOC-automation system?

One tangible advantage of TOC-automation lies in how flexible and customisable the system is so that it can be easily adapted to the needs of specific customers. Thus, the original solution was used to develop an automatic notification system for field engineers for the 1C Snaryad system (by phone and text). In the context of the deployment of specific solutions, one important benefit is the close integration of TOC-Automation with the popular 1C platform, allowing the system to be set up to make use of the on-duty schedules of the technicians on-call, the service time of engineering teams and make calls, if need be, to personal phone numbers of the engineers retrieved from their employee records in 1C.

In which projects has the system already been used and what results have been achieved?

We've already deployed TOC-automation for 17 customers and for 2 in-house projects at ICL Services. The main effect of the deployment of TOC-automation has been in improved efficiency of our 24/7 monitoring engineers and dispatchers as a result of the automation of phone notifications. Current estimates suggest that, at the moment, TOC-automation is saving us 6.81 full-time equivalents, allowing us to significantly boost the efficiency of our monitoring stations. Prior to the deployment of the system, every monitoring station was handling 4 projects. Now, each is handling 6–7 projects. In addition, the system drastically reduces human error and thereby improves the quality of service.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/27/2021 -- Since 2020, ICL Services has been cooperating with a large network of Halva automated parcel lockers for storage and release of goods in large stores. The Company operates in more than 75 cities in Russia.

PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Snaryad Field Staff Management System

KEY CHALLENGES
During the 2020 pandemic, Halva increased the number of parcel lockers in the Russia, which necessitated their efficient and timely maintenance. It was important for the Customer that the contractor had similar experience and a wide service area. ICL Services had the required experience with automated storage systems and offered its services.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Provide installation, configuration and maintenance of Halva parcel lockers throughout Russia.

OUR IMPLEMENTED SOLUTION
ICL Services engineers started servicing Halva parcel lockers in May 2020. The Customer delivers the parcel lockers, and ICL Services engineers mount them, install the software, connect service and user cells, and perform troubleshooting if necessary. To restore the operability of parcel lockers and the availability of services for Halva's customers, ICL Services engineers throughout Russia go to the sites and solve problems that affect the operability of the equipment.

All requests of the Customer are recorded in the Snaryad system, and most of them are resolved in less than 8 hours from the moment of first contact. An on-site engineer analyses the situation and, if possible, solves the problem ? restores the power supply / communication channel or reboots the parcel locker. If an engineer needs advice to solve more complex problems, he/she contacts the staff of the ICL Services Technical Assistance Centre (TAC), which consists of highly qualified engineers. When contacting TAC, field engineers receive timely and effective assistance with complex problems.

In addition to resolving incidents, the parcel locker support service includes regular preventive maintenance, which reduces the number of equipment failures.

In six months, ICL Services engineers have installed over 900 parcel lockers in over 75 cities; several hundred requests are processed locally every month. The quality of service is under the control of the project management team, and the actual service level is 98%, which is in line with the Service Level Agreement (SLA) between ICL Services and the Customer. The Customer's parcel lockers are served by more than 200 engineers throughout Russia. The Customer has direct access to the statistical data of the project (the number of equipment failures, the number of visits, certificates of work performed, and the level of service, taking into account the SLA).

ACHIEVED RESULTS
Thanks to the transfer of parcel locker maintenance to the ICL Services team:

- The costs of mounting parcel lockers throughout Russia have been reduced

- The rate of expansion of the network of Halva parcel lockers has been increased both in quantitative and geographical terms

- The downtime of parcel lockers because of breakdowns has been reduced thanks to quick response to requests and a high level of competence of engineers

- A unified system for assessing the quality of work has been created

ICL Services continues to install and maintain Customer's parcel lockers. In the coming months, Halva plans to triple the number of parcel lockers and expand the geography of its presence with the help of ICL Services.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

The role of large companies in the development of local communities can hardly be overestimated. Businesses create new jobs, develop the socio-economic potential of the areas in which they operate and create and support local communities. As a socially responsible company, ICL Services makes its own contribution to this process. This article offers some details about the company's social initiatives.

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/27/2021 -- Free education
Several times a year, ICL Services runs free IT courses: anyone can take a test and, if they pass it, they can learn the basics of specific IT occupations. The best graduates are offered internships and subsequent employment with the company if they're interested. Earlier, these kinds of courses were offered on the premises with students coming to the office to soak up the corporate spirit of the company. After the start of the pandemic, the ICL Services courses went online, which allowed the company to reach far broader audiences. Thus, in 2021, the company organised online courses in project management, the automation of robotic processes and the future of IT engineering that students from all over Russia took part in.

Career advice from an early age
This year, Kazan's edutainment centre for children has launched a new ICL Services station. The centre's target audience is children aged 3–12. The centre uses the play-and-learn format to introduce the kids to 80+ occupations in a broad range of fields. The ICL Services station showcases systems for the development of IT services and equipment while the training programme is designed to encourage young developers to take an interest in IT occupations.

Interaction with students
ICL Services specialists go around to universities and tell students about opportunities in IT. This is done to make sure the students and graduates know and understand how to get into IT and build a career in it. These kinds of lectures and subsequent Q&A sessions with practising experts help future graduates decide what they want to do next, make an informed choice of a future career track and understand which skills a junior candidate should have for a major IT company to consider hiring them.

Supporting talented youths
ICL Services supports talented youths by taking part in the organisation of competitions and hackathons. The company's employees sit on competition and selection panels, assessing IT projects and providing valuable feedback to the competitors. For example, this summer, ICL Services partnered up with a children's IT camp. Our employees joined the expert panel and evaluated the projects of aspiring IT technicians. After three camps, winning teams were selected and then 15 kids from all over Russia completed one-day internships at our company as a reward. Eight of them attended the internships in person, the rest joined in online. In one day, the kids got to learn a great deal about IT software and hardware, about the corporate culture of the company and about its product lines while also participating in joint meetings with the professional participants of Russian and international projects and even pitching their own projects as part of the camp.

