Success Story

PPG Industries enables its IT and business managers to see the information needed to effectively understand and control consumption with Upland’s ComSci.

PPG Industries uses ComSci to provide IT and business managers with a detailed view of IT products and services, enabling them to track spend, manage IT costs, and increase technology value to internal clients.

PPG Industries enables its IT and business managers to see the information needed to effectively understand and control consumption with Upland’s ComSci

Business Needs

With technology playing a vital role in business operations, PPG’s infrastructure group wanted to get a better handle on technology costs and how technology products and services were being consumed by internal business units to ensure it was providing the most cost-effective and value-added services. While PPG had a chargeback system in place, it was internally developed and offered limited visibility of what made up IT costs, not showing how technology was being consumed by users, business units or departments. This prevented PPG’s businesses from having accurate data for informed decision-making.

 

“The accuracy of our data is now much greater, primarily because of the enhanced visibility provided within the ComSci solution. This allows each department to analyze its utilization of services and track its internal budget. Better visibility also enables managers to control demand, which has resulted in reduced overall spend.”

~Denise Vay, Senior IT Manager of Financial Services, PPG Industries

Paving the Way for Better Visibility

Recognizing that you can only manage what you can see, PPG sought to replace its internally developed legacy system with a hosted solution to put more rigor around IT financial management.

Maintaining the legacy system was costly and limited PPG’s ability to provide customers with insight regarding their IT charges. The infrastructure group had to spend lots of time gathering information rather than focusing on strategic, value added activities. By selecting ComSci’s

ITFM application, PPG was able to better understand who is consuming what technology service and its impact on the business, and to identify opportunities for cost control or containment.

“The goal wasn’t to drive costs out of the business, but to better understand how IT products and services were being used in the business and to ensure we were investing in the right technology to advance business goals,” said Denise Vay, PPG Senior IT Manager of Financial Services. “We evaluated each of the top vendors, but ComSci was the only one that met our requirement of providing a fully hosted production chargeback system.”

“In addition to using ComSci’s SaaS-based solution, we also use its Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) offering to manage the process of data aggregation for our monthly IT service billing and reporting production cycle,” Vay added.

“This enables us to spend less time processing data and more time analyzing and using the data to assess different financial scenarios.”

PPG implemented three ComSci modules — Bill of IT, Demand Management, and Analytics and Reporting — to improve its IT financial management processes. The modules provide PPG IT and business managers with information necessary to effectively understand and control consumption.

Tracking Spending, Validating Charges and Changing Consumption Behavior

Vay noted that the system is intuitive, easy to use and enables business and IT managers to view monthly charges via a dashboard set up with each department’s account. This simplifies the viewing and understanding of technology charges, improving the ability to track spending and validate usage and other IT charges. “The accuracy of our data is now much greater, primarily because of the enhanced visibility provided within the ComSci solution,” Vay said. “This allows each department to analyze its utilization of services and track its internal budget. Better visibility also enables managers to control demand, which has resulted in reduced overall spend.”

PPG’s infrastructure teams can now monitor internal consumption of IT services for better accuracy and to ensure they are providing the most cost-effective services. Managers can see services they are being charged for and eliminate services they are no longer using, such as paying mobility costs for an employee who has left the company.

Working with ComSci has been a great experience. ComSci delivered a complete solution for our internal customers.

~Denise Vay, Senior IT Manager of Financial Services, PPG Industries

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