Introduction

Henkel is a globally operating company with leading innovations, brands, and technologies in two business areas: Adhesive Technologies and Consumer Brands. Its portfolio includes well-known hair care products, laundry detergents, fabric softeners as well as adhesives, sealants, and functional coatings. In order to accelerate the digital transformation in the company, Henkel has established the digital unit Henkel dx in 2020. Focusing on individual customer and consumer needs, the department builds digital and data-driven business models for the company’s business units. An important part of Henkel dx is the digital workplace team, specifically looking after end user computing and workplace backend infrastructure topics for the global workforce.

Challenge

In the past, Henkel’s internal IT service desk has had a remote support solution in place, but it was only tailored to the Windows platform, which turned out to be a challenge: “Over time, we realized that we were having trouble in our IT support to service the growing number of corporate devices other than our standard laptops, such as mobile phones and Mac devices”, says Adrian van Zyl, Product Owner Client & Mobility Operations at Henkel dx.

When helping an employee with such a device, IT agents had to rely on the basic troubleshooting procedures, such as a static knowledge base they would go through with the employee step-by-step over the phone. This proved time-consuming and inefficient, also, among other things, because of frequent language barriers between service desk agent and employee, creating more and more dissatisfaction among both groups.

“At that point in time, our mobile device fleet was a little bit smaller than today, but nevertheless, mobile devices were always in the top ten of the ticket drivers. This was an important early indicator for us that this seemed to be a pain point we should have a closer look at”, says Adrian van Zyl. In a huge effort to modernize its workplace, empower its employees and facilitate access and participation with the digital infrastructure, Henkel started to introduce more Mac devices, including handing out Apple iPads to 6,500 employees in Germany. But to serve the growing need for remote IT support and access, Henkel finally would have had to license three different remote support products to satisfy only one use case. This would have resulted in a non-uniform, non-standardized remote support solution ecosystem that was becoming increasingly harder for Henkel IT to manage since each solution works differently resulting in complexity and bad support agent experience, not to mention managing different licenses from different solution vendors.

“It was not ideal for the support agents from a workflow perspective, and not ideal for the end user, as they had to accommodate to different solutions. At that point in time, it really became a no-brainer for us that we needed a single solution to manage our ever more heterogenous fleet of around 60,000 devices worldwide and streamline the experience”, Adrian van Zyl remembers.

Solution

Henkel intensified the search for a single remote support and access solution capable of replacing the three former ones – and found it in TeamViewer’s enterprise connectivity suite Tensor. 

“The most excited people were the service desk agents. Because they didn’t have to deal with the friction of working with three disparate remote support solutions to help the caller”, says Adrian van Zyl. In addition, workflows improved massively with the smooth integration of TeamViewer into Henkel’s existing IT landscape, including ServiceNow, Microsoft Azure and Teams, and Jamf. Especially the integration into the ticketing system ServiceNow led to significant gains in ticket resolution times and smoothened IT support operations, making it possible to initiate a TeamViewer session right out of the ticket without having to switch apps like before. Furthermore, connection logs were automatically added to the ticket, improving compliance, audits and facilitating documentation while saving time, resources and improving overall security and compliance posture at Henkel. 

Besides streamlining the IT support, security considerations were another main driver for Henkel when opting for TeamViewer. “Keeping our data safe and secure is a major topic for us. Every new software product needs to pass through certain gates, one of them being the security gate. We assess all different aspects of the solution, such as ISO certifications. TeamViewer’s industry-proven security features played a decisive role for us.” The granular role and access management allows Henkel to create a sophisticated rule set for initiating support sessions, making sure that only authorized personnel and devices can connect. Long story short: Henkel can pre-define which devices can connect to Henkel devices, creating a gated and secure IT environment.

Expanding use cases

The customizable ruleset also enabled entirely new use cases, bringing massive benefit to Henkel: 

• Selected and authorized internal as well as external providers can now connect to computers and devices in Henkel’s R&D labs, making use of device grouping and easy access. This allows for fast and efficient access to analyze data or calculating the best usage of Henkel products in real word usage simulations with pre-configured access and full auditability. 
• Henkel has a dedicated team of robot process automation (RPA) experts who are responsible for designing, developing, testing, deploying, and monitoring the RPA bots. Henkel adopts a follow the sun approach to maintain its RPA fleet and ensure best in class experiences. This means that the RPA bots are supported by colleagues in various locations spread across different time zones, ensuring that the bots are always up and running and that any issues are resolved quickly and effectively. This way, Henkel can provide seamless and consistent service to its colleagues and customers around the clock.