Job creation
ICL Services has 2,500+ staff and new jobs are being created constantly. The company is making a tangible contribution to the socio-economic development of the regions in which it operates and regularly gets commendations from the local governments.

Corporate housing
The company commissions affordable housing for its staff, effectively building an entire IT town next to its campus. The first residents moved in back in 2010 and today the town already has new terraced houses, a large apartment block, a sports centre as well as land tracts for the construction of private housing.

Fostering communities with shared interests
Not only does ICL Services support the development of the local community as a whole, but the company also takes an active part in fostering smaller communities for people with shared interests.

- Sports
Corporate running competitions are held for joggers; the company also organises participation for its employees in mass races in Kazan, Moscow and Voronezh. In 2021, the ICL team finished third in a corporate sports competition. Employees are paid compensation for their sports activities and are given discounts for participating in running clubs. The company also hosts football, volleyball and ice hockey games. And recently, the company has opened a new sports ground on its campus where staff can play football or volleyball or practise yoga, pilates or gymnastics in their free time. Entire clubs are now emerging that invite professional yoga coaches.

- Hobbies
The company holds mini-board game competitions and movie nights for which the company buys films for movie festivals and arranges for staff to get together and watch them. As a rule, the films for which the company arranges corporate viewings deal with relevant social issues. After the movie, the viewers discuss the issues raised in it.

- Environmental protection and charity
Environmental protection and charity are two of the most popular topics that bring people together at the company. Employees get together to plant trees, share ideas on how to improve the environmental footprint of the company, set up initiative groups and hold various green events.

The high engagement of the employees who support the company's initiatives helps the company have a positive impact on the local communities, take an active part in developing them and create new initiative groups comprised of local activists.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top 100 IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Our core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/release-3.htm

Kazan, Russia -- (ReleaseWire) -- 09/27/2021 -- Statistics confirm that the number of corruption-related violations is growing every year and globalisation only exacerbates this problem. Corruption has become the main stumbling block for the economies of both the western nations and the former USSR (Russia and the CIS). Numbers speak louder than words: in Russia, RUB?46?billion was lost to corruption in?2018 and in?2019 this number was up by RUB?9?billion, only to then set a new record reaching a high of RUB?63?billion in Covid-stricken 2020. It is noted that this accounted for 11.4% of the total financial damages caused by all crimes in Russia last year. Unfortunately, few people were surprised: according to Transparency , in terms of the perception of corruption, Russians are in 129th place out of 180, which essentially means that people in this country have come to regard corruption as the new normal.

The most common crimes of corruption around the world are fraud, appropriation, embezzlement and abuse of power, all of which throw a wrench in the economic growth both at the global and national levels. It should therefore come as no surprise that more and more measures are being introduced every year at the political, economic and corporate levels to combat corruption. In the case of corporate regulations, the measures included in them must be followed by both rank and file employees and top management alike. It is only on the condition that this principle is followed to the letter that corporate equality of rights and prosperity can be achieved.

This practise is a key principle of business conduct at ICL Services, which is ranked among the top?25 participants in the Russian IT market according to Tadviser. The company leads by example in demonstrating how implementing an anti-corruption policy can help a business grow in the market.

As a key global IT services company, ICL Services follows the leading business practices as it goes about setting its strategic goals. The company has clients in more than 30?countries around the world and it has adapted to each one of them while being guided exclusively by honesty and transparency. The huge experience in providing IT services on international markets has helped the company develop a special anti-corruption policy as part of its social responsibility agenda. The anti-corruption policy was developed as a policy the precepts of which must be followed by every employee and the main goal of which is combatting corruption every step of the way.

ICL Services' anti-corruption policy comprises standards, principles and procedures for interacting with government organisations, political parties and movements as well as provisions for how the company should engage in charitable activities. It's important that, when the policy was developed, the experience of colleagues from other countries was taken into account, countries where a zero-tolerance of corruption is practised at the corporate level.

The process of abiding by the policy is as follows: a special compliance officer tracks efforts to combat corruption at the internal corporate portal of the company and supports the functioning of the corruption risk management system from within. The compliance officer's job description includes protecting all company employees against threats and risks. In their turn, staff must undergo special anti-corruption training.

Corruption and fraud may cause significant damage to the company's reputation and result in a lot of internal conflicts as well as a deterioration of the corporate climate within the company. Therefore, whenever a contract with a customer or a partner is being entered into, ICL Services will always include a clause about the abidance by the applicable anti-corruption laws in Russia and the countries the customer or partner operates in so as to reduce the risks of corruption and minimize potential losses.

Besides, ICL Services interacts with its partners within the framework of the company's active adherence to its anti-corruption policy. Thus, to create conditions conducive to fair competition in the IT services market, ICL Services conducts an annual analysis of prospective suppliers to verify that such partners display the required level of compliance with the conditions that are vital for productive cooperation.

Thus, by carrying out anti-corruption activities on a number of fronts, both within the company and when working with partners and contractors, ICL Services prevents conflicts of interest and ensures adherence with all Russian and foreign anti-corruption regulations at all times. Setting standard rules and regulations for all staff is key to transparent and fair communication at all levels of cooperation.

About ICL Services
ICL Services is among the top 10 largest IT service companies in Russia and top-100 best IT outsourcing companies in the world; an important part of the ICL group of companies and a key business partner of Fujitsu. Company's core competence is smart people who work in streamlined processes on hundreds of projects. The service catalog contains over 60 services.

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