UNICCO enables cost-efficient delivery of value-added services with WebSphere Portal

With a 95 percent customer retention rate, UNICCO Service Company is bringing outsourced facilities management into the Internet age in order to reduce costs and provide customers with value-added services. Based in Newton, Massachusetts, UNICCO employs more than 20,000 employees—of which approximately 18,000 work onsite at customer locations, performing tasks such as janitorial services, maintenance and engineering, site inspections and payroll services. In addition to the onsite staff, account managers routinely visit client sites to perform inspections, directly communicating with high-profile clients—including Bank of America, Beacon Capital and Miami International Airport—to keep them satisfied and well-informed.

With such a large portion of its workforce dispatched to large customer sites, IT plays a crucial role in maintaining UNICCO’s outstanding customer satisfaction record. “We try to leverage technology wherever we can and share that with our customers. Beyond providing business services, we offer a total solution by bringing the corresponding technology to the customer’s site and implementing it,” explains Bill Jenkins, senior IT director at UNICCO. “So, for instance, if we are contracted to provide mechanical services, we come to the location with an asset management application and the associated business portal components, and we implement and manage them to remove the hassle and risk from our customer.”

UNICCO strives to keep its customers satisfied
In order to remain a leader in customer service and compete in a highly competitive market, UNICCO looks for ways to foster efficiencies by improving collaboration within the company and by offering value-added services that benefit its customers. “Our business is taking place at the customer’s location, so what we try to do is streamline collaboration with our customers and internally with our employees,” says Jenkins. “That partnership helps us develop value-added services that can increase efficiencies for both UNICCO and its customers, which makes everyone happy.”

With these challenges in mind, UNICCO decided to implement a business portal to improve collaboration and streamline business processes. “We realized that we could develop a portal here at UNICCO that we could extend all the way down to the customers’ locations, which would allow us to work more collaboratively with them.” explains Jenkins. “The idea behind the portal was to develop a single reliable and secure business solution that we and our customers could share. What better way to provide the best customer experience possible than to put everything they need in one location?”

After validating the concept at several customer locations in 2003, the company ultimately chose to invest in IBM WebSphere Portal software. “We decided that we needed to buy a product that was scalable, an enterprise-level solution that we could put in place and extend out as needed,” says Jenkins. “Although we looked at products from Microsoft, BEA and Oracle, we chose IBM because WebSphere Portal wasn’t just a component of something larger. Since it stands on its own, WebSphere Portal offers the flexibility to adapt to the variety of customer sites we work in.”

IBM WebSphere Portal applications serve both UNICCO and its customers
Running on IBM System x servers, WebSphere Portal helps UNICCO consolidate all of the applications it has developed into a single interface and gives the company a solid foundation for building and delivering new applications. “Now when we go to build a new application, we already know how we’re going to handle things like security and delivery to the desktop because it’s going to be part of the portal,” explains Jenkins. “We just jump right into identifying the business needs and then we go to work developing the functionality.”

The first business process that UNICCO decided to tackle was time entry for its remote employees. By adding an application that allows the company’s remote workers to manage timesheets from customer sites, the company greatly increased the efficiency of its personnel managers. “Instead of getting weekly time spreadsheets for upwards of 30 people in from the field, account managers can go onto the portal and manage hours for each employee,” says Jenkins. “It’s much like a spreadsheet, but the interface is better. Role-based definitions even let us offer different functionality in the same application to the payroll employees who process the checks.”

In addition to the time-entry application, UNICCO developed a quality inspection system that helps the company assess performance at customer sites. “We can gather performance data, bring it back into the portal and deliver the information internally and to customers. Customers go into the portal to see the results of inspections and examine deficiencies.” says Bilal Khokhar, development manager for field applications at UNICCO. “It even has a PDA interface so users in the field can input data in real time as they inspect the site.”

UNICCO also developed an application for WebSphere Portal called myAP, an accounts payable application responsible for handling the processing of all of UNICCO’s invoices. By moving that processing to the portal, UNICCO has eliminated many of the errors that can come with relying on faxes or e-mails to distribute important paperwork. “We have operations people dispersed across North America, and invoices have to be routed to them for approval and coding. The portal enables that without having to fax paperwork around or e-mail attachments, which increases our accuracy and efficiency by creating a central location for invoices. Plus, since the history of every transaction is now in the portal, we can quickly find the source of an error should a problem arise,” says Jenkins.

QuickPlace adds collaboration to WebSphere Portal
Aside from the custom functionality, the out-of-the-box portlets available for WebSphere Portal help UNICCO achieve impressive efficiencies with minimal effort. Of particular value, IBM Lotus QuickPlace software offers a self-service work space system expressly designed for team collaboration. “Whenever we set up a new customer, we add a new Lotus QuickPlace room for the account,” explains Jenkins. “Instead of spending time on custom Web development, customers and account managers can place content on the portal to be accessed by all of the team members. Lotus QuickPlace directly contributes to a sense of collaboration between UNICCO and its customers.”

