Despite the growth, it will save. Even enterprise software can be used cost-effectively and flexibly, as Raiffeisenbank’s example shows.
A growing company or a local branch of a large corporation – in a company’s life cycle, there is usually a situation where the number of tools used is no longer sustainable. Therefore, it is necessary to replace them with an enterprise solution. Many companies are concerned about this transition, as it usually entails several risks and the need for a significant investment in a new system. The fact that enterprise software does not have to mean expensive and inflexible was also proven at Raiffeisenbank, where experts from EEA (a member of the BiQ Group technology group) were responsible for implementing Jira.
Raiffeisenbank originally intended to use the Jira Service Desk (today’s Jira Service Management) for incident and request management. This is how the cooperation with EEA started: It was necessary to solve the whole process of creating requests so that they would be concentrated in Jira. Any user who has a problem with a banking application can now resolve it through one portal. However, IT has long since resolved the incidents and expanded to a larger pool of resolvers.
However, the collaboration involved not only Jira itself but also managing other tools. First, a configuration database was necessary, thanks to which users can see how many applications Raiffeisenbank has, what kind of infrastructure it has, its servers, and how the whole ecosystem works. The possibility of its future development played a crucial role in the selection.
Because of the infrastructure oversight and reporting, Jira needed to be expanded.
First, Raiffeisenbank needed to design a process for how the entire ITSM, or incident management, would work. Jira replaced the original tool, and from this, a new method was developed, which the EEA team adapted to the client’s needs and linked to the service desk portal.
In addition, some of the original tools needed to be replaced with new tools that fall within the Atlassian ecosystem. One example is Xray, the departmental testing tool, and this was a reasonably large migration, with approximately 58,000 test scenarios being migrated, which together contained almost 200,000 steps. Jira, initially used in just one department, has grown into an ecosystem used across the bank and now provides a comprehensive view across the bank, facilitating reporting and giving management a big picture of what is happening across the company.
“When moving from HP ALM to Xray, I was concerned about the necessary change in ‘mindset’ as we had been using HP QC for several years. However, the opportunity to test the features in a non-production environment and Xray’s clear and extensive official documentation and advice from an external partner dispelled my doubts,” says Kamil Tichý, Senior IT Test Manager.
Software for corporations doesn’t always have to be expensive
One of the myths that has taken hold across companies is that enterprise software must always be costly. A significant factor in this case is the number of licenses purchased for hundreds or thousands of users, including those who do not use it to its full potential.
The EEA team has proposed a solution where the number of licenses is capped. “The client is actively using thousands of licenses. Over time, the number of licenses flexibly changes. Still, the maximum number is 3,000 – we don’t exceed this number because we have devised a mechanism to add/remove licenses based on the users’ needs and how they log in. This saves significant resources,” says Lubo Starek, CEO of EEA.
The cooperation has lasted around five years, and Raiffeisenbank envisages further development in the future – improving processes and inventing innovations such as capacity planning.
“The cooperation with EEA is very efficient. We contact the team daily and always get a quick response. At first, it looked like we would only use Jira within IT, but the people responsible for the business have also found their way to her. For example, we are migrating People & Culture (HR) requirements to Jira and are constantly expanding the range of users,” says Adéla Vajlichová from Raiffeisenbank.
Roklen24.cz
