In our sights – PROMOS support

Editorial team: Mr Falkenhain, what kinds of issues cause customers to contact PROMOS support?

Sascha Falkenhain: There are a wide range of things. It could be anything from smaller errors relating to operation right up to those that exist in all postings in the SAP^® system. Our approach is also different depending on the issue.

Editorial team: What does that mean? What is your procedure?

Falkenhain: After we receive a ticket, the supporter on duty initially checks who can clarify the situation within what period of time. Here, both the relevance of the problem and the ease with which it can be resolved play a role. Some things can be fixed immediately because they involve a simple user error. Others, by contrast, are more deeply rooted and require assistance from our consulting team or the relevant specialist departments, for instance. In every case, the customer receives confirmation of receipt with a message that we are looking into a solution.

Editorial team: In what percentage of cases can you answer directly? And how long on average does it take to process a ticket?

Falkenhain: Our team can resolve around 56 percent of tickets directly. but is primarily due to the fact that we have a lot of individual developments in use at our customers, which require a high degree of solution depth. As for the time factor, our average response time is around three days. However, there is a great deal of fluctuation here. We can resolve some tickets directly in five minutes. Other times, a developer needs to be involved as well as a consultant. In other cases, the customer and supporter discuss the specific situation in more detail before a suitable solution is found. Of course, there are also specific response deadlines that we have to meet as an SAP® Partner Center of Expertise.

Editorial team: What does the title Partner Center of Expertise mean?

Falkenhain: This is an SAP mark of quality for SAP partners who provide SAP support that meets the quality requirements of SAP^®. In addition to system-related requirements, SAP has specific requirements regarding the training of Support Consultants, which PROMOS consult meets in full. These SAP quality standards are checked every two years and a certificate is issued.

Editorial team: And these consultants are also specially trained for support?

Falkenhain: Yes, exactly. They attend special SAP course and then have to complete an approximately three-hour examination with a total of 120 questions. As well as technical issues, this also includes appropriate interaction with customers. Of course, each person also has their own individual pet project. So one is an expert in the FI area, while another has additional certifications for BI. Up to now, the distribution within our team has been pretty good.

Editorial team: Are there also tickets that have to be passed on to SAP directly?

Falkenhain: Yes, but this only happens in less than one percent of cases.

Editorial team: So how many tickets on average do you receive?

Falkenhain: Per year, we receive around 4,000 tickets, and that number is increasing. At first, this sounds like a lot. However, when you consider that we operate approximately 130 systems, it isn’t actually all that many. And here we are talking about around 8,000 to 10,000 customer users!

Editorial team: Can every user simply open a ticket with you?

Falkenhain: That depends on the customer. We support very small companies with only eight users. In those cases, of course this is the case. At large companies with up to 700 employees there is usually an internal IT team – who we refer to as our key users – in between who perform a pre-analysis of the topics and then create the tickets.  

Editorial team: Mr Falkenhain, to conclude, do you have any tips regarding the best time to submit a ticket?

Falkenhain: Actually, we do have something like peak times, for example just before holiday periods and roughly from Tuesdays to Thursdays or when there are new or upgrade projects. The ideal time to submit a ticket is early Monday morning or Friday afternoon. Those are our quietest times. But of course we are available to our customers at any time!

Editorial team: Thank you very much for this interview, Mr Falkenhain.