Role-based access delivers appropriate functionality to different users
With the role-based functionality enabled by WebSphere Portal, UNICCO can base access to its applications on users needs, as well as deliver customer applications, functionalities and interfaces to different individuals. “When users first log in to my UNICCO, they see relevant applications based on group memberships. For example, managers in the field can log on to manage employee timecards through the time-management application but they might not see the myAP application accounts payable employees have access to,” explains Jenkins. “Customers can access Crystal Reports to run reports on the quality inspection system or work order history, and if we’re handling accounts payable for them, they can also use myAP to monitor the status of in-process invoices.”

UNICCO eases application development with WebSphere Portlet Factory
To streamline the development process, UNICCO uses IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory to rapidly create, customize, maintain and deploy new portlets. “95 percent of the custom-developed applications on our portal were developed using WebSphere Portlet Factory,” says Khokhar. “Working with Portlet Factory means a reduction in time to deployment. With Portlet Factory, oftentimes we don’t have to write lines of code or design applications around particular technologies—we can take a modular approach by reusing the builders that are already available in Portlet Factory to develop custom applications.”

Dashboards offer customized views and tools
To offer relevant metrics to UNICCO employees and customers, UNICCO is using the IBM Workplace Dashboard Framework to deliver real-time, graphical reporting to users that are tailored to their roles. Currently serving a variety of users at UNICCO are a new business dashboard, a corporate performance reporting dashboard and an IT dashboard. “The role-based access determined by group membership also determines what dashboards users see after logging in,” explains Khokhar. “Although the dashboard information is initially presented in a standard view, we allow users to further customize the information so they see exactly what they need.”

For example, the Corporate Performance Reporting Dashboard provides a central means to quickly assess profitability on a per-location level rather than examine spreadsheets from individual location managers. “If we have a location that isn’t meeting the numbers, we can drill down into the dashboard to figure out why. For example, if a general manager wants to monitor the profitability of each account all they have to do is click on the location and essentially ask, ‘Why are we not meeting our goals here?,’” says Jenkins. “The person in the field can respond, and a history is established. It really helps the company focus on how we are doing.”

Currently in development is a customer key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard that will allow customers and management alike to access metrics like work order completion time, customer satisfaction, compliance rates and more. “By getting the KPI dashboard in place at all customer locations, UNICCO can implement performance standards across the entire organization—the efficiencies that can lead to will help us better serve our customers,” says Jenkins.

WebSphere Portal facilitates SOA strategy
Aside from the particular products, a service-oriented architecture (SOA) plays a crucial role in the overall business strategy at UNICCO. By relying on an SOA approach, UNICCO possesses the reusability and flexibility necessary to make application development and enhancement cost-effective. “In any organization, business processes are constantly changing as the business is growing and new requirements are coming in,” says Khokhar. “We don’t want to be in the business of ripping and replacing entire applications every time we update a business process or a priority changes. SOA allows us to look at our existing systems essentially as reusable services and use WebSphere Portal to provide a cohesive front end for delivering those services to our users.”

To make the company’s SOA strategy work, Khokhar’s team uses Portlet Factory to create loosely coupled services that can easily be adapted to different customer or business demands. “When developing applications, we begin with the mindset that the individual components need to be reusable. We also understand that they have to grow with the business and be able to adapt to a number of different backend data sources,” says Khokhar. “By sharing as much as possible between applications, we now possess a set of core services that can be reused in application after application. Now we can essentially assemble a solution from a set of services, and the portal brings it all together for the user.”

WebSphere Portal allows UNICCO to reach out to workers and clients
With WebSphere Portal, UNICCO has gained a cost-effective foundation for the delivery and development of the services critical to distinguishing the company from its competition. “As a development manager, my biggest challenge is to deliver applications that meet business needs. With WebSphere Portal and Portlet Factory, not only I am able to do that, but I can do it in an efficient and cost-effective manner,” explains Khokhar. Adds Jenkins, “By avoiding a large number of different systems, our developers can focus only on the skill sets they need instead of learning new technologies each time we need a new application—and that saves time and money.”

Aside from shrinking the expense of development, the new functionality delivered through the portal is helping the organization bring down operational costs. “In fact, I’ve estimated the first-year savings of moving to electronic invoices with our myAP solution to be US$140,000,” says Jenkins. “400 users in the company have used the application to execute 84,000 searches, which all used to be done manually using paper-based processes. Now all of that is done electronically, which represents significant administrative time and cost savings.”

Ultimately, however, the portal’s biggest benefit may be that it helps UNICCO keep its customer satisfaction advantage by offering an enormous value-added service to its customers. “Whether through QuickPlace collaboration, the quality performance inspections or the KPI dashboard, customers are eager to leverage our technology in running their own operations,” says Jenkins. “Together, WebSphere Portal, WebSphere Portlet Factory and Workplace Dashboard Framework are enabling us to be a more responsive, efficient and flexible service provider partner—and that means we are delivering truly integrated facilities management.”

For more information
For more information about IBM WebSphere Portal, please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit: ibm.com/websphere/portal

You can get even more out of Lotus software by participating in independently run Lotus User Groups around the world. Learn about opportunities near you at: lotususergroup.org

For more information about UNICCO, visit: unicco.com